More than two dozens of Ohio legislators are pressing a bill that designates the weeks between mother and father’s day as a “most natural family” day, causing a decline of some LGBTQ families, according to reports.
State representatives Beth Lear and Josh Williams, both Republicans, said that they introduced the Casa 262 bill to celebrate families and to emphasize their critical role in society, at a time when marriages and birth rate are decreasing.
“ At a time when marriage is in the low tendency and young couples often choose to be left without children, it is important that the state of Ohio make a statement that marriage and families are the cornerstone of civil society and absolutely essential if we want to maintain a healthy and stable Republic, ” said representative Lear in a press release.
“With America, which faces the reduction of birth rate and a small population, we can no longer afford to ignore the founding role that strong families play in the maintenance of our future,” said Williams in a statement.
“Hb 262 is more than politics: it is to promote the economic and social stability that comes from the breeding of children in healthy homes and two parents. We must use all the tools at our disposal to support the families who build the next generation of Americans,” he added.
The bill does not define what a “natural” family does, but Williams told NBC News that the bill is aimed at “promoting natural families, which means a man, a woman and their children, as a way to encourage the highest birth rates.”
Birth rates in the United States fell into a historic minimum by 2023, according to a CDC report published last year.
The CDC recently reported that birth rates increased by 1% by 2023, which “pushed for an increase of less than 1% of the general fertility rate”.
Some marriage rates have also undergone downward change over the last few decades. The Pew Research Center reported that the number of 40 -year -olds in the United States who have never married never reached a record in 2021.
But the bill was criticized by the LGBTQ community, according to WLWT5 and NBC News reports.
The resident of Ohio, Vanessa Melendez, who identifies as a lesbian, is a married mother of two who lives with his wife, the adoptive daughter and the stepson of a previous marriage, to College Hill.
Melendez hit Ohio legislators to use the word “natural” in their pro-family bill, saying that it excludes families like theirs and others they have adopted, conceived through IVF or who raised children without a partner.
“The elephant in the room on how they positioned it is the word” natural “, Melendez told WLWT5.” And I think what they say is if there is only one way of being a natural family and this is not true. “
“They really arrive after a very narrow and exclusive way and only give a description of a family type,” Melendez added. “We do not want to eliminate us from a type of family, but there are so many other types of families.”
Williams defended the bill at NBC News, saying that the bill is not intended to be discriminatory, but is aimed at supporting the family structure that is “more directly related to the creation and parenting of children”.
“With the same logic that all families should be celebrated,” Williams also told WLWT5. “You could go in June and say that we should not have a month of pride because all sexual orientation must be celebrated, not just those that are alternatives to the main current.”
Williams, who is black, was raised by a single mother, grew up in poverty and experienced homeless, and argued that misfortune has had negative effects on the black community.
“And we know that statistics that show that this causes a higher rate of poverty, a higher rate of school abandonment, a higher rate, a higher rate of public assistance, a higher rate of criminal behavior,” he told WLWT5.
Williams and Lear did not immediately return the Fox News Digital Comments Request.
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