Adam Carolla Should Straighten Out His Gay Parent Remarks

Actor Adam Carolla has built his career on tickling people's ribs. His latest remarks about gay people, particularly gay parents, are anything but amusing. Quite the opposite.

Carolla recently sat down with the website PopEater to discuss his childhood, Republican preference and why he would rather a straight couple raise his kids. "If something happens to me, I'd rather my kids were raised by a heterosexual couple rather than a gay couple, all things being equal," explained Carolla. "I just believe a mom and dad is better than two dads or two moms. I don't believe this, I just know this. I'm an atheist, it's not a religious thing, it's a nature thing."

While he would prefer gays over junkies, says the father of twins, if a gay couple and straight couple are on equal economic footing, he wants the straights on top.

Carolla has a mixed record when it comes to LGBT-inclusion. While he appears to support gay marriage, and equality in general, he's also caught flack for "butching up" a gay assistant for laughs and recommending the Gay Games have an oral sex contest to weed out straight impostors.

Those last two examples, however, are perfectly in line with Carolla's comedic mission: highlight social divisions to help bridge a divide. He did that quite well on his eponymous CBS radio show, which included "gay walking:" a segment in which gay people are asked "straight" people questions, like who won the Super Bowl, and an audience has to guess whether the contestant knows their heterosexual trivia, thus confronting their own, often flawed stereotypes.

Carolla's latest remark, however, proves neither humorous nor socially responsible.

Like Carl Paladino, the failed New York gubernatorial candidate who said gay people "brainwash" youth and choose their "lifestyle," Carolla's comment suggests that gay parents, and people, are unnatural. Since we're unnatural, we're to be loathed and scorned.

Though Carolla may not take his ideas to such an extreme level, we've seen how seemingly innocuous statements or positions can fuel fundamentalist anti-gay politics. Carolla's comments no doubt ring true to conservative Americans who revere him as an entertainer.

Simply because someone's gay friendly doesn't mean their comments are always as progressive as they believe; little "truths" can perpetuate dastardly myths, moving equality back, rather than forward.

Adam Carolla should reconsider his comments and make clear that his views are not meant to imply LGBT Americans are less capable than straights when it comes to raising rug rats. The heart, after all, knows no gender or sexuality.

Photo credit: NerdCoreGirl's Flickr