On the two dozen Ohio lawmakers are postponing a draft law that defines the weeks between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as “Natural Family Month”, causing reactions from some LGBTQ families, according to reports.
Beth Lear and Josh Williams, both Republicans, said they presented Bill 262 to celebrate families and emphasize their critical role in society, at a time when marriages and birth levels are falling.
“At a time when marriage is trending down and young couples often choose to stay without children, it is important for the Ohio state to make a statement that marriage and families are the cornerstone of civil society, and absolutely necessary if we want to maintain a healthy and sustainable republic,” said Rep. Lear in a press release.
“With America facing the decline in birth levels and a reduced population, we can no longer allow to ignore the fundamental role that strong families play in keeping our future,” said Rep. Williams in a statement.
“HB 262 is more than politics-is about promoting the economic and social stability that comes from raising children in healthy family, with two parents. We must use every tool at our disposal to support families who are building the next generation of Americans,” he added.
The draft law does not determine what makes a “natural” family, but Williams told NBC News that the invoice aims to “promote natural families – say a man, a woman and their children – as a way to encourage higher birth levels”.
The birth rate in the SH.BA fell to a historic low in 2023, according to a CDC report published last year.
The CDC recently reported that the birth rate increased by 1% in 2023, which “brought out a less than 1% increase in the overall rate of fertility.”
Some levels of marriage have also experienced a declining change in recent decades. The Pew Research Center reported that the number of 40-year-olds in the SH.BA who were never married reached a high record in 2021.
But the draft law was criticized by the LGBTQ community, according to reports by WLWT5 and NBC News.
Ohio Vanessa Melendez resident, who is identified as a lesbian, is a married mother of two children living with her wife, adopted daughter and Stepon from a previous marriage in College Hill.
Melendez struck Ohio lawmakers for using the word “natural” in their pro-family bill, saying it excludes families as her, and others who have adopted, conceived through IVF, or raising children without a partner.
“The elephant in the room how they positioned it is with the word” natural “,” Melendez Wlwt5 told. “And I think what they are saying is if there is only one way to be a natural family, and that is not completely true.”
“They are really coming after him in a very narrow, exclusionary way, and they are giving only a description of a kind of family,” Melendez added. “We do not want to remove from that kind of family, but there are so many other types of families.”
Williams defended the draft law at NBC News, saying the bill is not intended to be discriminatory, but aims to support the family structure that is “more directly related to the creation and upbringing of children”.
“With the same logic that all families need to be celebrated,” Williams also told Wlwt5. “You can then go to June and say that we should not have a proud month because all sexual orientation should be celebrated, not just those that are alternative to the main flow.”
Williams, who is black, grew up by a single mother, grew up in poverty, and experienced homeless and argued that the father had negative effects on the black community.
“And we know statistics showing that this results in a higher degree of poverty, a higher school drop rate, a higher rate, a higher rate of public aid, a higher rate of criminal behavior,” he told Wlwt5.
Williams and Lear did not immediately return the Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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