Conservative Radio Host: Divorced People Who Remarry “Do Not Love Their Children”

If you get divorced, says conservative radio host Jesse Lee Peterson, don’t you dare get remarried. Because that would mean you hate your kids, you selfish jerks.

“The parents who are doing that are selfish parents,” Peterson said. “You’re selfish and you’re destroying the souls of your children … These people who are blending their families like that do not love their children.”

That’s why the Brady Bunch broke out into fights every episode.

Peterson insisted that anyone who has a child out of wedlock or gets divorced must remain single and must not “get involved with anyone else” until their children are grown and have moved out of the house.

“You deserve to suffer,” he said. “It’s not your kid’s fault that you are out of control and decided that you were going to have sex … with the wrong person and make a baby. They don’t deserve to suffer that because you were crazy.”

You would think that someone who has argued against gay marriage because kids deserve a mom and a dad wouldn’t argue against a parent looking for a new partner…

And why does Peterson think divorced people had sex “with the wrong person” when they had kids? Many of them will tell you they used to be in love and don’t regret their relationship, but for any number of reasons, they fell out of love or had some other reason to end the relationship. That’s not the child’s fault, and it’s not the couple’s fault either.

Peterson complete ignore the idea that married people might want to leave an abusive relationship or go through some personal change that makes the marriage no longer work for them. In his mind, there’s never a good reason for divorce.

Peterson says that parents who find themselves single or divorced must admit to themselves that they are solely to blame for their situation and “then God will give you love” and they’ll have no need for a partner.

“It doesn’t matter how nice the person is that you get involved with, the kids are not going to accept it,” Peterson warned. “In their souls, they are not going to accept it and you do a disservice to your children when you do that.”

Feel free to comment if you came to accept and love your stepmother or stepfather. Because Peterson doesn’t think you exist.

A lot of this probably stems from Peterson’s own biography. He didn’t grow up around his biological father, but got closer to him later in childhood. When he was 16,

… Peterson moved in with his mother and stepfather in the nearby city of Gary and there came to learn of her deep resentment of the man who denied impregnating her. “Her anger at him kept her from loving me,” Peterson writes.

He’s welcome to draw his own conclusions.

But make no mistake, this is how conservatives often operate. They had a bad experience, so that means everyone else had the same bad experience. Peterson resented his mother, therefore all kids must resent their divorced parents. There’s no room in his worldview for the idea that other people might be just fine with their parents divorcing or getting remarried. It’s impossible kids could love their stepparents. Kids must always be devastated by their parents’ separation.

It’s just not true. And he’s too closed-minded to realize it.

(via Right Wing Watch. Screenshot via YouTube)