On Friday we noted that the Religious Right was up in arms about proposed changed to the passport application that would have replaced the terms “mother” and “father” with the terms “parent 1” and “parent 2.”
Well, it looks like the State Department has backed off a bit and will retain “mother” and “father” while adding “parent 1” and “parent 2”:
In a bid to forestall a backlash from congressional conservatives, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has ordered the State Department to amend a bureaucratic change that would have eliminated the titles “mother” and “father” in favor of the gender-neutral term “parent” in passport applications and other documents.
The State Department said Saturday that Clinton had instructed the department to retain “mother” and “father” in passport applications as well as in a form known as a “Consular Report of Birth Abroad” that U.S. embassies use to document the birth of a child to expatriate Americans. It said the forms will now ask for the names of the child’s “mother or parent 1” and “father or parent 2.”
Will that placate the Religious Right? Unlikely.
