While Connecticut is known for its accepting nature, other states seem to be considering less welcoming policies including a new bill introduced by Ohio Republicans in the Columbus statehouse.
Ohio’s House Bill 262, cosponsored by more than two dozen Republican lawmakers, would declare the 35 to 42-day period between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as “Natural Family Month.” On top of defining a five-to-six week period on the calendar as a “month,” the bill would disparage single parents, gay and lesbian families and all non-nuclear families.
The bill does not define what a “natural family” would be, but an organization called the Natural Family Foundation seeking to, in its text, “make America great again,” states that a “natural family is the cornerstone of all civilization.”
The NFF claims a family must have a clear male leader with blood ties to the rest of the family, with no leadership from any other key influences in that family’s society. It claims that “the family is being corrupted” and that its only definition of family is a “biological born man and woman in a lifelong, committed, monogamous relationship with their biological and/or adopted children.”
Any other family – a single parent raising children, queer parents raising children, grandparents raising grandchildren – is therefore corrupting the concept of family under the proposal. Should the NFF find success with defining “natural families,” it hopes to also make divorce and premarital sex less common.
NFF articles hosted on the organization’s website claim, inaccurately, that “the one common thread among all the recent mass shooters is that they are children of single mothers,” that “children born to single mothers are twice as likely to be become delinquents,” that “a kid having ‘two moms’ or ‘two dads’ is… counterfeit” and that “leftists have and are tearing the natural family asunder.”
In an interview with the Buckeye Flame, NFF executive director James Harrison told the Flame that he attended church with one of the bill’s legislative sponsors. He said that “if you’re going to celebrate gay Pride, then we’re going to celebrate the natural family,” and implied he would prefer for children in the foster care system to remain within the system than be adopted by a same-sex couple.
Adoptive parents and gay and lesbian individuals told the Flame that this policy was designed to exclude and harm any non-nuclear family by diminishing their status.
The blog LGBTQ Nation noted Harrison is also the leader of an organization called Minutemen United that in 2013 protested an Ohio church opposing gay marriage and abortion rights.
While Connecticut does not single out any specific type of family as superior to others, the NFF’s reach extends as far as New England. In 2024, New Hampshire Republicans honored “Natural Family Month,” LGBTQ Nation reported, drawing condemnation from New Hampshire Democrats for “recognizing an institution whose mission it is to attack… any family [the NFF] considers non-traditional.”
