Anti-gay conservative group One Million Moms has attacked two gay dads that were featured alongside their adopted daughter in a recent issue of American Girl Magazine. The magazine, owned and operated by Mattel, is popular among young girls and is tied to the American Girl doll franchise.
The article in question focused on young Amaya Scheer, adopted daughter of Rob and Reece Scheer, and the charitable work she and her family do for foster children. Amaya along with her three adopted brothers were all once foster children themselves, as was their father Rob.
The article, by an adult writer for the magazine, is written through Amaya’s perspective. In it, Amaya promotes the charity one of her dads — Rob — started several years ago, called Comfort Cases, which provides backpacks filled with pajamas, toothbrushes, blankets, stuffed animals and other items for foster kids. The group has gone from providing about 300 kits in 2013 to donating 7,000 to kids in the District, Maryland and Virginia foster care systems last year.
The article also goes on to detail how when Amaya arrived at the Scheers’ home in 2009, all her belongings were in a trash bag. Amaya recalls that when she was in foster care, the blankets she took with her from one foster home to the next “were all torn up” because “there wasn’t enough money to buy new ones.” The items provided by her family’s charity are meant to help foster children in need of basic toiletries and supplies.
However, in their online attack, One Million Moms made no mention of the charitable work done by the Scheer family and instead focused solely on attacking the Scheers and also Mattel, who it criticized for not remaining “neutral in the culture war”:
On their Web site, the group criticized the article, saying it should have focused “on the child and not about the parents since it is a magazine for children.” It went on: “The magazine also could have chosen another child to write about and remained neutral in the culture war.” The post goes on to say the magazine is trying to “desensitize our youth by featuring a family with two dads” and it calls homosexuality wrong. It also encourages subscribers to cancel the magazine.
Rob was dumbfounded by the response from One Million Moms:
“I don’t live in a plastic bubble,” Scheer said. “I am a gay man and I have four African American kids. I understand people out there are ugly. But I didn’t expect a group of moms to say we are sinners.” He said the family also received several unflattering calls to their home.
“How could somebody hate us so much in their heart by looking at our kids?” he asked of the response from the One Million Moms groups. “That’s what shocked me.”
Rob added that One Million Moms completely missed the point of the story. It’s “not about two gay men” he says; “It’s about kids in foster care that are carrying trash bags with their belongings. That’s not acceptable.”
American Girl was also “disappointed” by One Million Moms’ reaction according to company spokesperson Julie Parks. She said the piece on Amaya was meant to “shine a spotlight on a girl who is making a difference.” She added, “We have no agenda with the article other than to shine a spotlight on Amaya.”
Watch a news report from NBC Washington, below:
