Dear Malia and Sasha 5/10/12

Your father, that loves you dearly, is worried about your feeling that some of your friend’s parents do not have the same rights as others.     Please do not worry.     I assume that you are referring to friends that are raised by persons of the same sex.    Understand that these couples are really very few.     On our last census only 650,000 of same sex, out of 312 million Americans (0.1%) reported as partners and of these 130,000 had the label of being married and only one in five had children.      I am sure that you will have many more friends that live with a mother and father that also chose not to be “married”, as these are 70 times more frequent that the ones that worry you.      Every parent, gays or not, of the kids that you play with have the same rights under the law.      Your father is a very busy man, with the economy and the rest, to fully explain that the absence of the word married does not have great legal meaning.      Traditionally, and by most religions, this word marriage represents the blessing of bringing children, like you, to the world and this miracle can only be accomplished by the physical union of both sexes.      Many of us that are against treating persons that, no fault of their own were born with love for others of the same sex, in a discriminatory fashion disagree with your parents on using the symbolic word marriage as it truly represents the preservation of mankind.      Please keep supporting your father because as our President, he has many responsibilities and we are going through very tough times here and abroad.      His latest declaration on gay marriage had much more to do with the next election than reality.     Study hard, listen to mom and dad that love you and sleep well. Sincerely yours Fernando J Milanes MD