Shock outrage horror!

And what's the most super-important story of the last few hours over at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network? Off to FEMA camps for you, mom and dad; Comrade Education Czar has spot in Big Soviet Kindergarten for Biffski and Jane!

Well, sorta. Stating sometime next month, apparently, passport applications are going to have a space for "Parent 1" and "Parent 2" rather than "father" and "mother" (or "mother" and "father," whichever). You might think you have bigger things to worry about: how's the exchange rate, will the kitties be OK, will the French laugh at your pitiful attempts to order the oven-broiled tractor, are you going to get to your conference in Lebanon with a big old Israeli stamp on the front page of the passport? But that's not how the thinking goes at Fox -- see, when "family groups" are "outraged," we have a story that's worth some staff time and a spot at the top of the front page.

Some "family groups," that is. The executive director of the Family Equality Council thinks it's a great idea: “The best thing that we can do is support people who are raising kids in loving, stable families.” It's that darn Family Research Council that seems to be causing the trouble:

“Only in the topsy-turvy world of left-wing political correctness could it be considered an ‘improvement’ for a birth-related document to provide less information about the circumstances of that birth,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins wrote in a statement to Fox News Radio. “This is clearly designed to advance the causes of same-sex ‘marriage’ and homosexual parenting without statutory authority, and violates the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act.”

And the unintrusive, minimal-gubmint, back-to-the-Constitution solution?

Perkins, meanwhile, accused the State Department of disrespecting the law and called on Congress to “take their oversight rule very seriously and intervene in both these circumstances.”

Now. Having paid attention all this time, you might be inclined to categorize this as an example of agenda-setting: not telling people what to think, but telling them what to think about. Let me suggest putting it at the second level of agenda-setting: not just telling people what to think about, but telling them how to think about the things they think about. (Fox didn't categorize the thing as a "president" story by accident.)

As of this writing, the story has racked up 3,400-plus comments, and I'd like to suggest that they offer some reasonably good clues as to how Fox expects you to think about things:

Mark this: Nero is channeling through Obama and his cronies. These people are out of their mind. When are WE going to stop this insanity?

G a y rights groups like the more 'global term' of parent. I guess they have never been to a Mus1im country before.

impeach buckwheat

Yet another example of the liberal left getting their way, and another attack on the traditional family. Will DC find their senses or is the repair of our Republic going to require 1776 version 1.1?

The government is changing language to control thought. Orwellian, to say the least. Parent 1 and parent 2 are cold, clinical, sterile while Mother and Father portray love, warmth, feeling equatinq to family.

Why does the majority always have to change for the minorities. F them g a y s...! This and the stupid spanish c r a p we have to put up with. The Our leaders are a bunch of morons. Period.

read "brave new world" you will get an idea of where this is headed. the similarities between what that book predicted and reality are becoming unsettling.
Editors, remember that the person who calls demanding to know why you and your Marxist buddies are suppressing this story may never have heard the sound of a phone being slammed down in his or her ear before. Don't let a priceless bit of Americana be forgotten.