"I would never do that to a child that didn't have a mother," Martin Hranáč said in an interview. But this is what hurts those who take care of children with love and responsibility
Martin Hranáč made his name as an eccentric participant in the reality show VyVolení, and later as an actor, entertainer and waiter who managed to find his place in life again after hitting rock bottom. In recent years, he has been trying to profile himself as a "folk comedian" - a person who entertains a wide audience while standing up for the fact that he speaks "without serviettes". It is this honesty that has won him attention, but increasingly it also raises the question of how far the boundaries of personal opinion can extend when it touches on the identity of others.
In a new interview with news server iDnes.cz, Hranáč once again confirmed that his honesty often takes the form of misunderstanding. "I don't think it's good for two gay men to have a child," he says without any pretension. He adds that he finds it "terribly unfair" to a child when "two men deprive it of its biological mother." On the face of it, this is an opinion that anyone can hold - but in his case, as someone who is in a gay relationship himself, the phrase carries a different weight.
Hranac and his partner, Jesse Hackshaw, have been a couple for many years, and recently married. In the media, he talks often and happily about their relationship - about cultural differences, about plans together, about the fact that his job as a waiter keeps his feet on the ground. There would be nothing wrong with all that. But the moment a man who draws on rights that the queer community has fought hard for starts to define himself against it, it feels like a kick in the ribs to those who are still pushing for equality.
Hranac's rejection of rainbow families could perhaps only be taken as a personal stance - if it weren't for the fact that he is someone who has access to the media and who influences the public image of gay people with his statements. When he says that a child "needs a mother" and that he would "never do to not have one", he is implicitly saying that children raised by two men (or two women) are impoverished, incomplete, "different". And that their parents are selfish, fulfilling their own dream.
But all available research shows the opposite. Children from rainbow families thrive just as well as those from heterosexual families. They have healthy relationships, strong backgrounds and often a greater degree of empathy and tolerance. What a child really needs is not a mother and father - but love, security and stability. Biology is no guarantee of care or closeness. And after all, even in heterosexual families, many children grow up without one parent without necessarily being unhappy.
Hranac likes to call himself an "honest old Czech faggot". He says he doesn't want to be "identified with LGBT" because he is bothered by the supposed intolerance of this community for other views. But this "independence" of his comes across more as an attempt to please those who only tolerate gays if they stay quiet. If they don't want children. If they don't claim their rights. When they're "the normal ones".
It's sad that someone who has experienced firsthand what it's like to be rejected chooses to repeat the arguments of those who still see queer people as a threat. His words then serve as a convenient alibi for prejudice - "after all, even a gay person says it's not natural".
Martin Hranáč is of course entitled to say what he thinks. But freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from responsibility. When he talks about families, he should remember that he is talking about real people - couples who love, raise children, pay taxes and face social prejudice on a daily basis. His line about how he would "never do that to a child without a mother" then reads not as an opinion but as a condemnation of lives that are different from his.
And perhaps that is the paradox. Hranáč likes to style himself as a man who has been through a difficult time, who has come to understand that everything bad can be good for something, and that life is to be taken with a grain of salt. But his words about rainbow families show that the compassion he wants from others he cannot yet offer to others himself.
Some people talk to entertain. Others speak to make a difference. And then there are those who speak without thinking about what their words do. Perhaps this is what Martin Hranac should think about before he decides to speak "straight" again.
