As a writer, I've come to know that words are very powerful things. The right words will resonate with people, bringing people to empathize with a character or to sympathize with a viewpoint. The right words make people stop, they make people listen, and they make them think.
Similarly, the wrong words at the very least will cease to make sense or resonate with readers, at their very worst they wind up angering people, exposing flaws in the speaker, and bringing people to the opposite opinion of what the speaker wanted them to see.
Which brings me to focus on the word "alternative". The dictionary posits that an alternative is a secondary choice, an additional option. The word by itself doesn't have a negative connotation, yet when we tie in the word "lifestyle" it suddenly takes on the nature of a label. A code people use, when for whatever reason they are afraid to say "gay".
The obvious fallacy in this term should be clear. Basically it furthers the "us vs them" in the debate of what relationships are real and valid. We call homosexuality an "alternative" to heterosexuality as though it was a choice these poor souls made just to make their conservative neighbors uncomfortable.
Avoiding the potential bear trap of making this about politics, I'll stick to the wording here. The other flaw in this reasoning, is it implies by its very nature that there are in fact only two ways to live, two ways to parent, a normal way, and an alternative. This is absurd.
The "nuclear" two parent model is as alternative these days as a homosexual household. We have homes with step parents, half siblings, and split custody, we have single parent households, we have family's where multiple generations live together, or children share a home with aunts, uncles, and cousins. We have families of blended race and multiple languages, families of devout religion, and families who don't express their faith.
There is no one way to build a family, and as such, there is no inverse alternative. Instead there's a plethora of options for how families live and come together, and trying to label one, just one, choice in a sea of options as "alternative" is what really shines a focus of hypocrisy on this phrasing.
Ultimately, I hate labels. They seem to be a way of oversimplifying issues and people into mere terms that can be cataloged and set aside. When I look at a family, my ideal isn't based around one man one woman, it isn't even based around the number of parents a child has. In my ideal, a family is a group of people who live together, love each other, and work hard to provide the very best they can for each other. If people are happy together, if they care for each other and provide for each other, I don't see how that is an "alternative" to family.
