Must We Be Different?

I was moved to quarrelsomeness this past week. The provovation was relatively minor. A friend of mine posited on his Facebook wall that a child raised by same-sex parents who trumpets his normalcy is undesirable--that we should hope for better.
The video on youtube of Zach Wahls testifying before the Iowa legislature against an amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman in February, 2011 went viral, and continues to enjoy elevated popularity, as does the man himself.
He describes himself as being a regular guy--a straight guy, with academic accomplishments, community invovlement, and he is clean cut good looking to boot. The point being that being raised by two women didn't change anything about who he was. They raised a child you would be proud to call your own. And that really resonated with people.
My friend, who has been a long time proponent of marriage equality as well as raising an openly gay child, was unhappy about that. His main objection is why should the focus be on normalcy? Why not celebrate differences. if kids raised by gay parents are different, if they don't fit our preconceived ideas of what is a 'good kid', is that a bad thing? Would that mean that we should be against gay marriage?
Well, I see his point, I do. But I am not the audience you need to convince. That audience is a group of people who are not well known for valuing differences, and for them, Zach Wahls is hard to reckon with--he is an Eagle Scout, for goodness sake. So I was moved to defend ordinary and normal as acceptable and perhaps even valuable attributes, especially for someone who might feel different to begin with. But it will be nice when no one is surprised that kids raised by gay parents have all the pluses and minuses of kids raised by straight parents. That will be a good day.