equality blooms with spring, pt. II

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Did you read the speech? Obama talked about the need for fathers, Irvine. Fathers.
Obama's point is clear and it's sailing over your head. He's trying to encourage biological parents not to neglect their children, not tell gays they can't raise kids.
What's not in dispute based on the statistics posted, from such controversial sources as the US Census Bureau and the Dept of Human Health and Services, is that kids do better with their fathers in the home.
As opposed to having no father in the home and just a mother.
 
Did you read the speech? Obama talked about the need for fathers, Irvine. Fathers.

yes, fathers with children. they need to pay attention to them. nowhere -- and i listed every last adjective for you in that speech, nathan -- did we find any qualities that couldn't also be shared by a woman.

we have a problem specifically with heterosexual men who father children and then neglect them. this more often than not afflicts poorer families. Obama addressed THAT, not the essential goodness of men and their indispensability PREDICATED upon their gender.

two mothers and/or two fathers have been proved, again and again, to be every bit as good as a mother and a father, and in fact, the newest evidence shows that two mothers just might be an even more optimal environment in which to raise children (though i'd argue that it's more that gay couples have to spend considerable money and jump through hoops to have children, and so they tend to take their jobs *very* seriously, as opposed to heterosexual men, apparently).

so, nathan, while a child might need HIS father, a boy with two mothers does not need the sperm donor nor is he disadvantaged by not having a male parent when he in fact has two good female parents.



Biology is a concoction? *shrug*


the essential timelessness you're ascribing to traditional gender roles certainly is.



As I said earlier, gender roles shift and change over time. What's not in dispute based on the statistics posted, from such controversial sources as the US Census Bureau and the Dept of Human Health and Services, is that kids do better with their fathers in the home.



good. go pick on the straight men. they're who you have the issue with.
 
When studies corroborate evidence across racial and socio-economic lines, the need for fathers then isn't merely isolated to African-American urban youth (as Irvine implied a few pages back when he said that Obama was simply addressing the African-American community).



wow, how intellectually dishonest of you. i've come to expect more from you, nathan.
 
Since marriage is the context in which the majority of children are still born, and since the statistical evidence shows that kids need fathers, I'd say it does...



... and here we go. sorry i didn't multi-quote all this.

yes, perhaps heterosexual men shouldn't be allowed to get married, or father children since they're too irresponsible to be trusted with them.

that's the core of your argument.

i guess my kids are going to be really, really awesome, since they'll have two dads.
 
You should have paid attention to the next quote:

"A family structure index - a composite index based on the annual rate of children involved in divorce and the percentage of families with children present that are female-headed - is a strong predictor of suicide among young adult and adolescent white males."
"Trends in White Male Adolescent, Young-Adult, and Elderly Suicide: Are There Common Underlying Structural Factors?" Social Science Research 23 (1994)

When studies corroborate evidence across racial and socio-economic lines, the need for fathers then isn't merely isolated to African-American urban youth (as Irvine implied a few pages back when he said that Obama was simply addressing the African-American community).

Interestingly, the statistics for girls without a father are also interesting:

Girls without a father in their life are two and a half times as likely to get pregnant and 53 percent more likely to commit suicide. Boys without a father in their life are 63 percent more likely to run away and 37 percent more likely to abuse drugs. Both girls and boys without a father are twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to end up in jail, and nearly four times as likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services press release, "HHS Launches 'Be Their Dad' Parental Responsibility Campaign" (March 26, 1999)

You've sucked me back in one more time, but seriously, this is it.

You honestly don't get it. That does not tell me one single thing about how the studies have handled third variables, or even if they have, because many don't. Nothing. I'm tired of repeating this over and over again.

And again, the overwhelming point you seem unwilling to address - none of this matters anyway in the context of this discussion, for the reasons I and several others have already mentioned.
 
Actually, it's interesting -- in 1983, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that 60% of child abusers were women with sole custody. I realize that child abuse and the specific case of sexual abuse are different, but still -- I wasn't aware of that. (Things may have changed since those days.)

Well obviously since more women had custody of children back there than men; that statistic alone drove it to 60% in all likelihood.

Your constant focus on fathers simply points out a failure on the part of straight men. Perhaps that's something you should be addressing totally separately from whether my old roommate and her girlfriend should be allowed to marry.
 
You've sucked me back in one more time, but seriously, this is it.

You honestly don't get it. That does not tell me one single thing about how the studies have handled third variables, or even if they have, because many don't. Nothing. I'm tired of repeating this over and over again.

And again, the overwhelming point you seem unwilling to address - none of this matters anyway in the context of this discussion, for the reasons I and several others have already mentioned.

In summary: you're wrong in thinking any of this discussion of children matters, and even if it did, you're wrong about that too.
 
Since marriage is the context in which the majority of children are still born, and since the statistical evidence shows that kids need fathers, I'd say it does...


So what about all those terrible single mothers, depriving their poor children of a father? Gonna vote against those too?

Or maybe, as others have said, it's the straight guys who are fucking it up for everyone else. :hmm:

Wouldn't be the first time....
 
So what about all those terrible single mothers, depriving their poor children of a father? Gonna vote against those too?

I don't know how these women could just let their man walk away like that. Surely we can legislate against their inflammatory actions.
 
So what about all those terrible single mothers, depriving their poor children of a father? Gonna vote against those too?



i think it is clear that women who leave men -- for whatever reason -- are guilty of child abuse by depriving them of a father.
 
so i know i'm late to the party, but i'm just watching the first season of Mad Men, and i couldn't be happier that gender roles have evolved along with our knowledge of smoking, children playing in plastic bags, and seat belts.
 
Girls without a father in their life are two and a half times as likely to get pregnant and 53 percent more likely to commit suicide. Boys without a father in their life are 63 percent more likely to run away and 37 percent more likely to abuse drugs. Both girls and boys without a father are twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to end up in jail, and nearly four times as likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems.

Are you not evening paying attention to anyone else in this thread? These studies are meaningless to the discussion. Studies that deal with the statistics and challenges of one-parent households, particularly one-parent households where the other parent has left the picture, have absolutely no bearing on a discussion of two-parent households.

None.

Yes, Obama talked about the need for fathers. But, and this is a very important distinction, in the context of households that are struggling under single parent care, which is, once again, an entirely separate area from two-parent households where the parents are homosexual. And as Irvine pointed out, if the need for fathers is so great, and if we're to take your stats at face value (which no one should) and say that female led households lead to greater suicide rates, then wouldn't a homosexual male couple be the ideal environment to raise a child?

For you to bring any relevant outside data to this discussion, you'd have to produce studies that compare heterosexual parents to homosexual parents, which you have yet to do.

Quite honestly it's baffling that you don't see the obvious disparity between the statistics you're posting and the discussion that's taking place here.
 
Are you not evening paying attention to anyone else in this thread? These studies are meaningless to the discussion. Studies that deal with the statistics and challenges of one-parent households, particularly one-parent households where the other parent has left the picture, have absolutely no bearing on a discussion of two-parent households.
No one argues that in most cases two parents are better for children than a single parent. But there are still variables. For instance, never having a father affects children differently than if they lose one to divorce which affects them differently than if they lose one to death.

But most people would go further and state, without hesitation, that a child with a loving mother and father would have an advantage over the child of a loving same sex couple. Which begs the question; if it's only quantity, two parents being better than one with gender being inconsequential, than wouldn't three parents be even better? Four?
 
Which begs the question; if it's only quantity, two parents being better than one with gender being inconsequential, than wouldn't three parents be even better? Four?

It takes a village...
 
But most people would go further and state, without hesitation, that a child with a loving mother and father would have an advantage over the child of a loving same sex couple. Which begs the question; if it's only quantity, two parents being better than one with gender being inconsequential, than wouldn't three parents be even better? Four?


You get some points for not bringing animals into the discussion.
 
:hmm: I'll butt in here and ask a question that will be too hard to answer. I have no kids. I have never ever planned to have kids. We got married 20 1/2 years ago with the plan to never have kids. I'm fixed, surgically, to never have kids. They're not happening in this lifetime.

So far, we've had pages of posts about families, fathers, mothers, men, women, biology, philosophy. None of these have addressed the fact that marriages sometimes don't produce children.


The question: Is my marriage still legitimate to those posters who have decided that marriage is only for having children?


INDY, AEON, since you're both back in the discussion, my question still stands. Since the two of you seem to think marriage really does only equal offspring, since that's ALL you've talked about for pages, how's about those of us without kids? Still a valid marriage?
 
Originally Posted by nathan1977
For most people, the process of getting married revolves around making babies


It can, but is not defined by!!!

Even the most ignorant among us understand this.

So why are you trying to use it to define marriage now?

I can only think of one answer.

Why are we still talking about this?
 
if it's only quantity, two parents being better than one with gender being inconsequential, than wouldn't three parents be even better? Four?

How about 20?

Nursing Moses: Moms step in after infant's mother dies - CNN.com

As the newborn breathed in life, his mother, Susan Goodrich, began to die. Less than 12 hours after having her son, the 46-year-old mother of four was gone. The cause was a rare amniotic fluid embolism.

...

What evolved in the coming days still touches Goodrich. More than 20 mothers in Marquette, a city of 20,000 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, volunteered to nurse baby Moses.

All these months later, they're still at it.

"It's been such an incredible outpouring of community love for this child of mine," said Goodrich, a 44-year-old history professor at Northern Michigan University, where his late wife worked, too, teaching Spanish and Portuguese. "This has certainly stretched the parameters of what is public. I've had to open the door to complete strangers, inviting them into the most private, intimate part of my life."

A touching story, or further evidence of societal decline? Either way, I'm guessing that since this child will be raised by a single father, we should have the state take him away and give him to a family with a mother and a father, right?
 
Interesting. Here's a blog post from Rod Dreher, which, if you're not aware of him, he's very conservative and has written a lot of the expected "gloom and doom" posts about gay marriage, but, yet, has found himself in favour of gay adoption.

Gay adoption - Crunchy Con

A conservative Catholic friend e-mails this morning with news of a gay couple she knows having adopted an orphan from overseas, and how she supports what they're doing. She says that she accepts the Church's teaching about homosexuality, but considering the life this orphaned child faced in his home country, and knowing her gay friends to be of sterling character, she believes the child ended up in the best possible situation for him.

My friend feared that I would be horrified by her support for gay adoption, but in fact I'm pretty much where she is, though I'm not entirely comfortable with that.

He also updated it with an anecdote from someone:

During the 1980s, during the Bush/Dukakis campaign, my lesbian mothers had a family of four foster children living with them. During this campaign, gay adoption, and Dukakis's tolerance of it was specifically an issue. The children of this household were given to my mother and step-mother because one in the family had been so badly sexually abused by her father and an uncle that she could not be placed in a household with men - she was so terrified of them that she was a danger to herself. She was 5. At least one of her brothers had been molested as well, by his father, who was now in jail for arson. The baby had had three broken bones - he was 10 months old when we took him in. There was no other household for those four traumatized children to live in - no one wanted four siblings, ranging from 7 to 10 months, badly abused and traumatized, with a variety of mental and behavioral problems, except us. The only other option was separation of the siblings. The kids never had had regular meals. The four year old wasn't toilet trained. The baby was 10 months old and weighed 12 lbs. They had lice and constant trantrums. They lived with us for two years, and for two years, we never knew if the state would come and take them back and separate them from their safe, clean house where they were finally secure and could eat and not be afraid, because the two jerks in office were debating whether gay people should get to take care of children nobody wanted, and implying that crappy heterosexual homes were preferable to safe, stable gay ones. I found that intolerable then, I find it intolerable now. My mother and step-mother took in more than 70 foster kids over the years, some of them with stories just as horrible as these ones, but it was these kids, overlapping with the political situation that taught me just how wonderful my very ordinary family was - I ate every day, I had parents who loved me and kept me safe. That they were both women was the very least important thing about them. On this subject, my feelings are entirely uncomplicated - anyone who stands between a hungry kid and home with food is doing something immoral. Anyone who stands between a child who is not safe and safe home is wrong. And if you think that heterosexual parents make better adoptive homes, and want to make a big deal about it, you had better have at least one adopted, high need kid if you want me to give a hoot what you think. I realize that's a much more visceral than rational response, and probably a little unfair. But as I'm sitting in my Moms' living room, cooking for tomorrow, when 28 of our family - my sisters and their husbands and kids, my aunt and her adopted daughter and her elderly mother, two former foster kids and their kids, my aunt and uncle (on step-Mom's side) and their kids are coming together, I find I simply can't come up with anything else to say.

So it begs the question, considering Dreher's above quoted anecdote. Are people basically "okay" when an "individual gay couple" adopts, but opposed when "gay people" adopt?
 
A touching story, or further evidence of societal decline? Either way, I'm guessing that since this child will be raised by a single father, we should have the state take him away and give him to a family with a mother and a father, right?


I dunno. From the posts in this thread, it seems that single fathers are just fine. The need for a father has been demonstrated by the "evidence." The need for a mother, not so much.
 
I have some thoughts on the whole parenting thing, regarding why a father and mother unit is not the be all, end all in parenting, and why other family units are just as valid.

Humans are inherently flawed. These flaws vary in scope and degree, but I think it's very safe to say that none of us are perfect, and we bring these imperfections into every aspect of our lives, including our parenting. For example, I have no doubt that Nathan and his spouse, who I'm guessing are a very traditional family, are great parents. I'm sure they treasure their children, keep them safe, teach them right and wrong according to their values, want the very best for them, and are doing all that's within their power to raise them to be fully functional and productive members of society. I'm sure his kids will probably turn out to be just that, people that he and his wife can be very, very proud of. But will they be perfect? I doubt that. They will have their flaws, just like the rest of us.

To get a little more specific, I (imperfect me) have raised my daughter as a single parent for over 10 years now, and she's now university-aged. During that time, her father has been an inconsistent figure in her life. Is she lacking because of the absence of a present, engaged father figure? Has this caused her to be flawed in any way? Probably. But on the other hand, she has so many amazing qualities, and some of them have come because of being raised by a single parent. So, if she'd had a present father for all these years, she may have gained in some areas, but she also would have lacked in others. She would still be flawed, but she would be flawed differently. Further, I contend that in whatever criteria make a person a good one, she would easily hold her own against or even surpass children raised in the best and most functional of two parent, opposite gender families. I deeply resent the implication I've seen many times in various parenting threads here that single parenthood is inherently inferior to other family types.

The exact same thing can be said for homosexual families. Do they lack anything because of not having two different gendered parents? Probably at least a little. But what they do lack will be compensated for in other areas. Their flaws will be different, but not necessarily greater than the flaws of a child raised in a male - female headed family.

My point is, no one type of family unit can be said to be superior to another. It all depends on the individuals involved, and their commitment to parenting. One thing that can be said for a same sex headed family though, is that given the hoops they must jump through in order to have a child (as opposed to heterosexuals who can produce them with as little as a casual roll in the hay that was meant purely for sexual gratification), their children are probably far more intentional and wanted than many children born to heterosexual parents, and that has to be a positive thing.
 
But most people would go further and state, without hesitation, that a child with a loving mother and father would have an advantage over the child of a loving same sex couple. Which begs the question; if it's only quantity, two parents being better than one with gender being inconsequential, than wouldn't three parents be even better? Four?



first, "most people" are wrong, since all studies show that kids with gay parents do just as well, and perhaps even a little bit better with two mothers.

as for the question you feel was begged, my understanding is that polygamous relationships are illegal. i would imagine it is the quality of that relationship between the parents that's also critical to the health of the child. i also think kids do well when they have not just two parents, but invested, loving, involved grandparents and perhaps aunts and uncles as well.

but this seems to be a needless distraction, and just another extension of the argument, "but if we let men marry men, then we have to allow polygamy and incest and bestiality as well."
 
I have some thoughts on the whole parenting thing, regarding why a father and mother unit is not the be all, end all in parenting, and why other family units are just as valid.

Humans are inherently flawed. These flaws vary in scope and degree, but I think it's very safe to say that none of us are perfect, and we bring these imperfections into every aspect of our lives, including our parenting. For example, I have no doubt that Nathan and his spouse, who I'm guessing are a very traditional family, are great parents. I'm sure they treasure their children, keep them safe, teach them right and wrong according to their values, want the very best for them, and are doing all that's within their power to raise them to be fully functional and productive members of society. I'm sure his kids will probably turn out to be just that, people that he and his wife can be very, very proud of. But will they be perfect? I doubt that. They will have their flaws, just like the rest of us.

To get a little more specific, I (imperfect me) have raised my daughter as a single parent for over 10 years now, and she's now university-aged. During that time, her father has been an inconsistent figure in her life. Is she lacking because of the absence of a present, engaged father figure? Has this caused her to be flawed in any way? Probably. But on the other hand, she has so many amazing qualities, and some of them have come because of being raised by a single parent. So, if she'd had a present father for all these years, she may have gained in some areas, but she also would have lacked in others. She would still be flawed, but she would be flawed differently. Further, I contend that in whatever criteria make a person a good one, she would easily hold her own against or even surpass children raised in the best and most functional of two parent, opposite gender families. I deeply resent the implication I've seen many times in various parenting threads here that single parenthood is inherently inferior to other family types.

The exact same thing can be said for homosexual families. Do they lack anything because of not having two different gendered parents? Probably at least a little. But what they do lack will be compensated for in other areas. Their flaws will be different, but not necessarily greater than the flaws of a child raised in a male - female headed family.

My point is, no one type of family unit can be said to be superior to another. It all depends on the individuals involved, and their commitment to parenting. One thing that can be said for a same sex headed family though, is that given the hoops they must jump through in order to have a child (as opposed to heterosexuals who can produce them with as little as a casual roll in the hay that was meant purely for sexual gratification), their children are probably far more intentional and wanted than many children born to heterosexual parents, and that has to be a positive thing.




thank you for the best post in the thread so far. :)
 
INDY, AEON, since you're both back in the discussion, my question still stands. Since the two of you seem to think marriage really does only equal offspring, since that's ALL you've talked about for pages, how's about those of us without kids? Still a valid marriage?

Valid marriage? Of course not.

We should continue the practice of ostracizing couples that marry and cannot have children because of infertility or the husband getting his pecker shot off in Bush's illegal war in Iraq.

Society should continue to distance itself from couples whose children die due to lack of universal health care coverage or rising sea levels.

Older couples whose children have left the nest should continue to be seen as second class marriages. Better that one offspring continue to live at home, preferably in the basement where they can blog for the DailyKos.

"Go forth and multiply," thus sayeth the Lord. Let it always be a blasphemy for a young, perfectly healthy couple to marry and choose to never have children. They shall be stoned, not shunned.
 
It takes a village...

295px-VillagePeople1978.jpg



Daddies home.
 
Valid marriage? Of course not.

We should continue the practice of ostracizing couples that marry and cannot have children because of infertility or the husband getting his pecker shot off in Bush's illegal war in Iraq.

Society should continue to distance itself from couples whose children die due to lack of universal health care coverage or rising sea levels.

Older couples whose children have left the nest should continue to be seen as second class marriages. Better that one offspring continue to live at home, preferably in the basement where they can blog for the DailyKos.

"Go forth and multiply," thus sayeth the Lord. Let it always be a blasphemy for a young, perfectly healthy couple to marry and choose to never have children. They shall be stoned, not shunned.

And now you see how ridiculous it looks when we have to ask if gay marriages should be legal.
 
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