Ok so lets think about this. Lets say gay couples can legally marry, but cannot have kids. This is impossible. Single people can have kids, kids can have kids but gays cant? It's ireconcilable.

What if a married lesbian couple get impregnated assuming it's legal to marry but not spawn. What is the punishment for getting pregnant and/or giving birth? How can it be a crime to get pregnant? If the lesbians are biologically capable of bearing children, how does this affect the gay couples who are not? Should we sue God for not making men capable of bearing children? Should we sue the Tobacco companies for somehow having a hand in this? The scenarios give me a headache. The lawyers would be billing the gov't for the next 100 years contemplating the legal consequences.

While I am not against same sex marriage per se, same sex couples having or adopting kids makes me nervous. From a psychological perspective kids need the influence of a mother and a father.* Since children are such a large part of the original intent of creating the arrangement of marriage, I cant understand how all the details would work if there were gay marriage.

It isn't as simple as one would think to just say one way or the other. Or maybe I'm missing it completely.

* - says me a single guy with no kids or plans to have them.

I ran across this article the other day while doing research for a paper on primates. It's pretty interesting.

Excerpt:<blockquote>Wild male Sumatran orangutans at two study sites engaged in homosexual behavior. These observations demonstrate that homosexual behavior is not an artifact of captivity or contact with humans. In separate instances, homosexual behavior was associated with affiliative and agonistic behaviors. These observations add orangutans to the list of primates in which homosexual behavior forms part of the natural repertoire of sexual or sociosexual behavior.</blockquote>

This seems to suggest that the idea of homosexuality being "unnatural" is completely off base.

It seems to me that a whole slew of people have been raised by single mothers, and they seem to be getting on okay. In the absence of a father, the child will simply find some other male role model (and vice-versa for women).

I understand your point here. I dont think the 2 are the same though.

Seeing 2 women or 2 men as a couple raise a child still leaves the child without one or the other in the team.

I still dont agree with it.

If children being raised by single parents turn out just fine, then how can adding another parent of the same sex possibly change the results for the worse?

It shows a parental relationship of 2 same sexes, without a opposite sex influence. Having 2 daddys or 2 mommies. I object and think it's confusing for kids.

Sure there are single moms and dads, but they're single or with the opposite sex partners. This tends to show a relationship of opposite sex partners and allows them to define their own sex role from a parental example. A man or a woman.

I'm not saying I know it all. This is my opinion though. I dont think its good for kids.

What do you mean by "opposite sex influence"?

an opposite sex influence in the parent(s)

Would a girl have the parental influence of a woman from a gay couple? How about a boy from a lesbian couple? It's true there would be other role models, but the primary parental roles may not have their particular biological match.

It could also be said that one partner in same sex couples do have opposite sex traits, the butch lesbian, for example. While this is true it doesnt give the opposite sex parent the same biology and development experience as the real deal.

Can a woman relate to having an errection*? Most likely not. Is it important to have that type of sexual development experience to be somehow subliminally relatable to your kids? That's your call.

You, as a male, can relate to dad in some way when you're growing up, you can talk to him about girls, sex, (having sex with girls instead of alone in the shower) and other gender related topics. This may be more difficult with a woman, or an opposite sex parent.

In the end, if you ask me, I say its confusing for the child and I dont agree with it.

* - does not apply to Maggie

My dad died when I was 3, so I'm one of those people raised by a single-parent woman. I never ever had any sort of father figure growing up, real or replacement.

Originally posted by juju

My problem isn't gay couples having children. Its with gay couples adopting children. And its not so much a problem as an unsettling question.

Lesbian couples can have children. Male couples (duh) cannot so they have to adopt.

It goes to the question of what is the marriage for? If two gays want to institutionalize their commitment to each other be it civil, religious or whatever then honestly, I can find no fault in that and think it is actuallly a sign of character.

My question (and I don't know the answer) is what do we (legislatively) say about gay adoption. To be clear about my position (since you asked in another post), the idea of making it against the law for gays to have their own children is preposterous and and unacceptably discriminatory.

I don't know nor do I really care where homosexuality comes from - it is a reality and a lot of good people are homosexual. We must find a way to not shun these people by treating them like outcasts. But I don't know how that translates into the children question. And that's not to say that homosexuals can't be loving parents its to say I don't know what a kid raised in a homosexual house "looks like." Maybe its fine - I don't know. I'm not predisposed to an answer - I would just like some more information before deciding (the adoption question).

Adoptions into gay families is a tough issue even for me. I know that in a logical sense there is nothing wrong with a gay couple raising a child, yet at times I feel like I should say no.

In the end I think what it comes down to is the dedication of the family to the child and their ability to raise a child.

Yes it will be a bit odd for the child to grow up in a gay family, yes they'll get teased, yes they'll have some tough concepts to understand very early on. But in the end it's still better for the child to grow up in a gay family than a foster home.

fnf wrote:
Nice way to put it.

I bet a lot of kids in a foster home would choose a gay household over no household. And their opinion matters considerably more than mine does.

My take?
Have at it, boys!

Which would be more detrimental to the child: an unhappy marriage between a woman and a man who would have been gay, or being raised by that man married to another man?

(Admittedly, it felt wierd to write 'man married to another man'. If I feel wrong or awkward with a word or sentence, it's an indicator to me that it's incorrect. They might be correct to say that marriage is associated with 'union between a man and a woman'.)

single parent Vs mommy-mommy, they're not the same IMO.

Lemme see if I can find something written on this.

Many people have told me straight to my face how damaging a fatherless family is to a child.

Nothing could possibly be more damaging than their stupid prejudices.