gay couples rasing kids
 

the environment a couple creates for their children is a complicated mixture, and it's not as simple as 'x will mess up a child, and y will create a happy healthy child'. the strength of the union between the parents has a HUGE effect on the children's sense of safety and security at home. honestly, a straight couple who have issues between them like drinking/drug abuse, domestic violence, crime, don't-give-a-s#it-ness, etc. will probably 'mess up' their children way more than anything about the concept of having two fathers or two mothers. and frankly, the discrimination and legal hurdles that a gay couple have to navigate to raise their children seem more likely than pure 'gayness' to give the children problems as they grow up. particularly the custody battles, in which the law does not recognize one parent as a parent, because the couple was never 'married' in the eyes of the state... that sort of emotional roller coaster scars children, not the fact that their parents are gay. in some ways it IS a different life for a child. but growing up biracial is also a different life for a child. growing up in a city is a different life for a child than growing up on a cattle ranch. ALL lives are different from one another, and the religious right doesn't claim that raising a child in a city will cause emotional scars, whereas raising him/her on a farm will not. this fear of 'psychological effects' from a same-sex couple raising children IS a social construction. period. i know it feels weird to think about it; i'll admit it feels a little weird to me too. but we can change that if we make the effort. we're just used to a family being a mother, a father, and kids, because that's wha tmost of us grew up with. it's the first thing we ever knew as children, it feels normal, so the alternative feels questionable and strange. but remember the days (still not entirely past, depending on who you ask) when a biracial marriage was considered a sure way to mess up any children involved. most peopel today can see that the race of the parents is not directly related to the happiness of the children, because there are other factors that are way more important.

wow. a novel. thank you to anyone who actually read that through...
bottom line: let them have kids. in fifty years it'll be old news,a nd we'll wonder why we felt weird about it.

i hope!

~always amazed

I fully support gay marriage. I have never understood what is holding it up. Who does the marriage between two consenting adults hurt? Will our children all go off and become homosexuals if gay marriage is allowed? What is it with the US? Canada and most of Europe have legal same-sex marriage and I don't recall hearing that they're being smitten by God.

As most of you know I'm a pot smoker, and so I'm sort of a big fan of personal responsibility. Do what you will, but harm none.

*at this point in the message I'm getting pissed*
who the hell does the right think it is? They cite religious precedents in their arguements against something that has NOTHING to do with religion! Is this not a free country? One of my best friends is a devout catholic, he is also gay. Does he not have the same rights as others? I don't find the words gay, homosexual, or same-sex anywhere in the fucking constitution! What I do see though is a clause saying that because a right is not outlined in the constitution does not mean we don't have it. I would say the right to marry whoever you damn well please is an inalienable right.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Fucking narrow-minded zealots! They're like the idiotic bullies in grade school.

If two gays want to go off and have sex with each other fine, don't include me. I do agree what two people do behind closed doors is their own right. blah, blah, blah, blah......

What I want to do is play professional basketball.

Problem is I'm white, 5'10, and a little tubby.

Sure that doesn't preclude me from trying my hardest, drinking my milk and practicing lay-ups. I might make it on a team if I try hard enough, I know several other people have done it but it would be a lot harder for me to get the billion dollar shoe contract that LeBron James signed.

Even if I did get signed to a contract, I'd never be able to dunk the ball no matter how hard I tried. I simply don't have the vertical leap, and therefore would never make the 'star' status in the NBA.

So should I gather up all the other short people in the world and post a petition that the NBA is violating my civil rights to become a multi-million dollar basketball superstar with the ability to make shoes fly off the shelfs????? I mean it's just a tradition that the NBA has always had rims that were more than 5 feet off the ground isn't it?

If you are saying that 'marriage' is just a word why does it matter if they can do it or not? OH for the fringe benifits that come with it. I see.

Well too bad.

I didn't choose to be non-athletic, why should I suffer?


Because sometimes the world is just unfair.

If the government was in the business of handing out basketball licenses, then it should give you one. You aren't guaranteed to find someone to play with you, but if you do, you have the right to play. Likewise, if a gay person finds someone they want to marry, the government should give them the license.

parallel gov't retardations
 

adult seatbelt laws
helmet laws
many of the drug laws
what do you mean i can't kill myself, i'm mine aren't i?

I just think that the right wing types are afraid of seeing validated gay people running around being all public and stuff - might offend the bible thumping constituency or something.

I am all for people having the right to marry other consenting people (of reasonable consenting age) regardless of ANYTHING. What gives a governing body the fucking right to impose their morality standards on such things that hurt no one?

as far as adoption goes - adopting a kid is fucking hard, and if 2 people can qualify for that, then fuck the rest I say! The housing systems unadopted kids live in have to be worse. And it beats the welfare state ghetto living baby factories and 17 year old "i wanted a kid because it was cute" types. If the government is going to impose restrictions on child owners, there should be a licensing body for pregnancy as well!

Yeah, but it still happens quite a lot! :) They're under a lot of pressure, you see.

JeepNGeorge -

The government is not a company or a private entity. It does not have the right to discriminate.

I'm curious.
For those who are queezy about gay parents, how would you feel about your child having an openly homosexual kindergarten teacher? Would it matter if the teacher was male or female? How 'bout another notch...what about a transgender person?

I have no children, so my opinion is less valid (i guess), but I would have to say that sexuality is OFF FUCKING LIMITS in a kindergarten venue, so gay/straight/trans seems rather irrelevant.

The spawn will be subjected/exposed to all kinds of alternate things in their forays from the nest. It's OK as long as the security of the nest remains intact to seek shelter in when things are confusing.
By "openly homosexual kindergarten teacher" I'm assuming you mean not hiding his lifestyle rather than "Hi kids, I'm your new teacher Raul and I suck penises". :eek:

See I knew something was wrong with my kindergarten teacher!!!!

When we will stop trying to legislate equality. Although we all are created equal, not everybody is treated fairly. Single people don't get the same tax breaks as married people. Rich people get more tax shelters than poorer people. Girls can be in the Boy Scouts, Boys can be in the Girl scouts, Women are picketing to be let on Augusta golf course, too my knowlege no men are fighting for the right to be in the LPGA though. Where will it all stop?

To me being gay is unnatural, I know how can I be so backwards in my thinking. Having sex is enjoyable and if you enjoy having sex with a person of the same gender fine go right ahead. But in the end sex is a means to reproduce, we like it so we can survive as a species. Again this is just my humble opinion and I'm sure there are others out there that disagree. But don't come whining to me cause you don't have the same rights as heterosexual people.

Women and minority business owners are judged higher when bidding on a government contract. People with military experience are given extra points on their civil service exam. Guess what people the world and especially the government is filled with all sorts of inequalities.

I myself don't want anymore government control in my life, so I hate it when people who feel the are rightly or wrongly being mistreated go off running to the gubment to get their rights reinstated. What usually happens is that they get more rights or more special rights than we do.

Sure you can trust the gubment, don't believe me just ask the Indians. I know how can I go way back in history for such a reference. We have moved on haven't we. Sure we have. Gays have the same rights as straight people don't they. Yeah they do on paper, but is it really so. Do YOU treat everybody equally ALWAYS? Have you ever stoppped to help a beautiful person of the opposite sex, but tend to look the other way at somebody less desireable but in need of more help? Just because the gubment says that people are equal doesn't mean they will be treated equal. Will all the benifets of straight people be instantly transferred to them, no. I know it has taken several years for african americans, or blacks if you will, I'm so outdated I don't know what they prefer to be called now, to be equal and we have to start somewhere with the gay world, but really what difference does it make if they are allowed to legally marry or not. Oh for the taxes and other benifits...well instead of fighting for that lets do away with those laws...LETS GIVE THEM TO EVERYBODY NOT JUST ANOTHER SELECTED GROUP!!!!!!! Let parents transfer property to kids without paying the estate tax, etc.

Lets make less rules, gubment. Not more of them

/endrant

*misspellings left intact to irritate Dave

George, this is simply untrue. Scientists have discovered that a great deal of mammals engage in homosexual behavior.

A simple google search reveals this site which has about a thousand scientific references:
<blockquote> In the non-human primate groups, incidences of homosexuality have been recognised in the activities of rhesus monkeys, female stumptail macaques (Mitchell, 1979, pp. 134 &142), Japanese macaques (Mehlman & Chapais, 1988; Mitchell, 1979, p. 416) male chimpanzees, female bonobos, male mountain gorillas, male siamangs, male white-handed gibbons (Wrangham, 1986, p. 367; Yamagiwa, 1987; Yamagiwa, 1992; Edwards & Todd, 1991) and male pygmy chimpanzees (Savage & Bakeman, 1978).

Fedigan ( 1992; p142 ) writes that female-female sexual behaviour has been noted in ‘the squirrel-monkey ( Talmage-Riggs & Anschel 1973 ), the vervet ( Struhsaker 1967a ) and the talapoin ( Wolfheim & Rowell 1972 ), and Meredith Small also references incidences of female-female sexual activity amongst bonobos ( 1993: p144-5 ), Japanese macaques ( 1993; p145-6 ) and Indian langurs ( 1993; p146-7 ).

Other mammals noted for homosexual activities include: female cattle (Short, 1984)’, burros (Flinders, 1993), Male mountain sheep (Weinrich, 1982; Denniston, 1980), giraffes, rats (Kirsch & Rodman, 1982), dolphins, dogs (West, 1977, p. 116), female red deer (Short, 1984), donkeys, cats, rams, goats, pigs, antelope, elephants, hyenas, rabbits, lions, porcupines, hamsters, mice, and porpoises (Weinrich, 1982).

There have also been reports of homosexual pairings in several species of birds: female pairings of Western gulls, ring-billed gulls, California gulls (Weinrich, 1982; Davies, 1991; Denniston, 1980), budgerigars (also called undulated or shell parakeets) (Kavanau, 1987, pp. 41 &119); also mallard ducks whom consorted only with other males during the ‘imprinting period’, itself equivalent to human puberty (West, 1977, p. 43).</blockquote>

If you must compare humans to animals via some odd notion of "natural/unnatural", then this evidence surely points in the other direction.

I merely said it was unnatural to the propigation of the species. I don't doubt that all kinds of studies have been made to show that it in fact happens. They also found that if I drink too much coffee it will give me heart problems, and then they said if I dont' drink enough coffee that will give me problems.

Being born an albino also happens. That is not natural either, but it does happen. Too bad the albino animals can't lobby for congressional protection when the predators come their way and they stick out.

So, what do you mean by natural and unnatural, then?

how is a recessive trait surfacing every once in a while unnatural? silicone tits are unnatural - fake blondes - stuff like that, and I bet you have no problem with either, so who are you to define "natural"?