I’m surprised to see a person whom I genuinely consider an open minded, thoughtful person be so quick to embrace gender norms. It is interesting to me that we have progressed so far in relation to sexual orientation acceptance, yet still cling to the idea that boys not only HAVE TO, but also can only learn to be “MEN” from men and girls not only HAVE TO, but also can only learn to be “WOMEN” from women. So while I agree wholeheartedly with most of your point, it saddens me to see the same old gender roles being doggedly clung to.
By that rationale, Jews and nonwhites shouldn’t have kids at all because there’s racism and anti semitism and the kid might suffer. Suffering is a fact of life. There’s no way to mitigate it.
Is it any better for a Jewish couple to adopt a Jewish child and raise it Jewish? Why is that different? Because the non-Jewish child has a chance at a better life?
I would add that in many cases, an important factor is previous connection to the child. Putting a child with his dead mother’s ex-girlfriend & her new partner may be better than any other solution just because that may the one couple that both want the child & that the child trusts.
I never said that non-mainstream couples (Jews, blacks, Muslims, Mormons, Asians) should refrain from having kids for one second. I hope they have them to their heart’s content. But the fact remains that every kid born into a Jewish family, a Muslim family, a black family, etc. where that particular state of being is not the norm and mainstream is a potential victim of bigotry.
Dr. and Mrs. Goldberg adopt blonde little Harry Christianson, abandoned son of a 15-year-old wasp crack cocaine hooker and a white British sailor. They rename (I almost said Christen :p) him Chaim Samuel Goldberg, and raise him Jewish. They give him the best education and a traditional Jewish upbringing, and he goes on to take his dad’s place as Chief Surgeon at the local Hospital. No reason they should not have adopted him. And yes, there are hundreds of positive aspects to their adopting that child. But yes, they did make a Jew of him, and so there is that one little negative aspect. He can be exposed to anti-semitism that he would have never ben exposed to otherwise.
Similarly, the REAL gay couple I described in my OP have done so much good for that little Latino boy that the negative aspect of “your daddies are a pair of fags” is far, far outweighed by the good aspects. But it is there. If he had remained in his little metal bed in that poverty-stricken orphanage in Central America, nobody would have derided him for having two gay daddies. Ever.
Ah, but if we perpetuate the notion that being gay is deficient in some way, that having gay parents is something worth mocking, then in the future this will continue to happen. Children will continue to be derided for it. Whereas, if gay parents become more of a norm, something not protected against in law or thought bad of socially, then while children, today, may be mocked, in the future they may not be. The “ever” is the problem; we can’t just think about effects today, but effects continuing.
Well, let’s be realistic. The high end of the best estimates are that around 10% of people are gay and the low end is 1 or 2 percent, IIRC. Assuming half of all marriages end in divorce, and not all gay people are going to want kids or adopt, you’re looking at a ceiling of maybe 3 or 4 percent of people having same sex parents, and that’s probably way too generous. It can be accepted, but it’s never going to be “the norm”. But this is a pretty good argument that, even if arch-conservatives’ worst nightmares were true, they’re never going to be a threat to the fabric of our society, either.
Good point. I should have said “are more accepted as normal”, or something like that.
Okay, but then here the problem is society, not the fact that he’s raised Jewish. I’d make the argument that it’s better to challenge bigotry than to let it go unchecked.
I can’t say how strongly I disagree with this!
Same Sex Couples would be (assumed) to be marginally worse parents because they risk stigmatizing the kids?!?
What about the uber rich and famous who stigmatize their children by making them famous before they are even born, and putting them in such a tiny class of people that they have a very small circle of peers and far to much pressure to succeed? Look what happened to Michael Jackson after being brought up in the limelight!
So the solution is to bow to the close minded people and try not to make waves? Home schooling is far more of a departure from the “norm” and likely to be provably stigmatizing, should we out law that? What about all the poor Jehovah’s witnesses that I went to school with who always had to sit out the x-mas party, the Valentines Day party, etc. They were far more stigmatized because of their family oddness than any other kids, even those with weird parents.
Jews should not adopt a non-Jew child because it would be unfair to the kid to force him to Mitzvah? Should we make that another demerit on the adoption form?
Tall enough (but not too tall)?
Dark enough to be able to go out in the sun and share “normal” activities with their kids, not so dark as to look “Un-American”?
Live on the right side of tracks?
Parents’ eye or hair color matches children’s, we would not want people to laugh and point when they are out together!
And totally ignore questions like:
Are they nice people that would love the child even if they are slightly “undesirable”?
Yeah, I think priorities are a bit off with this OP, and only serve to continue to allow “homo” to be the one class of people that can have their rights trampled on in polite company any more.
I have no fantasies that those who draw their power and self worth from fear and hate will stop being negative if I start “conceding” my group’s “shortcomings”. If they want to use a bad assertion as their “argument clincher”, too bad. I want well done studies on a large number of families, corrected for income, color, religion and every thing else before I would agree that there is any general difference between same gender parents and opposite gender parents.
As to the OP, different is not always bad, normal is not always good. Remove those two assumptions, and this argument has no legs to stand on.
Dag
I’ve got nothing to add to that. Saying it is better for a child to be raised by Christians or straight people because there is prejudice against Jews and gays is essentially blaming the victims.
You like it when somebody confirms your opinion? Amazing!
This is why I said the OP’s “admission” is useless. I am not opposed to compromise. I do think compromise requires effort from both sides and needs to be sustained. “I admit straight families are better” is false and encourages prejudice rather than building compromise. An actual compromise might be “the state can marry gay couples, but churches don’t have to do it. Adoption agencies can make their own policies, but the state can’t ban gays from adopting.”
My concern is more the framing. By phrasing it as “this gay person, for one, admits to this” frames gay people in general not as disagreeing with what Valteron has to say, but rather *won’t admit *what Valteron has to say.
I’m concerned that this gives magellan, for example, license to think “Well, all gay people feel like this, and Valteron is one of the few willing to admit it” which in turn leads to “Most others on his side also agree, but are concealing that fact so as to not admit even a tiniest victory”. And while I agree that certainly, people so opposed on an issue are liable to begrudge even small victories for the other side, by the same token, it’s also a mistake to assume that those small victories exist when perhaps they don’t. I disagree with Valteron - as do apparently a good few people in this thread - and my concern is that when I voice that opinion, it won’t be taken as “Revenant (or whoever) thinks this, instead”, but “Revenant doesn’t want to admit it, but he secretly thinks otherwise”. Because it’s wrong and it makes us look like jerks.
Very well said.
Or maybe the mother is a doctor and the father can stay home and give his quality time to the child at least in the first formative years…
Please remember that fathers are nurturers too. The mother is not necessarily the more nurturing of the two. Nor is the father necessarily more career-minded.
Or maybe they might want to share equally in both areas.
It is interesting to see a train wreck made up of straw men none of which I caused. This discussion has strayed sooooo far from what I originally said that I could not even start to address what most of the last posts have said without staying up all night.
I am especially fascinated by the reasoning that things can be admitted to be true or false depending on the strategic advantage they give you in an ongoing debate rather than their objective truth or falsity.
Just for the record:
I am 100% in favour of same-sex couples parenting, whether they adopt, use surrogacy, or use sperm donations from one partner in the sister of another (creating a blood bond of the child with both parents).
I also believe it is plainly obvious that a child of same-sex parents in the early part of the 21st century is likely to get teased, mocked or even a little persecuted by some other kids because “your daddies are fags/ your mommies are dykes”.
I have never heard of a kid of opposite-sex parents running home in tears because somebody said “Your parents are straight”.
Recognizing that this homophobic cruelty exists neither condones this behaviour nor blames the victims. Schools and society must fight this cruelty, and conservative churches and temples must ask themselves how much of this suffering they unwittingly cause.
Now finally, here is the point I was ultimately trying to make you understand. So please listen carefully. While I admit that right now, having two daddies or mummies is a negative compared to having one of either sex in this homophobic world, it is such a minor imperfection that in almost every case it is outweighed a thousand times over by what the same-sex parents have to offer.
And I gave the living example of the little Latino boy with same-sex parents that I had recently met. On the negative side, he might get teased and ridiculed a few times in his young life. On the positive side, he is now an American citizen, loved by two devoted men, fluent in English and Spanish, attending private schools, travelling on luxury liners and (while he is too young to know it) facing a life of privilege and opportunity that most people in the USA, let alone Central America, would envy.
Anyone who feels that kid would be better off returned to his poor little orphange in Central America, raise your hand!:):dubious:
Whatever, lady. It’s been a long night, don’t bust my chops with political correctness. I meant people with lots of financial resources and time to devote to the child. Cut me som slack, will ya!
Of course it is! What are we arguing about? I have Jewish relatives. Do you think I want to see them hurt?
Do people only read half of what I post, or something? I was making the analogy that the fictional Goldbergs who adopt a Christian child abandoned by a wasp drug addict and raise him as their own are doing him several million favours, but by making him a Jew, they are making him liable to antisemitism. If they leave him where he is, he will probably grow up in poverty, crime, drug addiction and prostitution, but he will not be subject to anti-semitism. So I think the advantages of being adopted by the Goldbergs outweigh the disadvantages like a boulder outweighs a feather.
I am simply making an anology with my same-sex parents point.
By the way, completely off topic, did you know that the first Freudian Slip is on display in the Museum in Vienna? It is really beautiful, with lace and pink flowers all around. I will send you a picture of it.
Well, we could probably reduce this a little bit* if your OPs were not, themselves, so frequently loaded with strawman arguments or other forms of bad argumentation. 
For example, I doubt that the following statement is actually true
Not that the topic has never come up, but the claim that the issue has arisen in “a lot” of threads seems hyperbolic, at best. Given that the reality is that there are rather few anti-SSM posters on the board and that those have not made this issue anything resembling a cornerstone of their arguments, the reality is that most interested posters are going to bring all their own interests to such a thread and it is nearly guaranteed to wander all over the back forty in a fruitless (heh) search for either a consensus or a genuine debate.
= = =
- Given the nature of Dopers, any undirected thread is going to wnader all over hell and most directed threads are going to meander about, as well.
I just think that phrasing it like that makes it seem like they’re doing something wrong. I think saying that society has made them subject to antisemitism is closer to the truth.
Although I agree with the OP, I’d point out one instance where same-sex adoptive parents can be better than single sex: if they’re adopting an older child who’s been abused by someone of the gender that the adoptive parents aren’t (that is, if the child has been abused by a woman and the adoptive parents are men), then they could adjust a lot better.
Yes, that child does need to get used to trusting adults of the gender that abused them - but it’s a lot easier to help them adjust to that with trusted adults outside of the home, teachers, aunts, etc, than within the home. If the child is 12, say, then they have only 6 or so years left to be adopted - and if their adoption falls apart, then they’re left with even less time to settle into a family. They need a family as well as the ability to trust people of any gender.
That would only be for a few older children who have specific gender-related issues to their abuse, but it’s not exactly an unlikely situation.