My contention is that a child should have both a mother and a father and this should be what we strive for before putting a child in a situation in which they will only have one “type” of parent (two moms or two dads, but not one of both).
Anyhow, you asked me to explain myself. I did. I’m not interested in debating it with you. I will not change my mind and you will not change yours, and neither of us will say anything that the other hasn’t heard before, so why waste our time?
(Now is this the part where I get to hear “neener neener, if you won’t debate then I win” as I’ve seen in so many other threads? Or will this thread die, or will there be a pile-on causing it to linger like the stench of a rotten egg in July?)
As the Atlantic Monthly famously concluded, Dan Quayle Was Right. Fathers are important.
That isn’t an argument against gay adoption, of course – I’m pretty sure being raised by a loving, commited monogamous gay couple is a thousand times better than being shuffled around in the orphanage/foster care system – but the best environment for children is to be raised by both their biological mother and father in the same household, assuming neither parent is prone to child abuse.
If you aren’t even open to considering different data with the potential of changing your mind, why are you even on this fucking message board that is devoted to lancing ignorance like the boil it is?
In other words, you can’t support a single one of your wildassed assumptions, and you can’t rebut a single one of the many excellent arguments put to you. So you’re going to run away and stiuck your head in the sand so you don’t have to have any of your precious prejudices challenged. Just fuckin’ lovely.
Hey, if you’re not here to debate, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ON THE BOARDS IN THE FIRST PLACE? Get the fuck out of here and stop wasting our bandwidth, asshole.
That article was pointing out the problems of single parent and blended families. Extending that to include gay families is a bit of a jump in my opinion, especially when you consider that gay couples are more likely to be financially secure thus avoiding the poverty issues that are endemic in single parent households.
I think the message is that TWO parents are vital. I suggest that the gender of the parents is irrelevant.
Dewey, Your linked article does not compare same-sex parents to hetero parents. It just says that kids do better with two parents than they do with one. Nothing in the article indicates that the parents must be of mixed gender.
Yes, it says that kids don’t do well if one parent is missing or leaves but it does not address the issue of a child who is brought up by same-sex parents at all. The crux of the article is that children do best when they have two parents who stay together. I don’t see where there is anything gender specific in that.
How is saying that I think it’s better overall for a kid to have a mom and a dad rather than having two moms/dads, etc. “wildassed?” This is not an original opinion; it’s not like I thought this up on my own.
I entered this thread to explain to Diogenes why I said what I said in another thread, because he asked me to and he seems like a nice guy so I didn’t see a reason to ignore him. And I did. I don’t have the time or the interest in debating it with him (there’s a difference between clarifying an opinion and debating an opinion, ya know), nor do I expect him to explain to me why he believes as he does. I’m not interested in trying to change his mind, either.
Miller, I come to these boards to ask questions, to read what other people are asking/answering and, every now and then, to poll. What do you come to the boards for, besides flaming?
First, Snoopy Fan, I tend to assume that people will be gone from their computers for quite extended periods – the rest of us have lives, too, and we’re aware that that will happen. It was only when you ignored two requests for an explanation of your remarks and this thread for a significant period of time that I arrived at the conclusion that all you were doing was a drive-by.
And yes, I agree with you that children do need healthy role models of both sexes to mature with a stable sense of what they ought to be as their own sex and how they should relate to the opposite sex (not necessarily romantically – something as simple as how a co-worker will deal with a crisis and what their role ought to be, is something you learn from observing adults doing that as you grow up). Such role models are not found in the home in gay nuclear families – but are readily available to most kids raised by single parents and gay couples in the form of grandfather, aunt, family friend, etc. Kids don’t need “a mommy” and “a daddy” – they need a parent – ideally two – who loves and cherishes them, and extended exposure to adults of both sexes who are prepared to spend time with them and show them by word and example how to be good men and women.
I am chagrined at your “you aren’t changing my mind and I’m not changing yours” line – I would think that the welfare of the children is the most important factor, not the sanctity of your or my opinion. Nor do I see how you get from “heterocouples are better” to “gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to adopt.”
Finally, that whole line of argument doesn’t address the “morally gone” remark. You realy ought to explain why permitting gay adoptions implies that a society is “morally gone” in your opinion.
Just out of curiousity, do you also condemn single parents/widows/widowers when they’re not raising their kids with two parents instead of one? :rolleyes:
I believe several longitudinal studies have been done on same-sex couples (mostly lesbians, because up until recently gay adoption was very difficult and expensive) have determined that the mental health of a child raised by a same-sex couple is roughly equal to the health of a child raised by a heterosexual couple.
It’s wildassed because you won’t, or more likely can’t, provide a single cite that supports your assertation. You “think” a hetero couple are better parents than a homosexual couple. You have no proof of this. You have no (evident) credentials in child psychology, human sexuality, or any other vaguely related field. Even your anecdotal evidence, your own childhood, is a crock of shit because it has nothing to do adoption, gays, or adoption by gays.
You’re new here, and clearly not all that bright, so allow me to point out how this board works: if you come into a thread, in any forum, and present an opinion - any opinion - be prepared to defend it. Especially be prepared to defend it if it’s on a subject that’s even remotely controversial. If you won’t/can’t, then SHUT THE FUCK UP. Because no one cares. This is a discussion board: if you aren’t going to discuss, you’ve got no place here.
I come here to fight ignorance. You, m’dear, are profoundly ignorant. Hence, the flaming.
Granted, the article speaks of broken families. But I think there’s more to it than that. I think there is a gender component to parenting, and that explains why even for those single-family households where economics are unproblematic tend to produce the same cocktail of domestic problems.
Put simply, there are gender roles which exist, either from social conditioning or from inherent qualities, that cannot be flipped on or off like a switch. There are aspects of parenting that are best handled by a father figure, comprising roles most common to males, and there are aspects of parenting best handled by a mother figure, comprising roles most common to females. While either gender can emulate the other’s role, such efforts are not as effective as the genuine article.
It is silly to suggest, as kambuckta does, that gender is “irrelevant.”
I jump to point out that I’m talking in broad strokes here: surely some men are better at mothering, and some women are better at acting as father figure. Just as some women are taller than some men does not invalidate the statement “men are taller than women,” the existence of exceptions here does not invalidate the general rule.
And again I jump to note that this isn’t an argument against gay adoption. Finding loving homes for parentless children is hard enough; we ought not make the perfect the enemy of the good. A loving and stable environment that happens to lack a father figure is still infinitely superior to the utter mess orphans are otherwise subjected to.
Dewey: That, sir, was a brilliant and reasoned approach to the question. Congratulations!
[sub]Now, if he’d only take that same common-sense approach to Constitutional questions…! :p[/sub]
Gosh, another stone-age mentality flushed (literally) out of hiding by the issue of gay marriage. How shocking!
The only lingering stench around these parts is the odor of your bigoted presence, SnoopyFan. Yes, you are a bigot. You are also extremely close minded. You claim that:
Let’s see here, I guess that means you already know that the reasons for thinking as you do are invalid. I do my best to freely change my mind whenever someone else logically proves that I am wrong. Why can’t you do that? Too set in your ways of being a bigoted clown? If so, that is one of the most pathetic reasons on earth. If you are not open to argument, fine, thank you for pointing up what a Class A moron you are, but how the fuck dare you accuse me or anyone else here of being equally ignorant as yourself? That goes beyond rude at a site devoted to fighting your exact brand of willful ignorance. Yes, willful, the most evil and malignant kind there is.
So, it’s “morally wrong” for someone who finds their same gender more desirable (or wishes to remain single) to be permitted the joys of parenting?
Welcome to the 21[sup]st[/sup] century, SnoopyFan. Feel free to leave the dark ages behind you. What about kids who cannot and won’t ever meet their father due to anonymous artificial insemination? Oh, that’s right, single women like your own mother aren’t fit parents (of which you are living proof in spades). Sense any irony here?
And she’s “fucked up” because her dad was gay, or just because her parents separated? Yeah, he’s a great father but being gay still means he has no right to parent a child.
Yo mama!
We don’t have a “shortage” of adoptions? What the fuck sort of rope are you smoking? Children all over the United States are leading the most barren of lives awaiting adoption. Reach down, grasp firmly, and please yank your head out of your ass!
So, now it’s your mission to make all child adoptions conform to some idealized solution for the deficiencies in your own life? What makes it so wrong? Try to give some reasons, not just an unreasoning stance.
Do tell, you mean to say that as a woman have you never experienced some sort of discrimination in a world that favors men 90% of the time? No? You’re lying. Yes? Then what the fuck are you doing being equally discriminatory? Haven’t you learned a single thing in your life? Like, maybe bigotry is very, very naughty (as in sinful)?
I’m quoting some really pertinent replies for you to study. Had I been in your shores, these posts would have triggered serious reconsideration of my position due to hypocrisy and illogicality.
Word, Otto!
And not enough heterosexual couple are adopting, not that such a point is truly salient to your bigoted arguments.
Check my opening paragraph for just how fucked up your sort of willful ignorance is.
No, this is the part where I join Miller in telling you what a fuck of a waste of bandwidth you are at these boards!
Are we all such control freaks on this board that we absolutely must try to win people to our own opinions? We can’t just exhange opinions and be done with it? We can’t go “oh you think ___________? Well, I think that’s full of shit, but whatever makes your grapefruit squirt?”
Polycarp, I said gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to adopt primarily because there is no shortage of hetero couples who want to [give me a while and I’ll try to find a cite, just because you’re nice]. Note that many don’t end up adopting here because we make it so damn hard to adopt in the US; sometimes it’s just easier to fly overseas and deal with the red tape in another country. I am not saying that no family for a kid is better than a family that has a gay couple as the parents, that would be total bullshit. (Kind of like how they yanked those kids in Florida away from their 2 gay foster dads even though they’d been with them for years. So much for stability, huh?) I’m saying that I think the ideal is one of each parent (is that not the conventional thought among the psychological world, even if it’s being debated among them now?) and as long as our society can provide that, that’s what we should strive for. The “morally gone” part is this: something is terribly wrong when a society stops caring about the conditions in which its children are raised. Someone who posted above said that good is not the enemy of perfect (or words to that effect): I totally agree. But why settle for second best if we are able to give put them in an ideal? The notion that gay couples are second fiddle to straight couples is an opinion (at least until the perfect, unbiased, enormous study is completed that settles the question once and for all): you could find cites that say that there’s no difference, I could find cites that say otherwise, and both of us would probably go “consider the source” and reject the other sources as baloney.
Just out of curiousity, do you also condemn single parents/widows/widowers when they’re not raising their kids with two parents instead of one?
Have you read anything I’ve written in this thread, rjung?
I said INTENTIONALLY. As in, setting out to put a kid in an undesirable situation. Do widowers/widows get pregnant thinking “this is gonna be great. I’ll get knocked up, my spouse will die, and I’ll be a single parent with a kid who is missing a parent. Woohoo!” No, it just happens. There is a big difference between a kid ending up without a parent because something bad happened (someone died, someone left, etc.) and a kid ending up without one because someone thought their desire for a child was more important than the child’s need for both a mom and a dad.
Zen, Miller, you both are just hateful. You can flame me all you want, I realize the Pit is the place to do so. However don’t expect me to reply to any of your questions. You accuse me of being close-minded, and maybe I am on this particular issue: however, you’ve already made up your minds about me, so there’s nothing for us to discuss.
Incidentally, Diogenes, it’s 8:39pm here. I’m going to go to Blockbuster now and snuggle with my husband on the couch and watch movies. Don’t get antsy and assume that I’ve left you if I don’t return till tomorrow sometime
