spectrum, I don't get it.

[Dunderman]

@bodswood

PG wrote (messages #95 & 90): “Would you [support a person’s right to preach] the subjugation of women, fascist dictatorship, female genital mutilation, forced weddings, child weddings, or mass murder based on their beliefs?”

This question has to do with freedom of speech; it also has to do with the law; it also combines a range of rather different entities in the same list. (Always beware of lists–they are a favourite device of politicians, eg Blair, for this very reason.)

For that reason I’m going to take the Fifth on this one.

You’re a complete and utter despicable coward. You dodge the questions you cannot answer until you absolutely have no choice but to answer them, and even then you do your best to avoid answering. You know that you wouldn’t stand idly by while someone preaches those heinous things, and you know that that fact smashes your precious little argument to pieces. So you don’t answer. You’re intellectually dishonest, a coward, and a sorry excuse for a sensible human being.

You’re doing the same thing with the gay parents question. spectrum repeatedly asks you why he (or any other gay person) would be a worse parent than anyone else, and you keep dodging the question until you can’t anymore, and then you just say, in effect, “You know what I mean and if you don’t, you should, so I’m not going to tell you”. I bet you’re perfectly aware that there’s no data showing gay parents to be worse than straight ones, but since that fact will crush you in this debate, you pretend not to.

And you’re the guy talking about “morals”. Pathetic.

[bodswood]

Lilairen wrote: “What matters is people’s qualifications to provide homes, as individuals or as couples, not who they form adult loving relationships with.”

I think they’re related.

"The condemnation of homosexuality is a condemnation of people on the basis of who they love.

In the choice between love and law, which do you pick?

Jesus healed on the Sabbath."

Yes, he heals.

[duffer]

@iampunha

You know, I coulda sworn there was something in that holy book of y’alls that discussed whether or not people should judge each other, but gosh darned if I’ve forgotten it. I wonder why, given the actions of some (including prominent figures) in the name of God and Christ, that ever might be.

Might want to incluse Allah in that one. Or do you deny other religions?

[bodswood]

Welcome back to the discussion, PG.

My major concern with the examples you gave was the inclusion of ‘preaching fascist dictatorship’. In some countries, quite possibly the UK, this wouldn’t be considered illegal, and might happen at for example Speaker’s Corner (in London) with impunity. The other concern has to do with different cultures. Thus for example child weddings might be accepted in some areas of the world, might indeed be legal.

[spectrum]

Previous questions still stand unanswered, Boswood. Are you going to be a man and answer it?

[bodswood]

Two points might be made. First though it might be helpful to remind ourselves that children put up for adoption are inherently a high risk population. In other words, they have already suffered through the dislocation (unless they are very tiny, and even then who knows about the subliminal effects), and they are at higher risk of suffering when they discover that they are adopted, which they will often equate with unwanted.

Point one: children benefit from having both male input as well as female input from their primary caretakers. Although other circumstances may remove one or other parent in normal families, this is no reason to settle for second best in the case of adoption, where the stakes are higher (as noted above).

Point two: children are more likely to develop emotional problems without the balance provided by male and female input.

[Dunderman]

@bodswood

My major concern with the examples you gave was the inclusion of ‘preaching fascist dictatorship’. In some countries, quite possibly the UK, this wouldn’t be considered illegal, and might happen at for example Speaker’s Corner (in London) with impunity. The other concern has to do with different cultures. Thus for example child weddings might be accepted in some areas of the world, might indeed be legal.

Dodge, dodge, dodge. I don’t give a fuck what the law says, I want to know what you say. Would you let viewpoints that you find heinous stand unopposed because they were promoted due to beliefs?

Two points might be made. First though it might be helpful to remind ourselves that children put up for adoption are inherently a high risk population. In other words, they have already suffered through the dislocation (unless they are very tiny, and even then who knows about the subliminal effects), and they are at higher risk of suffering when they discover that they are adopted, which they will often equate with unwanted.

I know many adoptees, and the only ones who ever suffered from it were the ones who, for some stupid mindless reason, weren’t told they were adopted but had to find out on their own. Simply being open about the fact that your child is adopted eliminates this “risk” quite handily.

Point one: children benefit from having both male input as well as female input from their primary caretakers. Although other circumstances may remove one or other parent in normal families, this is no reason to settle for second best in the case of adoption, where the stakes are higher (as noted above).

Cite?

Point two: children are more likely to develop emotional problems without the balance provided by male and female input.

Cite?

[spectrum]

@bodswood

Point one: children benefit from having both male input as well as female input from their primary caretakers. Although other circumstances may remove one or other parent in normal families, this is no reason to settle for second best in the case of adoption, where the stakes are higher (as noted above).

Point two: children are more likely to develop emotional problems without the balance provided by male and female input.

My God, you’re stupid. First, these two “points” are the SAME FUCKING STATEMENT.

Second, there is no such thing as a “normal family.” And if there is, it certainly isn’t that Ozzie and Harriet “nuclear family” bullshit. Families come in a million different shapes and sizes, and all are just as valid as any other.

Third, what kind of arctic compound would one have to be in to raise a child with them not having input from members of both genders? Be it aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers or authority figures at school, leaders at church or in community group, no child lacks for adequate role models, such as it is, from both genders.

Fourth, while I know “people” like you piss all over them, many single parents raise kids who are just fine. If they can do it, a gay couple with twice the potential sources of revenue and the ability to be twice as many places at once, can do just as well, if not better.

So your “reason” is bullshit. Utter bullshit that doesn’t stand up in light of, gee, all the evidence of the real world, where kids from single-gender (gay or single parent) households tend to turn out just as well as any other kids in their socio-economic strata.

So either recant your attack on every gay person in the world, or back it up with something less laughable, bigot.

[bodswood]

PG, you want to know what I have to say. That’s what I have to say.

What do *you * have to say re those two points?

Besides requesting hearsay evidence…

[bodswood]

Spectrum wrote: “Third, what kind of arctic compound would one have to be in to raise a child with them not having input from members of both genders? Be it aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers or authority figures at school, leaders at church or in community group, no child lacks for adequate role models, such as it is, from both genders.”

If you reread what I wrote, you will note that I referred to “*primary * caretakers”.

[Dunderman]

@bodswood

PG, you want to know what I have to say. That’s what I have to say.

Answer the questions, coward. You know you’re wrong and cannot admit it even to yourself. It’s truly pathetic.

What do *you * have to say re those two points?

That they’re bullshit. Do you have anything showing them to be true? You’re making a claim here, you’re expected to back it up. Can you?

Besides requesting hearsay evidence…

I’m not requesting hearsay, I’m requesting hard data. Do you have any?

[bodswood]

PC, so you believe that qualitative research studies carried out by interested parties with dodgy methodology deserve to be treated as more than hearsay evidence?

I’d be interested in any hard data you can produce on this matter.

[Dunderman]

You’re shifting the burden of proof. You made the following statement:

children are more likely to develop emotional problems without the balance provided by male and female input

You made that statement. You. That means you have to provide the backup for it, if you want to use it as an argument. Is there anything unclear in what I’m saying? I’ll happily clarify anything you find difficult to understand.

You must have got that statement from somewhere. Where? What do you base it on? Why did you make it? Why do you believe it’s true? What evidence have you seen for it?

[bodswood]

Not secure in your research findings, PG?

The hard data going soft on you?

[Dunderman]

Just to shut you up, here’s a small portion of what a five-minute websearch found, ie a small portion of what you could have found if you had been the slightest bit interested in facts:

http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~williamsproj/press/GayParents.html
http://www.colage.org/research/facts.html#facts
http://www.datalounge.com/datalounge/news/record.html?record=19050
http://www.detnews.com/2001/editorial/0110/10/a09-312959.htm
http://www.narth.com/docs/does.html
http://content.gay.com/channels/news/heads/010427_gayparents.html
http://archive.aclu.org/issues/gay/parent.html

Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos

http://joeyrouth.tripod.com/colage/id10.html
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-9450.00302/abs/

You’ll find some studies and academic papers here:
http://www.youth.org/loco/PERSONProject/Resources/ResearchStudies/ERIC.html
http://www.apa.org/pi/l&gbib.html

Here’s a quote from one of the articles:

The American Psychological Association, the National Council for Adoptable Children, the Child Welfare League of America, and others have taken public positions against restricting lesbian and gay parenting, based at least partially on the results of the studies summarized here.

There’s plenty more available, as you would have known if your interest in the matter had been sincere. This is your cue to switch arguments since you cannot admit to being wrong because you’re a hateful moron pretending to care about the welfare of others. Go.

[gum]

bodswood Here: http://www.rnw.nl/society/html/adoption010815.html

From this: The issue of adoption hardly caused any controversy in The Netherlands where more than seventy percent of the population believes gay or lesbian couples can make good parents.

This is proven. Homosexual parents are good parents. Have been for years, here.

[Liberal]

@Bodswood

Point two: children are more likely to develop emotional problems without the balance provided by male and female input.

That’s just… bizarre. You’re presumption is firstly that a male/female pair will produce some sort of balance by its mere existence when in fact, one or the other might be dominant and one or both might be psychos. Emotional balance is provided by temperament, not by genitalia.

[matt_mcl]

bodsworth, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board.

On this board, whose motto is “Fighting ignorance since 1973,” we typically do not bring forth extraordinary claims, during an argument, without some degree of citation.

The notion that gender renders a parent unfit to parent is an extraordinary claim. Since you made the claim, it is your responsibility to cite it. Indeed, a panoply of citations has been made against this claim already.

Handwaving and blunt assertions do not cut it. That’s why people are becoming hostile to you; they see you not only asserting an opinion directly prejudicial to many of us as fact, but also being so arrogant as to expect us to accept it on your own recognizance, when you have presented no evidence to support it.

That’s essentially what you’re doing when you say “1) Gay parents are bad. 2) For evidence, see statement 1” (as you did to spectrum); or making two unsupported assertions, both of which say the same thing, and treating your case as made (as you did to Lilairen).

In the culture of this board, you cannot simply make bald statements that exclude an entire segment of society from parenting without something – anything – to back it up, and expect to be taken seriously.

(Naturally, you will probably attribute this failure to the board’s ‘pro-gay bias,’ and not to your own failure to debate.)

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@SolGrundy

At the risk of coming across as one of them uppity homos instead of a respectable representative of The Movement: that’s still unacceptable. As bad as lynchings or gas chambers? No, that’s hyperbole. But your saying that adults can “opt out” is so ludicrous as to be offensive.

Glad you reread my earlier post. That’s sometimes the problem with trying for a nuanced position: people don’t read the whole thing and end up wildly misinterpreting what you’re saying. Nonetheless, I think the truth is often pretty damn complicated, and we have to deal with that. To reiterate my position on reparative therapy:

1. As near as I can tell, it’s pseudoscientific crap.
2. Parents who inflict it on their kids inflict a horror on their kids. The fact that it’s not a horror on a level with sticking their kids in a gas chamber does not excuse them; certainly torturing kids like this should be prosecuted as a felony. Not as a crime against humanity: as a felony.
3. Adults who want to undergo painful pseudoscientific treatments to deal with their self-hatred should be legally allowed to do so, though of course I’d do my best to keep my friends from inflicting such awful nonsense on themselves.

I appreciate your retraction of this post later on, and just want to note how annoying it is to suggest that I’m calling spectrum an “uppity homo.” That’s clearly not what I’m doing: my problem with him has nothing to do with his homosexuality. Indeed, I agree with him on gay rights issues more than I agree with him on widescreen movie issues, or on food issues (he recently described in another thread the crappy diet he eats, an abomination in the eyes of food snobs like me ).

It’s when he does things like equating this awful “therapy” to lynchings and gas chambers that I lose respect for him. Not because the point of his argument is bad–I agree that “reparative therapy” is bad science, bad policy, and bad ethics–but because he’s being, as matt put it, overbroad.

Indeed, at the risk of coming across as one of those patronizing breeders who choose respectable members of the Movement :rolleyes: , I find matt’s comments in this thread express my thoughts on this matter pretty well.

Enough of that.

bodswood, you seem to fail to grasp some very basic ideas of argument. I don’t know whether this is because you’re stupid, or because you’ve surrounded yourself with idiots who don’t know how to argue, but I hope to correct your misapprehensions.

1. If you make a statement, it is up to you to provide evidence to back up the statement. It’s not up to other people to disprove your statement.
2. If you dismiss someone’s evidence, it is up to you to provide specific, verifiable reasons to dismiss the evidence. Handwave it away with, “There are indeed a number of studies on either side, none of them conclusive, many of them with methodological problems,” and everyone will see that you’re a lazy-ass motherfucker who can’t be bothered to do some real research.
3. Break rule #2 too often, and you’ll come across as a bigoted coward. Bigoted because you refuse to let new data enter your worldview and change your mind about important issues; coward for exactly the same reason.

You have the choice to change your argumentative style: it’ll be hard work, but it’ll be worth it if you do choose to develop an argumentative style with honesty, integrity, diligence, and respect. If you choose to continue in the current vein, do not feel sorry for yourself for the vitriol thrown at you: you will have chosen it, inflicted it on yourself.

Daniel

[matt_mcl]

@bodswood

At base, my position is that a homosexual relationship runs risks of depriving a child of the emotionally stable environment that he or she requires to such an extent that I do not support them.

That’s nice that you have that position. On what do you base it?