I haven’t seen the study you’re talking about - exactly what parenting arrangements did it examine? From what I’m reading here, it sounds as if it compared children raised by a single set of parents in a stable home environment, to children of single parents, or children whose parents have divorced. Is that the case? If so, then we cannot derive any useful data about the success of children raised since birth by adopted parents or children raised since birth by a biological parent and a step parent, because those groups were not included in the study. Did the study include any gay parents at all, in any of the groups? If it did not, then we absolutely cannot draw any conclusions from it on the advisability of gay parenting.
I tracked down the study, it is behind a pay wall though so I can not link to it.
The study did not track nor claim to track homosexual couples at all, hoopified has never refuted this in the thread unless I have missed it.
Even his cite claimes
[
](New research: How traditional families help children succeed | liturgical)
Both of which would bolster the concept of SSM.
[QUOTE]
Of course not. Human beings form bonds all the time. But your hypothetical still does not trump the bond that is inherent between a child and her/his biological parents. That is the nature of human beings.
Yes, that is my contention. SSc can not be both mother and father.
The same way that a biological father’s bond is different that the mother’s bond.
It’s not. It’s a function of their sex.
Do you doubt there is a difference between mothers and fathers? Both of whom bring something unique, incomparable, and their own shortcomings and strengths that is a function of their sex. No matter how you try to get around it, two men can not be a mother and father.
Well, if the child benefits from role models of both genders, why do they have to be the child’s parents? They are not the only adults in the child’s life, after all, unless that child is so isolated that he or she will have plenty of problems to deal with over and above what happens between the parents. There are teachers, coaches, older relatives… who may be of either gender.
Just another simple question I’m sure you won’t answer.
Are you admitting not only are you bigoted towards homosexuals you are also sexist?
Could you please elaborate on shortcomings and strengths that can only exist in one gender?
The emergence of rational basis with bite strongly resembles the emergency of the intermediate scrutiny standard. Lots of back and forth, cases involving similar classifications being decided without majority opinion as to the correct standard, and eventually you get Craig v. Boren. We’ve had what, three cases applying something resembling the RBWT standard?
I provided this cite which proved that the gender of parents is not relevant to the outcome of the child
[
](http://people.virginia.edu/~cjp/articles/ffp10b.pdf)
So please come back with something that is not conjecture.
And I provided evidence that shows these studies are suspect at best, disengenuous at worst.
I have only seen one cite from you, please share the evidence once again.
I just went through every page looking for your one discredited link.
Yes. That’s it exactly.
Do you live in a cave? Don’t you live in some sort of community? Seriously? Are men and women interchangeable to you?
That’s more or less what we’ve established as a society, except for certain issues regarding plumbing.
So more conjecture, with no corroborating evidence.
[
](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x/full)
You are the one claiming men or women have shortcomings that would prevent them from parenting without someone of the opposite sex.
Me being Thog over here would simply like you to to elaborate on what shortcomings or strengths are exclusive to one gender.
You made the claim how about you back it up.
I see nothing in there outside of that, homosexuality which may have a genetic component is more common among gay parents.
And that some kids were teased at school because they had gay parents.
It also sounds like many of them the parents came out after having kids in a hetero marriage.
Are you claiming being gay is a choice, or that these kids would have not been gay had their parents not come out?
Also note this does not apply to the study I linked to which were adoptive families, who had no real difference in the sexuality of the child.
So, to be clear, you’re saying that the bond formed between parents and their adopted baby is not as strong as the bond formed between parents and their biological offspring?
I’m not asking about same-sex couples here, just adoptive versus biological parenting.
What is the specific nature of this difference? How is it manifested?
No, two men cannot be a mother and father. What I question is whether there is a notable difference in a child being raised by a mother and a father, versus a child raised by two fathers or a child raised by two mothers. Do you have any evidence for this difference? Barring actual evidence, do you have any theory about what the precise difference is between these two situation, and how we could expect to see that difference manifest in the child?
Hmmm… okay. I think the contrary should be obvious, but that’s just me.
Obvious to who? If it should be obvious to society at large you’d think you could find someone here to agree with you.
You can’t point to a single example.
You are doing wonders to convince us here there is no argument on your side to be found.
What claim of yours, precisely, is that cite meant to bolster? I’m more than willing to grant that children of gay parents are less likely to harbor prejudice against homosexuals, and are less likely to view non-hetero impulses as a threat to their personal identity, and as such, are less likely to either closet themselves, or actively avoid homosexual experimentation, which would lead to an increase in the number of them who identify as non-straight, or who identify as straight but are willing to admit to non-hetero encounters. But that’s only an argument against gay parenting if you start from the assumption that it’s bad to be gay - which does not do much for the idea that opposition to gay marriage is rooted in anything other than anti-gay prejudice.
It also strikes me as likely that the children of gay parents are more likely to be harassed by their peers for having gay parents - although the politics of bullying and the social dynamics of in-group versus out-group among adolescents and teenagers is sufficiently complex that I would not want to take that as a given without some corroborating support. Your cite points out one study that noted that many children of gay parents wish, at some point, that they could have a “normal” family, but this is not contrasted in any way with the attitudes of children of heterosexual parents. Anecdotally, I don’t know anyone, regardless of their (or their parents) orientation, who did not at some point (usually as a teenager) wish that they had a different family that the one they were born with. At any rate, it’s impossible to determine, with the information in that cite, whether that attitude is a result of defects in the nature of gay parenting itself, or is a product of our intensely homophobic society. Certainly, the blame for schoolyard bullying of children of gay parents can not be laid on the shoulders of the victim’s parents.
Lastly, a large number of the studies your cite criticizes dealt with parents who came out late in life, often while they were still involved in a heterosexual marriage. I would absolutely expect that a child whose parent suddenly comes out as homosexual to have feelings of shock and resentment over that, particularly if it leads directly to their parent’s divorce. But already there, we’re not talking about children in a stable home any more, but children from broken homes, which is why I’ve been careful to stipulate that we’re talking about children raised by the same two openly gay parents for the entire length of their childhood.