Indeed, if you want to deny there are significant differences, then, you don’t even need to cite evidence. Just make the asserted denial, pat yourself on the back, and proclaim victory. That’s not how you began your discussion of parenting, but it looks like that is where you are heading now.

Use your superficial thinking, as quoted above, to test your own proposed procreation restriction on opposite-sexed duos who’d procreate together.

Your absolutist tendencies lean heavily toward totalitarianism: you really think that the Government “allows” married people to be childless? If that is the way you think, then, you are not really concerned about the meaning and implementation of equal protection under a system of justice.

LWW said: “Same sex-led families are no different from opposite sex-led ones, lesbians (or gay men) are no better or worse as parents, and the kids are no better or worse for their parents.”

At one point you insisted that you were not advocating that society reward homosexual behavior or promote gay identity politics.

You have not addressed the structural similarities that all one-sexed arrangements, homosexual or not, have with childraising arrangements that fall short of the standard (as per the wide social scientific consensus) of married mom-dad raising their own progeny. This is a related, but seperate, topic from the question of eligibility to marry, by the way.

The related? Well, the sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity can not apply to any one-sexed arrangement — homosexualized or not.

LWW said: “No better, no worse- just parents.”

1. You clearly are referring to types of arrangements and the evidence does not show what you claimed.

2. If you mean that there are no variations by structure of family, then, again you are mistaken. There are importance variations in terms of outcomes for children.

3. See the point about structural similarities — even with step-parenting and adoptive parenting. No one here is taking swipes at step and adoptive parents who are very often heroic.

Earlier, in our exchanges, you admitted that there is insufficient evidence for asserting the sort of social scientific conclusion you just put into pixels in that comment. I’ve “called BS” on your approach to the evidence and you have not yet developed your hypothesis, or pointed to someone else hypothesis, such that gayness or lesbianism makes all the difference to overcome the structural similarities that “same-sex parenting” shares with other types of parenting scenarios that fall short of the married mom-dad optimum.

Look, I’ve been careful to discuss the intact and low-conflict married mom-dad family and if you were paying attention you might also have wondered about high-conflict marriages raising chidlren. These, too, are substandard. The issue is not really about sexual orientation or identity politics, contary to your latest admission of advocating on that basis, but rather structure.

You talked of the number two but that was shown to be superficial mimickry rather than an actual structural basis for assuming, as do you, that homosexuality is the special ingredient that makes-up for fatherlessness or motherlessness in other arrangements.

I now shall be off to present my daughter with her birthday present- a telescope!

As far as the original blogpost, I already clearly called BS to all three points. Same sex-led families are no different from opposite sex-led ones, lesbians (or gay men) are no better or worse as parents, and the kids are no better or worse for their parents.

Put clearly, a woman and a man can be equally effective bringing up a child conceived with 3rd party gametes as two women. An opposite sex pair can be just as effective with a child gestated by a surrogate mother as a gay male pair. No better, no worse- just parents.

I am very happy for this study, as our planned twin grandchildren, who were conceived with an anonymous sperm donor appear statistically to be headed for a very happy life .

I will answere the 3 questions although they are all kind of “loaded questions” LOL.
#1 – Do not believe women are per se better parents. Good moms and bad moms exist, just like good dad and bad dads exist. Yes the study shows that 2 women can produce healthy happy children without a man. I do not believe men are dengerous though, I htought that was stupid to write into the question.
#2 – The study compares Lesbian raised children in comparison to hetro raised children. And yes the main problem reported is harrasement by hetrosexuals. But that does not mean that they ahve “no” problems all kids has issues. The point is the lesbian raised children do not have more “issues’ then hetro raised kids, in fact they have less.
#3-
The children of lesbian parents were intensely planned and deeply wanted. Therefore, manufacturing children through Donor Insemination is superior to conceiving children through an act of sexual intercourse.
I actually pasted the whole question above so I could respond to it as it is indeed such a “silly” question. Hetro couples want children and increase the number of times they have sexual intercourse in order to become pregnent, so those children are certainly planned and wanted. The bottom line for me is it doens’t really matter how you got pregnent as a couple. Plenty of hetro children were “accidents” and are still loved by their parents. Would you take this logic to it’s conclusion and say that children who are born to hetrosexual families are “better off” than unplanned children born to hetrosexual children. The manner in which you were conceived; planned hetro/un-planned hetro/Sperm donor to lesbians/surrogates to gay men/adoption by either hetro or same sex, is not at all important. What is important is that once born you are raised in a loving low clonflict home by a parent with sufficient economic means to raise you. Of course it is easier on the parents if there are 2 to share the load but it very well can be done by one. So, no, Donor Insemination is not superior.

Am I the only one who thinks these questions are darn right silly?

Also, you have not addressed the way that this connects back to the pernicious ideas in the original blogpost above.

Typically, married couples change their behavior if they experience infertility or subfertility. They do not resort to these procedures, generally. And even when they do, they do because of the disability, not because of the lack of the other sex, as all one-sexed scenarios must do.

These are not inconsequential differences.

I’ll add that this isn’t a gay/lesbian issue, this is a human issue for all of society. Most adoptions, IVF procedures with anonymous donors, and surrogate mother arrangements are done by heterosexual couples- simply because there are so many more of them. All these procedures (IVF, surrogacy) or institutions (adoption, surrogacy) were developed with traditional married folk in mind.

Also, Melly made me laugh: “They don’t want you to believe that lesbian parents are just as good as… no, they want us all to believe that lesbians are better parents than a heterosexual couple,”

You mean the way people like you are trying to make us all believe that heterosexuals are better parents than gay or lesbian couples? It seems Melly might be projecting a little of himself onto other people. Hmmm”

Correction, “herself”
No, Elliot, that’s not what I am trying to do at all. You need to read all my posts before you start throwing stones. I’ve said there are good and bad parents on both sides.
I believe for complete emotional and psychological development, a child needs the love and support and nurturing of an emotionally stable mother and father.
I also believe, thought I can’t prove it, that children raised by single parents, gay parents, lesbian parents will at some time wish they had a fulfilling relationship with the missing parent.

Medical case studies are not the equivalent of social anecdotes. I see what you intend to convey: that narratives are better than nothing.

So you should avoid using social scientific terms like show, indicate, prove when discussing the scant and sporadic evidence that is largely subjective. I mean, you would be far more cautious when discussing your impressions of medical case studies before diagnosing and treating actual patients, surely.

In this instance we are discussing changes to the societal regard of a social institution, rather than this or that particular individual’s private affairs. Social experimentation carries costs that go beyond the individual here and now. Also, if you are treating a patient for a medical problem that is not well understood, and doing so based on case studies, you’d do so only on case studies that resemble the problems your patient has. And in the social scientific context that means looking at the piles of evidence and analysis on divorce, nonmarital arrangements, one-sexed parenting (in whatever and all forms), and so forth.

But, in effect, you are deliberately placing greater weight on narratives — sporadic as you said — than on the actual accumulated evidence that pertains to the case at hand. Do you understand what I am describing? I think your favoritism has led your opinion rather than the available evidence leading you to some preliminary conclusions. And that does not justify your use of terms like shown and so forth. The data is not as specific as you would like so you would like to replace evidence with data points that are subjective, narrative, and not on par with the evidence that produced the very wide and deep social scientific consensus on the married-mom-dad duo for raising children.

Besides, there ar eplaces in the world that do not have the things you say are missing in the US due to federal laws and policies. Those things are not there for mom-dad duos. I think you are again relying on a politicized view of very slim social scientific evidence — and deeply discounting the bounty of evidence that does not fit that politicized view.

Nothing wrong with admitting as much. But let’s not give it the weight you have insisted upon. You would not do so on medical case studies for the sake of widespread medical experimentation on human beings, right? Sometimes, oft times, narratives can be much worse than nothing.

You would deny to all of society the special reason for the special status of this foundational social institution. You offer an anemic sustitute — your SSM idea. The only way to make the SSM idea normative is to engage in levels of government coercion that turn upside down the fact that marriage is a social institution of civil society and that government is servant not master of civil society. So depsite your protests you are promoting the denial of very much to all of society.

And keep in mind that even those who agree with the SSM merger will be coerced by government and will experience the consequences of this imposition. Compliance will not be enough; conformance and ‘approval’ will be mandated. That happened even to the racialists who supported anti-miscegenation and other forms of asserting the supremacy of their brand of identity politics on all of their society.

It is also clear that you do favor denial of eligilbity to marry for some people even though they’d qualify based on your SSM idea. You might own up to that much.

LWW: “how my kids and their stay-at-home mom are the harbingers of the end of Western Civilization as we know it.”

Even now, I guess.

I replied when I meant to quote.

But I’m not trying to deny anything to male-female pairings. You are trying to deny responsibilities and privilidges to same-sex pairings which are otherwise identical to opposite sex pairings. My family example, while anecdote, helps demonstrate that society is strong enough to handle variations on the theme. In the absence of harder data, anecdote is suggestive of a course of action, or certainly further study. When I have nothing else to work off, I use anecdote to treat patients- they’re called case studies in medicine. Given the absence of recognised marriage at a Federal level in the US by same-sex pairings save for extremely sporadic examples like my own, anecdote is all you leave me with.

I’ll address the rest of it, that which isn’t directly on the topic of lebian parenting covered by the original blogpost, here for convenience sake. I have to concentrate all this in one place, otherwise I can’t keep up without it consuming my life unacceptable given work and family.

Also I will reiterate:

If SSMers agree that there is no objective difference, in terms of needs, between the gaycentric subset and the rest of the wide range of nonmarriage arrangements, then, we can agree on equal protections.

Special status is more than protective status; the SSM campaign emphasizes protections so this is the obvious solution to the vulnerabilities of nonmarriage families.

The trouble with the SSM campaign and its arguments is that it does not stop with extending protections. They want to do two contradictory things (which are reflections of my previous 2 points):

First, demote marital status from its special status to a merely protective status. This is accomplished by abolishingn from social policy the special reason fro special status. The current distinction between marriage, and relationship types eligible for marriage, and those outside the bounds will be undermined severely. If the essence, the core meaning, of the social institution is to be abandoned by government — and if the SSM campaign has its way also abandoned by the culture — then special status becomes unsustainable.

Second, further demote the core meaning of marriage and its man-woman criterion — demote it from special status to protective status and then, further, down to a barely tolerative status. It would be deemed bigoted, unconstitutional, and a relic of our traditions, customs, and cultural understanding of the nature of humankind. Worse, those whose devotion to that core meaning is open and unsurrendered will be ostracized through government coercion. The precedent for this sort of thing in American history is the assertion of supremacy of racialist identity politics that produced the bans on inter-racial marriage. The abuse of government power to impose upon marriage law an anti-marriage change — and to use this foundational social institution for a nonmarriage purpose — would be unjust both in principle and in execution. Gay identity politics is not a superior form of identity politics and although it has been presented as more benign than the racialist predessor its promoters are the (witting and unwitting — but mostly unwitting) descendants of the anti-miscegenists of the past.

You make the same arguments that the SSM campaign makes. That’s based on the assertion of the supremacy of gay identity politics. The content of your comments have not diverge from the content of those arguments.

Regarding your response to the two points I made in my earlier comment:

Not all opposite-sexed arrangements are marriage. Not all opposite-sexed relationships are eligible for marriage in our laws. The boundaries are drawn around the core meaning of the social institution and are not simply arbitrary and capricious as per your repeated special emphasis on sexual orientation and the gay identity group.

Your pro-SSM view is a rejection of that core meaning and that constitutes a rejection of the boundaries *on that basis*; so you need to (or someone — whose conscience you’d defer to — needs to) justify whatever boundaries you wish to impose *based on your SSM idea* — its essentials without which the type of relationship (or type of arrangement) you have in mind would not be SSM and those applying would not be eligible.

LWW said: “We are talking exclusive relationships here. ”

I assume you mean that the law would permit twosomes but not onesomes and not moresomes. If that is what you meant, then, provide the principled basis for such a restriction. It is not good enough to depend on tradition — as in that’s how it has always been done here; nor can you depend on the tradition of monogamous romance alone. You have said, repeatedly, that extra hands make lighter the work of domestic duties and that mom-mom duos would include other persons — nonfatherly men for example — to meet the responsibilities of raising children. So the number two is not so obviously a limitation that fits your comments. Further explaination and justification is reasonably expected.

LWW said: “I’m not contagious.”

I have not suggested otherwise. With respect, your SSM idea is offered as an alternative to the marriage idea. And, if that replacement is imposed on all of society, you will indeed take away quite a lot from others — not just those here and now but future generations to come. That idea may be considered a contagion of sorts, in proper context.

Social institutions have influence. Coercive influence. Marriage is relatively non-cocercive but its normative power arises from its core meaning. The SSM replacement would not have such power and so it would rely utterly on government coercion via the police power in its various forms. That’s evident where the SSM merger has been imposed.

The SSM arguments you make in your comments fits very well the assertions made by the leading lights of the SSM campaign when it comes to deconstruction of the social institution. You offer nothing that would strengthen marriage but you do strongly suggest that the rough shape of the social institution in our society is precedent for the further change you seek to both the marriage law and the culture.

In sum you agree with points 1 and 2, evidently, and you perceive those points as positives rather than as significant social costs that need to be weighed in the balance. Yes?

And that, LWW, is not live and let live.

* * *

LWW said: “I do NOT believe SSM will in any way “improve’ marriage.”

I did not say you believed it would. And I agree that it won’t improve marriage in any way. I further agree that whatever particular individuals do in one-sexed arrangements is beside the two points I have made and to which you evidently agreed. But I will wait for your confirmation (or correction or clarification) on that evident agreement, because I am not putting words into your mouth but am hoping to learn your viewpoint from the words you have actually written.

If you cannot or will not seperate your particular private details from the societal issue, as is necessary while discussing a social institution’s societal significance, then you will not make much progress in understanding what you came here to learn about. You can fall back on the rhetoric of “the personal is political” or whatever, but that would be a real obstacle to your stated objective here.

To reiterate from a slightly different angle, it is not about quantity of SSMs, should it come to that, LWW. You are proposing a change to society that entails gutting a foundational social institution of its core meaning. That means less societally. Whether or not you agree, please acknowledge that this is what you understand me to have actually said. Thanks.

In terms of quantity, same-sex householding (in its various guises) has very low participation rates within the homosexual population. This is so even where the SSM merger has been imposed. Rates are low and declining in Canada, Scandinavia, and so forth. But change in how government, and society, regards the social institution is far more significant than perhaps you have yet come to grips with. It is such an important institution that changes naturally will have longterm influences on behavior across society. The changes are to marriage. The influence is through that change. It is not an influence through this or that particular individual who might participate in an SSM.

Please do me a favor: restate what I just said in those last three paragraphs in your own words so that we can learn if we are on the same page and that you do understand what I have actually said here. You don’t have to be exact — just get to the gist of what you believe I actually intended to say. You might disagree, but please, let’s first establish what it is that you might disagree with, okay?

And the context obviously is my comment @ June 19th, 2010 at 23:58 in which I clearly asked you to differentiate the particular type of relationship you have in mind from the rest of the nonmarriage category which is much larger and inclusive than your comments have indicated. Thanks.

Let’s trade nonsensical remarks: the sky has not fallen wherever marriage has been affirmed as the union of man and woman.

Even now, I guess.

The first principle of responsible procreation is that each of us, as part of a man-woman combination, is responsible for the children we’ve created (barring dire circumstances or tragedy). This is not just about conception and perhaps it would suprise you to learn that responsible procreation begins even before conception. The marriage idea unites fatherhood and motherhood and, as I said, it is the plan and it is the norm that the mom-dad duo are prospective social parents of their own progeny. Society expects this. The marital presumption of paternity is vigorously enforced even today after the social institution has been battered by radical changes imposed on it. In our society we even extend the presumption’s basic criteria to unwed procreation. It is not a sex-neutral presumption; it is not one-sexed. From a societal perspective, parents beget future parents who beget future parents and on and on; this fact of human existence is profound and inescapable except in the fictive world of SSM arguments. The social institution is the humane response to the opposite-sexed nature of human procreation; to the two-sexed nature of humankind; to the both-sexed nature of human community.

No one is denied entry into the social institution of marriage on the basis of sexual orientatin or identity group. So you are falsely asserting that your rights to equal treatment is denied on that basis. That is just a fact you and ‘homo couples’ (your phrase) might learn to live with — as in live and let live.

Better questions have been asked: do you agree that marital status is a special status in our society? If not, that should be stated upfront. If yes, then, what is the special reason (the societal significance) that merits that special status? And, then, how does your offered reason distinguish the one-sexed arrangement (sexualized or not) from the rest of the large category of nonmarriage arrangements and relationship types? That is the starting place that you have not even found.