Same sex parenting: What do the children say?

[assari]

http://catholicexchange.com/what-do-the-children-say

 

[Mayhem]

Not a very bad article, but not a very good one either. I'm in the middle of something, so I'm coming back tomorrow to address specifics. For now I'll just say that the author makes assumptions and generalizations that really don't make sense to me. But since this is a step up from your usual drivel, I'll rep you if the system deigns to allow me.

P.S. You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to assari again.

 

[Mayhem]

http://catholicexchange.com/what-do-the-children-say

Same Sex Parenting: What Do the Children Say?

First criticism: Nowhere in the article do "the children" say anything. It's all the authors perspective. And it's not a small thing. There are enough dimbulbs in and out of religion who will take a title at face value. Depressing but true.

Over the last year I’ve been in frequent contact with adults who were raised by parents in same-sex partnerships. They are terrified of speaking publicly about their feelings, so several have asked me (since I am already out of the closet, so to speak) to give voice to their concerns.

I cannot speak for all children of same-sex couples, but I speak for quite a few of them, especially those who have been brushed aside in the so-called “social science research” on same-sex parenting.

First of all, being "terrified to speak publicly"? Why? Who are you terrified of and what do you think they're going to do to you? "Over the last year" has been the best time to speak up and if you're using fear as an excuse, please feel free to continue shutting the fuck up.

Secondly, this broad, sweeping "I speak for many" doesn't mean shit. I want numbers and demographics. Otherwise I just assume you're making this shit up.

Those who contacted me all professed gratitude and love for the people who raised them, which is why it is so difficult for them to express their reservations about same-sex parenting publicly.

Yeah, they call it bullshit, where I come from. I'll hazard a guess that they call it bullshit where you come from too.

Still, they described emotional hardships that came from lacking a mom or a dad. To give a few examples: they feel disconnected from the gender cues of people around them, feel intermittent anger at their “parents” for having deprived them of one biological parent (or, in some cases, both biological parents), wish they had had a role model of the opposite sex, and feel shame or guilt for resenting their loving parents for forcing them into a lifelong situation lacking a parent of one sex.

This is the common theme that permeates the rest of the article. What is being described isn't same-sex partnerships, but divorce. And it is irrespective of the sex of the parents.

I have heard of the supposed “consensus” on the soundness of same-sex parenting from pediatricians and psychologists, but that consensus is frankly bogus.

Pediatricians are supposed to make sure kids don’t get ringworm or skip out on vaccinations—nobody I know doubts that same-sex couples are able to tend to such basic childcare needs.

I'm only including this because I recently made a starkly similar point to another thread and was accused of being a single-minded topic-bully for it.

Psychologists come from the same field that used to have a “consensus” that homosexuality was a mental disorder. Neither field is equipped to answer the deeper existential dilemmas of legally removing fatherhood or motherhood as a human principle, which is what total “marriage equality” would entail.

Well, medical science used to have the "consensus" that leeches and emetics cured malaria. And everything else. It's called evolution. If modern psychology is not equipped to deal with this, please explain what scientific field that is.

I support same-sex civil unions and foster care, but I have always resisted the idea that government should encourage same-sex couples to imagine that their partnerships are indistinguishable from actual marriages. Such a self-definition for gays would be based on a lie, and anything based on a lie will backfire.

I know of no one that has said any such thing. What has been debated and passed in law is equal protection under the law. That's it. The entire premise of this paragraph is false and misleading.

The richest and most successful same-sex couple still cannot provide a child something that the poorest and most struggling spouses can provide: a mom and a dad. Having spent forty years immersed in the gay community, I have seen how that reality triggers anger and vicious recrimination from same-sex couples, who are often tempted to bad-mouth so-called “dysfunctional” or “trashy” straight couples in order to say, “We deserve to have kids more than they do!”

Again, I have no idea what this guy is even talking about. But he again, completely ignores the staggeringly high divorce rate in the US (dunno and don't care about the rest of the world, but it's probably analogous).

It’s disturbingly classist and elitist for gay men to think they can love their children unreservedly after treating their surrogate mother like an incubator, or for lesbians to think they can love their children unconditionally after treating their sperm-donor father like a tube of toothpaste.

Now he's gone completely off the rails.

It’s also racist and condescending for same-sex couples to think they can strong-arm adoption centers into giving them orphans by wielding financial or political clout. An orphan in Asia or in an American inner city has been entrusted to adoption authorities to make the best decision for the child’s life, not to meet a market demand for same-sex couples wanting children. Whatever trauma caused them to be orphans shouldn’t be compounded with the stress of being adopted into a same-sex partnership.

Where and when is any of this happening? He makes these bold statements while providing no bonafides whatsoever.

Lastly, it’s harmful to everyone if gay men and lesbians in mixed-orientation marriages with children file for divorce so they can enter same-sex couplings and raise their children with a new homosexual partner while kicking aside the other biological parent. Kids generally want their mom and dad to stop fighting, put aside their differences, and stay together, even if one of them is gay.

Once again, he's not speaking to same-sex couples but to divorce in general. He just doesn't seem to know it.

In my family’s case, my mother was divorced and she made the best decision given our circumstances. Had she set out to create a same-sex parenting family in a premeditated fashion, I would probably not feel at peace with her memory, because I would know that my lack of a strong father figure during childhood did not result from an accident of life history, but rather from her own careless desire to have her cake and eat it too. I am blessed not to contend with such a traumatic thought about my own mother. I love her because I know she did everything possible to give me a good life. Still, what was best in our specific circumstances was a state of deprivation that it is unconscionable to force on innocent children if it’s not absolutely necessary.

Now the audience begins to wonder what this guy is bitching about. Me? I begin to lose interest in what this guy is bitching about.

Putting aside all the historical analogies to civil rights and the sentimental platitudes about love, the fact is that same-sex parenting suffers from insurmountable logistical problems for which children pay the steepest lifelong price.

Yes, let's put aside the sentimental platitudes about love. Love stinks. I know this because J. Geils said so. And right now, J. Geils has a shit ton more credibility than this wingnut has.

Whether it’s by surrogacy, insemination, divorce, or commercialized adoption, moral hazards abound for same-sex couples who insist on replicating a heterosexual model of parenthood. The children thrown into the middle of these moral hazards are well aware of their parents’ role in creating a stressful and emotionally complicated life for kids, which alienates them from cultural traditions like Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, and places them in the unenviable position of being called “homophobes” if they simply suffer the natural stress that their parents foisted on them—and admit to it.

So, a traditional marriage upbringing is guaranteed to be stress-free? I need to get done here so I can call my parents and scream at them for a few hours.

And God knows that losing Mother's and Father's Days are what serial killing and heroin addiction is all about. Of course, I'm still waiting for my first Veterans Day present, so fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all. (Hmmm, now I'm in a quandary. Do I shoot up and rape a nun before or after I yell at my parents?)

Same-sex marriage would pose no problems for me if it were simply about couples being together. As a bisexual I get that. But unfortunately the LGBT movement decided that its validation by others requires a redefinition of “marriage” to include same-sex partnerships. So here we are, stuck having to encourage problematic lives for children in order to affirm same-sex couples the way the movement demands.

Welcome to the age of problematic lives for children. Good thing we managed to avoid it until now. This is the part where we turn on Bill O'Reilly. He'll make it all better.

That’s why I am for civil unions but not for redefining marriage. But I suppose I don’t count—I am no doctor, judge, or television commentator, just a kid who had to clean up the mess left behind by the sexual revolution.

Try not to get any on you.

Additional Note: "I am no doctor". Hmmmm. And double hmmmm.

Robert Oscar Lopez, PhD, is the author of Johnson Park and editor of the websiteEnglish Manif: A Franco-American Flashpoint on Gay Rights Debates. He is launching CREFA, or Children's Rights and Ethical Family Alternatives, a new project to discuss the ethics of LGBT family-building, with Doug Mainwaring.

Me smells something fishy. And I'm not sure it's the mess left behind by the sexual revolution.

 

[BlkHawk]

"You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Mayhem again."

Good break down of the article.