[GateandGarden]

Originally Posted by sparky

So why bother doing it at all ? And people with seat belts still get killed in car accidents. While we're at it, let's all take off the seat belts. They're really no guarantee at all.

What are you getting at there? I can't see how that coincides with what Brian said.

I don't know that raising kids is any less shallow than going to Studio 54 and doing coke with Andy Warhol. A dominant paradigm is a dominant paradigm. People can go ahead and try and reclaim Leave It To Beaver and call it new and meaningful if they want to. It doesn't make it meaningful. Most people are lemmings. There's a certain element to the trend of gay parenting that is rebellious and is done with a real f-you to society. It's a knee jerk reaction to being told one can't do something and basically that people can do whatever they want to regardless of the consequences just because it fulfills their needs. That is self indulgent. That is coming from an inital statement of "I want" or "I need".

I agree that some people are like this, but you don't feel at least somewhat confident that Brian is not one of them?

"We" can do whatever the hell we want to with our lives. Life is really all about what we want, after all. Pity we can't consult the kids before they're drug into it. I'm sure most of them would have opinions.

So, what is the answer to that? I wasn't consulted before I was brought into this world, and there were times when I've wished I was consulted beforehand. Those of us who are unhappy should kill ourselves? (I know you didn't mean that; I'm being sarcastic here).

If the shoe fits.

"Husband" ? Figure of speech or not, that is downright creepy. In all this freedom and doing whatever we want, how about forming some new ideas ?
If people want to break the mold, I say build a new one. The demand to change the cultural/religious institution of marriage is exactly the wrong battle. The Right Wing used that preposterous issue as a barbed club in the last election and kicked the asses of the entire Democratic party into a ditch.
And the subtext of that issue was children. It is a hot button suicide of a political question and took the quiet, steady struggle for gay rights back 20 years.

If the shoe fits? What about procreation as something basic that a lot of human beings feel inclined to do? (I know, I know--some don't have the right intentions, as you've said, but others do). It isn't a desire that is exclusive to any sexual orientation. How could one by copying the other when people of all sexual orientations have been having children for centuries?

The whole fight for marriage is based on the idea that separate is not equal. If you want a separate instituion because you think heterosexual marriage is so corrupt, that's fine, but to me it's something of the symbolic equivalent of having different schools and bathrooms. And I don't see why the word "husband" is so creepy. I think it's what you make it.