[Johnny Stew]

Originally Posted by sparky

If you're talking about idealism, and what's best for kids, BEST is the point. Ideal. We're talking about molding people's lives.

You don't make decisions that affect people's entire lives based on an exception to a statistically proven rule.

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.

There are no absolute guarantees in life, Sparky.
If we spent our entire lives basing decisions on a guaranteed result, we'd never do anything.

I absolutely feel that people need to think long and hard about whether or not they can properly raise a child, and whether or not they're ready and able to give up selfish tendencies to become the responsible, mature parent that a child needs and deserves.
But I couldn't disagree with you more on the notion that the only situation in which the responsibility of raising a child should be taken on, is if it's by two opposite gender parents.

Originally Posted by sparky

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".

You don't see how raising a child... providing for that child, nurturing that child, clothing, feeding, loving, and supporting that child... you don't see how that's less shallow than promiscuous sex and club-hopping (which I'd have to say is about the biggest dismissal of consequences and most profound embracement of need fulfillment there is in the gay community)?

Originally Posted by sparky

"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.

You might be relieved to know that the American Psychological Association had this to say:

(T)here is no evidence to suggest that lesbians and gay men are unfit to be parents or that psychosocial development among children of gay men or lesbians is compromised in any respect relative to that among offspring of heterosexual parents. Not a single study has found children of gay or lesbian parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents. Indeed, the evidence to date suggests that home environments provided by gay and lesbian parents are as likely as those provided by heterosexual parents to support and enable children's psychosocial growth.

Originally Posted by sparky

"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.

I believe we are forming new ideas and breaking the mold.
We're forming the idea that same-sex couples can have a strong, committed relationship, and raise a healthy, happy, well-adjusted child, in that loving, nurturing environment. It has nothing to do with copying some fictional TV family, or with stealing what straight people have. It's about embracing our potential as mates, parents, and human-beings.

If any mold needs broken, it's the one that paints us as amoral sex-addicts who have a preoccuption with our hair, clothes and bodies (and those of others). We know it's just a stereotype, but, sadly, as many gay men buy into it as straight people do.

Originally Posted by sparky

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.

The gay marriage issue was handled in the wrong way, absolutely. The debate left many people feeling as if everything they hold dear was being attacked. It rallied many people against us, but it also opened the eyes of many others to our "cause."
Progress was certainly made in many areas, and we'll learn from the mistakes that were made and move forward.