First published in Between the Lines, May 31, 2007
The day after Jerry Falwell's funeral, Mary Cheney-who is a LESBIAN, in case you've forgotten the Bush-Kerry debates-gave birth to a baby boy.
If I were the world's scriptwriter, I would have reversed the order: Cheney gives birth, then Falwell keels over. No matter: just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does right-wing foolishness. With Falwell gone, someone else will step up to blame the world's problems on Tinky Winky, environmentalists, and lesbian moms.
For the record, my condolences go out to the Falwell family. That the man said profoundly stupid things about gays and lesbians (among other subjects) does not alter the fact that he was also a husband, father, and friend.
If only Falwell and his followers could muster up similar empathy. Whatever one might think about lesbian parenting, Mary Cheney is a mother, and Samuel David Cheney is her son. None of this will stop the so-called "family values" crowd from accusing her of child abuse simply for bringing him into the world. It's a nasty accusation, and it needs to be countered forcefully.
Vice President Cheney seems to understand this point. Some months ago, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked him to comment on criticisms of Mary, and the vice president responded with harsh verbal smack-down. Blitzer didn't deserve it (don't shoot the messenger-or in this case, the interviewer). But it was hard not to admire Cheney's exceedingly effective "Don't fuck with my family" attitude, or to be grateful that for once his belligerence was (almost) well-aimed.
When gay or lesbian couples decide to have children, they obtain them one of two ways. First, they may adopt, thus giving a home to a child who has none. Parenting is an act of loving sacrifice, and those who adopt children ought to be applauded and supported. To treat them otherwise not only insults them, it also harms their children-not to mention other needy children who may be deprived loving homes because of misguided "family values." Shame on those who stand in their way.
The other way-the one used by Mary Cheney and Heather Poe-is pregnancy, either by insemination or implantation of an embryo. I do not wish to minimize the moral questions raised by reproductive technology. Most of these questions, however, are not unique to lesbian and gay parents, who constitute a minority of its users.
But aren't same-sex families "suboptimal" for children? The research says otherwise. So does every mainstream health organization that has commented on the issue: the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology, the American Psychiatric Association, and so on.
Jerry Falwell's crowd would have us believe that these organizations have all been hijacked by the vast "Homosexual Agenda." Trust me: if we had such power, we wouldn't be having this debate.
Forget the research for a moment and consider the following: if Mary Cheney had not chosen to become pregnant-by whatever means she used-Samuel David Cheney would not exist. After all, he is a genetically unique individual, as pro-lifers frequently remind us. The practical alternative to Samuel's existing in this lesbian household is his not existing at all, and it is hard to argue that he'd be better off that way. So the claim that they harm him, simply by bringing him into this situation, rings hollow.
Metaphysical subtleties aside, the fact is that Mary and Heather will provide this child with a loving home, not to mention many material advantages. The more people see that, the more ridiculous charges of "child abuse" sound.
And that last point gives me great cause for optimism. When I came out of the closet nearly twenty years ago, myths about gay and lesbian people abounded: we were sick, we were predators, we were miserable, we were amoral. Such myths still exist, of course, but they are far more difficult to float (and thus, far less common). The main reason is that we are much more visible now, and so people know firsthand that the myths simply aren't true.
While many people know openly gay or lesbian people, relatively fewer know gay or lesbian parents. That's changing, and as it does, so too will the ability of the right wing to float nasty myths about them. Their influence will wane in the face of simple evidence.
Samuel David Cheney begins his life in an America with fewer Jerry Falwells and more Mel Whites; fewer Pat Buchanans and more Andrew Sullivans; fewer Dr. Lauras and more Ellens. Good for him (and the rest of us).
Corvino, John
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OK That’s IT! With Fitz’s use of words like “Hyperbowl” and equel, I am convinced he is not a real person, but a robot designed not with a mouth, or a brain, but a belching mechanism device. That device has the following settings: Ultra-Catholic to Southern Baptist to Right-Wing Nutcase to Bleeding Heart “Love the Fags but not their sin and PLEASE don’t kill the poor wretched things” at any given time. Yours for only $19.95!
Pretty much what Lori said.
I’d only add that if I had 50 cents for every time some abusive asshole fundamentalist with a bunch of children he abuses regularly and raises in appalling conditions lashes out at the “poor child of a selfish queer couple” who is well-schooled with a college fund and a head start in life, I’d be a millionaire.
I suppose the fundy thinks he’s being a “good father” by beating his children, teaching them that the earth is only 5,000 years old, and not giving them any sort of real-world preparation to interact with people who are different from them. He’d be wrong, of course.
Right on, Bill and Brian.
In ten years as an “out” lesbian, I have discovered something interesting. Most straight people (and I live in “red state” Arizona, so most of the ones I know are both Christian and conservative) are decent, kindhearted and — yes– open-minded people.
They are respectful and accepting toward us. Why? Because they’re decent people.
Are they “liberals” pushing some “immoral agenda?” I’d like to see one of these pathetic little, hide-behind-alias trolls actually dare to stand up and call them that to their faces.
This is the point to which I keep returning. There are decent people, who are capable of learning something interesting about life from day-to-day reality and who understand that other human beings must be treated with respect — whether they agree with them or not — and then there are the piece-of-crap excuses for humanity who don’t.
Decent people versus jerks. Character. It really is that simple.
Bill, Brian and other IGF-ers, we have given our current crop of trolls enough of a chance to figure out what they are. They think it’s all a game, and that they (precious, precious little them!) must “win” it at any cost. It doesn’t matter what we say, or how much sense our argument makes. And our basic value as human beings? Well, that matters to them least of all.
When some new challenger stops by and issues a worthy challenge, based upon intelligent concerns, he or she is certainly worth engaging. But these are garden-variety trolls. They oozed up out of the ground like slugs, and should now be invited to slither back under the rock from which they came.
Anything else is “hyperbowl.” Which, it seems, is nothing more than “Ty-d-bowl.”
I, for one, have wasted enough time with these people. I’m sure we all have better things to do.
Lori: First of all, there’s the assumption that same-sex couples somehow screen out the possibility of any involvement, in the child’s life, by any significant adult of the opposite sex.
Just look at you. How shameful.
Sure its great that they have exposure to the other gender. Does that excuse anything I wrote? No. Who here, and by name, do you think is less than the sharpest tool that you feel “interaction” overcomes purchasing human life, or paying a person to have a child and then be anonymous to that child the rest of their life?
Lets see, does the fact that slaves raised children in the south cover slavery? Does the fact that the nobles would allow people to trade places with them as a christmas festival tradition cover the fact that they were subjected and oppressed?
Just who do you expect that to work on Lori, give me their names.
Lori: I know quite a few people raised by opposite-sex couples who wish they’d had the sort of love and devotion lavished on many of the kids of gay parents.
I expect you feel that comparing a rotten apple to an orange is a good comparison too. Who comes up with these pathetic arguments?
Did you not read me discuss how it is important to get the real parents involved with the children? Sure there’s no doubt hundreds of loving people who can take on the burden of raising a child (if I were authoring the world story that is). Do you really think that telling parents that they are no more worth taking care of their children than the next one will make them more involved or less? Do you think the baby-abandonment industry will help people realize their unique importance to a child?
I’m asking questions which I know won’t be answered. These are the inconvenient truths swept under the rug of utopian socialism, the same as Monkey Butlers helping the stranded Simpson children on a deserted island.
Will anyone answer the points directly? Or am I going to have to expect that I don’t know the difference between a rotten apple (a possible good parent gone bad) and a substitute who simply purchased the child from a parent who cared more for money than the child.
Who is going to answer the points with any credible argument?
Bill: OK That’s IT! With Fitz’s use of words like “Hyperbowl” and equel, I am convinced he is not a real person
Where is Me Too. Is this the kind of intelligent discussion that I’m going to have to expect here? Me Too was classy and intelligent, and I’ve met others here just the same.
Its been my observation that any point can be defended. But that the worse points are defended in the worse ways. Some points require real talent to avoid reality to even attempt to dismiss. It seems people with that real talent have decided to show up, in absence of any valid point, to do the grunt work.
Brian: I’d only add that if I had 50 cents for every time some abusive asshole fundamentalist with a bunch of children he abuses regularly and raises in appalling conditions lashes out at the “poor child of a selfish queer couple” who is well-schooled with a college fund and a head start in life, I’d be a millionaire.
Way to go. Not only do you mimic the fallacious comparison of rotten apples and oranges, but you continue to imagine (out of security for your own guilt I imagine) demons behind the raising these concerns for children in the millions. In your fantasy world, I’d hate to be you. What must haunt you at night as you pat yourself to sleep on your back for your best held beliefs.
So you all can cheer lead each other, yay ra! ra! ra111!!!!
That is really all I can see. Some people here feel that social clique is enough to make right.
What someone told me back in 2000 is more true today to me than when he said it. Same-sex marriage, if enacted, will be the most oppressive thing one group of people have done to another since abortion and slavery. Imagine what the future holds when the children, who realize they were wronged by the purchasing and demeaning attitudes towards each other and the other sex wrought by the equalization of sex-segregation to integration. Who realize that their real parents were dismissed, and the in-tact family was written up as if it were the moral equivalent of white supremacy. And they were the ones ignored, their needs assuaged with self-righteous adult sexual freedom.
With what narrow eyes they will look at the haughty cliquish words here. And gay-equality will go down in the annuls of time like the phrase “seperate but equal” is today.
“Just look at you. How shameful.”
No, “Lawn,” look at your own shamefulness instead of trying to distract us from it by trying to point to it in others.
If the fruit is “rotten,” then it is unquestionably the heterosexual majority — vast as it is — that rotted it. Look to the pruning of your own tree, you hypocrite.
It’s always base, cowardly, beastly people like you — the cockroaches of humanity — who keep up the clamor for bigotry in whatever form it happens to take. What sort of life do you live, you moral midget? We have every right to demand an answer.
“That is really all I can see. Some people here feel that social clique is enough to make right.”
Lawn, you are a liar. And like a typical liar, “all you can see” is all you choose to see. There is no one “clique” here, and if you’d actually bothered to read very much of the commentary on the articles here you would unmistakably see that.
Oh, well…it worked for Hitler — just tell the same lie, over and over and over and over again, and pretty soon many people will give up and simply accept it as the truth.
It doesn’t work that way here. This is not a website for the typical leftist “gay agenda” sort of gay folks, and you’ve wandered into the wrong territory to pull your lame attempts to prove otherwise.
“Just who do you expect that to work on Lori, give me their names.”
How about any honest person (gay or straight) with more than an ounce of real integrity? There are too many of them to name.
“I’m asking questions which I know won’t be answered. These are the inconvenient truths swept under the rug of utopian socialism.”
Your questions have been anwered here many times over, by many different people on this very website. Even if you’ve spent the rest of your miserable life under some slimy rock (as you evidently have), at the very least you’ve somehow managed to stumble onto IGF.
And again, ad nauseum, ad infinitum with the nonsense about “utopian socialism.” You will continue to repeat the lie, hoping you can find enough gullible fools to swallow it. This is not a site given to “utopian socialism.” You are deluding no one but yourself and those as dishonest as you are.
What is it, moreover, with you people and spelling? “Seperate” and “annuls?”
You’d do well to go back to school, sir or madam, and learn something there besides how to lie (and ineffectively at that) to people who know better than to believe you.
While it is true that the majority of same sex parented families cited in Stacey and Biblarz’ article are dual lesbian
parented ones, arguably, this merely reflects reality.
In the past, lesbians might have had children from previous heterosexual relationships if they came out later, and nowadays, depending on the jurisdiction, they may have access to reproductive technologies that enable them to give birth to their own biological children. Thus, one might expect that most same-sex parenting research concentrates on lesbian-led families, precisely because there are probably more of them.
However, Stacey and Biblarz’s research does cite gay male parents and coparents. Apparently, we are more consistent disciplinarians, and
encourage development of autonomy
and self-reliance in our children.
Insofar as fatherlessness goes as an argument (or motherlessness, in the case of
gay male-led families), it’s a nom-starter. As in the case of Baby Cheney, the lesbian mum and
comum, or dad and codad, usually
take great pains to insure that
their son or daughter has strong
contact with appropriate male or
female role models, usually
grandparents, uncles, grandmothers, aunts, or lesbian and gay friends of the family.
Incidentally, too, one of the non-starter Christian Right objections to pediatric and
developmental psychology research
that shows benefits from SSP was
sample size. In her amicus curiae
briefs for Canadian cases for SSM, Judith Stacey notes that these imported methodological constraints may be adequate for quantitatively based sciences like demographics, but not for
pediatrics, most forms of medical research, or developmental psychology. In these, qualitative surveys provide a greater breadth of information about same-sex led families, which meet the requirements of that field.
Incidentally, you’re quite welcome to peruse my material in the Politics and Religion section of Gaynz.Com on same-sex
parenting, which cites pro-SSP
research, and provides rebuttals to Christian Right opponents of LGBT-led families.
Craig2
Wellington, New Zealand
If the fruit is “rotten,” then it is unquestionably the heterosexual majority — vast as it is — that rotted it.
Its amazing how divisive some can be. Jews call the others “Gentiles”, foreigners were “barbarians”. To homosexuals, the other are the heterosexuals, just one big lump that isn’t them.
I’m here to tell you that homosexuals are not a kind of people, nor a race, nor a selection or category. They are — people. I’m a person, and so are you. We are all human.
Whats rotten is rotten. But it is amazing with what sterile indifference and objectification you look at what has gone wrong. You tell me how a lesbian couple hiring a man to hide anonymously from the child they pay for is anything but corrosive to the ideal of responsibility, or further rotting these people.
Did you miss that part? Did you forget just what it means to be negligent towards your kids? Why is the negligent heterosexual (the other) the bar you wish to compare to?
cowardly, beastly people like you
I see. Just like me.
What sort of life do you live, you moral midget? We have every right to demand an answer.
Then demand an answer. But if we are to be taken equal in this discussion, you should answer the points I raised. I will respond in kind.
There is no one “clique” here,
I would be more than happy to be proven wrong on that point. Yet I see your replies to Fitz’s concerns, and read time after time the congratulatory language of agreement, without actually addressing the points at hand. I read the hurtful insinuations that behind these concerns must be “beastly” people. To have a concern about the our humanity and responsibility towards our children is now beastly? No but you tell each other that in different ways and phrases, to assuage your own guilt — and you know it too.
it worked for Hitler
Who also felt a socialist order would replace the family responsibility. Who hear doesn’t remember the very powerful scene in “SwingKids” where the children were asked to turn in their parents for not following his national orthodoxy. Those beastly people expressing concerns about Hitler’s disregard and overall arrogant instability. The same arrogant instability I’m arguing against in you and others here.
you’ve wandered into the wrong territory to pull your lame attempts to prove otherwise.
I hope I have, honestly. So where is your counter-reasoning. Flailing with labels and Hitler references is not giving me any confidence in this being the “wrong territory” or being disproved anytime soon.
Case in point, quote me one reasonable point you raise. Just one. Which argument have you raised that is the silver bullet here. Indulge me, highlight and emphasize the really important parts of that point. And then we’ll see if they haven’t already been answered.
For all the world I’d rather you people resort to reason rather than name calling.
How about any honest person (gay or straight) with more than an ounce of real integrity?
Name one, humor me. Which one follows and accepts that comparing a rotten apple (so to speak) to an orange makes for a valid comparison for making policy on.
You can always take the lowest of one segment to try to make yourself look better. But my words aren’t a comparison, they are a logical following of what it means to have responsibility in the first place. If I’ve told you how Mary Cheney’s actions are corrosive to the understanding of our responsibility, you do the inverse. You tell me how my advocacy is corrosive to people taking responsibility for children, and taking responsibility that children have access to their heritage (a UN recognized right).
I’m waiting.
Sure I’m show-boating. Because I know there is nothing behind your bluster. Because I have been around this forum *that* long.
Craig2,
Thanks for your well reasoned and appropriate response.
I have to underline this point a bit clearer. For the first part, it would be unfair to say that the “kin altruism” comes from a far-right christian outlook. Its divisive, and will lead one to misunderstand the true concerns.
I, personally, have no doubt that a random homosexual couple can raise a child as well as a random heterosexual couple. Of course, just what raised well means is hard to nail down. But I can accept that as a truism.
But that is where it is important to understand that people defending marriage are not defending it from homosexuals. Far from it. At least those that I interact with see a very secular, evident case that the best way to raise children is to foster a strong sense of responsibility for our own children. That responsibility means sustaining the other gender in their companion role in procreation, that support coming through a life long contract as we write it out in present day. It is the fostered notion for social support of that contract which raises it from a contract to a full institution.
The dangers to that institution are most sexual freedoms. Sex outside of the commitment for various reasons causes a sort of selfishness which hampers our ability to support and sustain this in-tact family commitment. That means adultery — for obvious reasons, incest — which compromises the familial structure with sexual opportunism, homosexuality — which draw people into a segregative and chauvinistic view of their own gender, and so on.
But here is my question to you. Do you question that a devoted loving couple who chooses to raise their own children — all else being equal — is no better positioned than any other couple to raise those children? Their shared identity (and there is a lot packed in that word), heritage, gives them no advantage whatsoever?
We see that the step-family is not as robust in raising children as the in-tact family. In fact in many regards they are statistically identical to the single-parent family. Now the social science on gay couples raising children either equates the homosexual couple with these arrangements as they are lumped in with the in-tact families as “heterosexual”, or they are compared against the in-tact family.
So my question to you (and others) is just what is it about homosexuality — scientifically identified or even postulated — that seems to bridge the gap we see between step-families, adopted families, and in-tact families? If they are as good as the in-tact family (and I’m not sure if you are saying they are) then what is it about homosexuality that cures the step-family or adopted nature of every homosexual household?
“Name one, humor me. Which one follows and accepts that comparing a rotten apple (so to speak) to an orange makes for a valid comparison for making policy on.”
That questions is quite reminiscent of one similarly manipulative: “when was the last time you beat your wife?”
As I don’t believe gays are “rotten apples,” or that (by ANY means) all heterosexuals are fresh, I of course am unable to answer your (dishonestly-loaded) question. Nor will I lower myself in the attempt.
If you have been visiting IGF for a long time (as you claim), and still wish to categorize us as flaming liberals and socialists, then either you’re a liar or you’re just flat-out insane.
Your stereotyping is so childish it just makes you look stupid. By no means have all lesbian couples “hired” some man to father a child from whom they intend to hide his identity.
Though I’m sure you’ll pick this up and run off in your preconceived direction, it is — for the sake of argument — far better for a hetero to “hire out” his sperm than to impregnate some woman with it and then abandon her. If he donates it to a sperm bank, he at least knows any child conceived will probably be raised by someone who loves it.
That is not necessarily an argument for that sort of arrangement. It merely shows that even if we take you seriously, you still make no sense.
I’m sure we’ll be treated to yet another unhinged rant about rotten apples and oranges. My toes fairly tingle in anticipation. Please just don’t bore us with any further phoney-baloney, tinhorn John Wayne impressions. You hide behind an alias and spew your venom anonymously — like most cowards. I have zero respect for you.
Indeed, what sort of a person comes to a site like IGF and then tries to perpetuate the lie that gays and lesbians who believe in commitment and responsibility to family are liberal socialist utopians? Surely not an honest one.
It is not worth the effort to argue with you. You are a flyweight, and your repeated assertions make no sense. As for your phoney-baloney strutting about how brave and tough you are (you lil’ cyberspace hider and alien-user you), it is merely funny.
You’re like a child, clamping your hands over your eyes and pretending gay conservatives don’t exist because you can’t see them. When argued with, you cover your ears and sing “la-la-la.” It requires an absolutely Herculean dedication to falsehood to come to a site like IGF and spout the sort of nonsense you do.
If you’ve ever read any of the articles here, you must not be bright enough to understand them.
The very fact that you prefer stereotyping to honest observation shows how afraid your type is of gay conservatism. For years you have doggedly tried to deny it even exists. Why? Because you obviously can’t debate it.
You’d rather argue rotten apples and oranges.
Okay, I meant “alias-user.”
Although the distinct possibility remains that OnLawn might use aliens.
I’d better be careful with my spelling. Somebody might mistake me for another OnLawn or Fitz!!!
I’d better be careful with my spelling. Somebody might mistake me for another OnLawn or Fitz!!!
Well, if the shoe Fitz, wear it OnLawn.
That questions is quite reminiscent of one similarly manipulative: “when was the last time you beat your wife?”
If sounds like you are looking for the words “false premise”. If you feel the question involves a false premise (as your example is a classic case of) then feel free to show it. I don’t think you are prepared to do so.
Go ahead, discuss just how your comparison to bad heterosexual couples and idealic homosexual couples is not like a comparison of rotten apples and oranges.
Thats what I’ve wanted to hear from you so far, after all. Quit avoiding the subject, if you will.
and still wish to categorize us as flaming liberals and socialists
A search for “flaming liberal” shows those words were written only just now by yourself. The first instance of socialist comes from Brian who coined the curious phrase “statist-socialist”.
Brian later gets even closer to the heart of what I consider utopian socialism ideals the matter when he notes, “Which means that you’re still advocating a socialist, collectivist approach to raising children where parents matter less than the priorities of a collective ‘society.’” I believe he was saying that about Fitz, which is entirely baffling. But as he, as yourself, seem to think that flailing about with accusations are as good as supported reasoned discussion, there is absolutely no connection as to why he says that about Fitz to know how or why.
Then later I identified Hitler as a socialist, someone who felt the social power of the nation-state overcame all.
Perhaps you wish to support your accusation better, or was it only another diversion to console your absolute lack of reasoned points to raise in this discussion.
far better for a hetero to “hire out” his sperm than to impregnate some woman with it and then abandon her.
Well, there you have it. Another bad hetero justifies a bad homosexual couple. What next, “gay marriage, at least it isn’t a holocaust!”
It merely shows that even if we take you seriously, you still make no sense.
Oh, how funny. So, your admitted lack of reading comprehension is supposed to mean what exactly? You don’t understand what I’m writing? Then why do you respond to it with such sure refutation?
I noted before that usually the people least able to deal with reality are usually left to defend stupid points, and here we see that Lori feels that admitting confusion is itself an act of refutation.
What else confuses you? What else is beyond your comprehension?
Please just don’t bore us with any further phoney-baloney, tinhorn John Wayne impressions.
Folks, this is what she writes instead of well reasoned discussion. Keep it up Lori, who here is going to tell Lori, “great job, you are reading John Wayne impressions into their writing, ooohhhh that was a very salient point”. I mean she’s unable to tell me who she thinks this will persuade, why don’t you identify yourselves? Who was utterly impressed by her theatrics, and thinks that was simply a rational or even persuasive point?
Are you going to answer the points? Are you just still confused? Do you think you’ve refuted anything? Then quote the argument that was the silver bullet.
But here’s another point…
By no means have all lesbian couples “hired” some man to father a child from whom they intend to hide his identity.
Didn’t Dale Carpenter write, refuting Kurtz, to say that triple-parenting is not really happening due to lesbian need for marriage? Why not have three parents, two real parents and the one lesbians lover. But then why not be fair and let his lover join in too?
Poor Dale, trying so hard to cover up nonsense like yours from the eyes of wiser people. Besides, you are naive (incredibly naive) to believe that lesbian couples are not hiring men to abandon their children and remain anonymous to them. You are even more naive to believe that the right to be manless is not one of the things being lobbied for by other homosexuals.
So what about your self-proclaimed brilliant refutation was actually a refutation? Just quote it. Let is know exactly where the death blow was that convinced you so much of your righteousness.
The funny thing is, the more I ask you the *less* you actually discuss the points of this discussion and instead turn to vague, useless accusations, and self-admitted confusion.
Yes, OnLawn, appeal to the “folks.”
Whattya think, folks? Whattya think, folks?
You need to believe that I am “confused” and that I cannot argue with you.
I cannot argue with you because you make no sense. There’s nothing wrong with being confused after having read several of your baffling, rambling, poorly-spelled, foaming-at-the-mouth, hands-in-your-underpants rantfests. Were I capable of understanding them, I’d be as crazy as you are.
Go away, annoying little person. I don’t waste my time with trolls.
I’m sure you will interpret that in your usual, pathetically self-serving manner. It will gratify your infantile ego, so I’m sure something good will come of it.
Nothing anyone says to you is going to change your mind, so why should anyone bother?
I hope you’re as young as you sound (not a day over twenty). If not, then I pity you.
No matter to you, I’m sure, that no one else can take you seriously (with the possible exception of Fitz — and isn’t that a distinction!). You take yourself seriously enough to more than compensate for it.
yea, thats’s correct
http://www.half-price-viagra.net
Lori,
Applause! But not good enough. All you have to do is quote that silver bullet argument that shows I’m wrong. Or if I’ve been too confusing, quote the silver bullet argument showing Fitz was wrong.
It seems the more I try to get a coherent argument out of you, the more you plead confused. Very, very telling.
If you are confused, then quote the part that confuses you and discuss what you feel it should say. That is if you really are confused.
There is a fallacy named (essentially) the lack of imagination. Where someone can’t imagine a reason they are wrong, so they have to be right. Perhaps, for your sake, we will coin a new fallacy called “lack of reading comprehension”. Sure, you might have some grammatical mistake or spelling mistake to blame, if so then quote it and ask for a more clear rendering of the language.
But that isn’t your intent here, is it. You want to avoid a real discussion on the merits. You want to sit in your corner and believe that the failure here was someone else. You want to imagine that the concerns here don’t really exist. You simply want to keep believing you are right even though you know you are not.
You see, the great thing (as I’m sure you know) about pleading confused is that it is (you hope) completely unverifiable. Its a myth that people have to take your word on. But you thought wrong.
Is someone here going to help poor confused Lori out? She’s completely incompetent in expressing a valid argument. Can someone help her out and supply what she seems so incapable of elucidating? Or if its been said before, just quote that silver bullet argument.
by the way, I still have hope that Craig2 can come in and continue that conversation. If anyone wants to read a good example of how to make a point re-read his post. It was well reasoned, independent of any reliance on self-admitted confusion, and all around a good read.
My question to him is still open for those who (rightly) feel it best to abandon Lori’s tangent.
OnLawn, you are a disrespectful, contemptuous little soul. You are obviously very troubled.
I disagree with your premise, which has been, all along, that gay people do not deserve do procreate and that our children are automatically disadvantaged because their parents are of the same sex instead of the opposite sex.
Your “silver bullet” seems to be that gender is everything.
I have now heard from you that I cannot read for comprehension, that I am morally inferior, that I am stupid, and I have lost track of what else. If you need to believe those things, then knock yourself out.
Your posts are so filled with hate and rage that they are tiresome. You seem to be sitting at your keyboard, foaming at the mouth and chattering wildly to yourself as you type — one-handed — the other one down your pants. I’m not trying to be abusive when I say this, it is simply a statement of fact.
You keep appealing to other readers to bail you out. Your occasional solidarity with IGF’s readers, alternating with your wild swings into hostility toward us, suggests that you are a closet case.
“You are confused…(pant-pant)…you are comsumed with guilt…(pant-pant)…rotten apples and oranges…(gasp!)…Whattya think, folks?”
Gee, Lawn, I don’t know how stable closeted gays are when they compulsively visit gay sites and post obsessive, one-note-Johnny rants no one else is particular interested in reading.
I am not interested in anything you have to say. Psychoanalyze that. Then stick it up your ass.
Get help, and stop boring people here.
Lori,
OnLawn, you are a disrespectful, contemptuous little soul.
Enough about me, what about the points raised. You expect imagining everything from a John Wayne accent to typing one-handed to really discredit arguments? Just who do you think is going to fall for that? Who here, name one just one who you think will accept your imaginary caricatures as a valid counter argument. Just one.
Seriously, I’m not near as interesting to talk about as the subject at hand. Yet you keep trying to change the subject… very telling.
I disagree with your premise, which has been, all along, that gay people do not deserve do procreate and that our children are automatically disadvantaged because their parents are of the same sex instead of the opposite sex.
Which means you didn’t read what I wrote. To separate that out into discrete points, you are claiming that to me homosexuality is inferior in raising children to heterosexuality. But that isn’t true, as I said above…
The other point in your claim seems to be that I said gay people don’t deserve to procreate. But I’ve never said that. I only say that it is important to instill in society the responsibility that comes with heterosexual encounters. The institution for this is called “marriage”. The nature of the gay relationship to hire out heterosexual encounters has a corrosive effect on understanding just how important that responsibility is.
The premise would more accurately read as homosexuality has no means to procreate, and the efforts to pretend to have the same capacity as heterosexuality simply subjugates the “other” gender, paying them to be abandoning parents. Who wants to establish that subjugation as law, let alone under the obviously false banner of “equality”.
Now you keep discussing the subject, what you think I’m saying or why you think I’m wrong and we’ll have a much better time than trying to imagine things I’m not saying (like you are immoral, liberal, socialist, etc…) By the way, the point about lacking reading comprehension is your own admission (though you attempt to blame it on me when you make no effort to ask me to clarify my position so you can understand it).
I’m not trying to be abusive when I say this
No, I don’t take it as being abusive. You want to know how it comes across to me? You are employing an over-active imagination when you should be concentrating more on reason and facts.
No amount of you pretending is going to make up for the lack of argument from your writings. Running to the unverifiable and personal attacks only makes you look incompetent. If you don’t believe me then please continue with another strained description of some imagined demon you seem to be haunted by — in my writings.
And I’m still waiting for someone to come to your aide. Oh wait, my aide is that? I’m the one flailing? How can you even imagine me requesting, “Oh please someone give me a good articulated argument against my position to save me.” No really, I wonder just what you were imagining to yourself when you threw that little chestnut to the crowd.
Dearest, darling Onlawn,
I’m not particularly interested in debating you. Got that? What do you need, a telegram from Western Union?
What you claim you’re saying seems to change as soon as you are called on it. Your mind is made up and will not be changed. If I really gave a damn what you thought, I might be tempted to argue with you, but I don’t.
Lets go over points and counterpoints…sorry, this isn’t the high school debate club. You aren’t going to change anybody’s mind either (in the first place because you’re so unclear about what your little bag is), and Teacher isn’t going to give you an “A” if you can convince yourself you’ve beaten us.
I don’t want to read a fifteen-hundred-word dissertation from you, loaded with innuendo, in which you can play spring-the-trap every time I comment on what you seem to be saying by telling me that — gotcha! bingo! — that wasn’t what you meant.
Your mind doesn’t seem that intersting, so I don’t care to plumb the murky depths of it.
Are you gay or straight? You’ll probably say you’re straight, but I doubt it. Most heteros aren’t so homo-obsessed that they spend that much time on gay websites.
What is truly, truly, all-clowns-outta-the-car hilarious is when homo-obsessed little you…skulking around here at IGF, looking for a chance to show everybody how smart and virtuous you are (when you’re the only one who cares) is your claim that other people are “haunted” by demons.
I can’t answer for anyone else here, but I think you’re a crashing bore and an annoying little pissant.
This commentary thread may originally have begun as an adult conversation, but now it’s all about playin’ gotcha. You’re like a little kid in a toy gunbelt, tearing around the living-room blasting your caps at people.
What do you intend to accomplish here? Make people think you’re straight? I seriously doubt there’s anyone…male or female…in this whole, big world who cares.
So, okay, okay…you’re straight as a broomstick up the ass, more saintly than Mother Theresa, more powerful than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet. You da bomb!
Now shut the fuck up and get out of my face.
Lori, I salute thee.
Kudos to you Lori for standing up against such close-minded assholes.
Lori Heine,
For God’s sake get OFF this site and RUN FOR PRESIDENT! NOW! I will take on a 3rd job for your campaign. Get ‘em Girlfriend!
Onlawn:
You appear to be under the misapprehension that all lesbian-led families are the product of previous heterosexual relationships that involved parenting.
Given access to in vitro fertilisation and other reproductive technologies, Stacey points out that this is not now the case, and that for many children, lesbian and gay-led families *are* their family of origin. In the case of lesbian parents and their exes,
they *do* seem to maintain affirmative relationships with them where the ex is not a spouse batterer, substance abuser or otherwise unsuited to bring up children. Otherwise, they take strong steps to provide suitable role models of the opposite gender. New grandpa
Cheney isn’t the only doting
grandparent of lesbian and gay-
led family offspring around.
Stacey and Biblarz some interesting data about stronger parent-coparent communication after the deliberative choice has been made to bring children
into the world. This may imply greater stability and less likelihood of the trauma of divorce. Also, note that lesbians and gay men who
start families tend to be in
their thirties or forties these
days.
May I reiterate that the above data was viewed as satisfactory when it came to adoption law reform in various Canadian and Australian jurisdictions?
Craig2
Wellington, New Zealand
PS: For summaries of the latestish research on SSP, check out my articles at
http://www.gaynz.com/aarticles/
amnviewer.asp?a=757
http://www.gaynz.com/aarticles/amnviewer.asp?a=1415
And incidentally, it is a standard criticism of the Christian Right’s marriage promotion movement that they selectively cite material than spins heterosexual marriage and the absence of divorce as more beneficent and harmful than they really are.
Craig2
Wellington,
New Zealand
Brian, Xeno and Bill, thanks for your support.
Doubtless we will soon hear again from our beloved OnLawn, who is to pettiness, ignorance and spite what Perlman is to the violin and Joe Montana to football. We can only breathlessly await his latest blast of verbal diarrhea.
We lack “reading for comprehension,” we are told (or at least I am), because we do not pore over his every utterance as if it were the Gospel of John. Pity us for our dull wits. His brilliance seems to be lost on all of us.
I am still waiting to learn what brings him down from his Olympus of moral superiority to teach us all. Hopefully we won’t have to wait long. I hate to admit it, but this is getting quite entertaining.
Pardon my purple outburst, please. I’ve been reading William F. Buckley and he always does that to me.
I’ve only just graduated from “See Spot Run.” That reading for comprehension problem, don’t you know.
Lori,
What you claim you’re saying seems to change as soon as you are called on it.
You admit you don’t know what I’m saying, and now say that I’m changing?
You “called me on it”, and I quote something I wrote that you should have already read (that poor reading comprehension really bites), and then you say I’ve changed?
I’m sorry but it takes a certain degree of honesty and realization of reality to even hope to debate. Which is why I suspect you keep talking about how much you *don’t* want to debate.
Way to go Brian and Xeno. Could you help me out. Could you quote one salient argument she’s raised?
I thought so.
Way to go, just slap her on the back and shoo her back, while she keeps making a fool of herself.
You appear to be under the misapprehension that all lesbian-led families are the product of previous heterosexual relationships that involved parenting.
Actually, according to the numbers a vast majority of them are. However, my point is by no means exclusive to that arrangement. What makes you feel otherwise?
Given access to in vitro fertilisation and other reproductive technologies
You apparently haven’t read my thread with Lori, which is to be understood. She’s backing out of it as fast as she can, I wouldn’t expect someone to take it seriously.
However, the point she has been struggling with is precisely on the topic of third-party procreation technologies. In fact, that use has been a majority of my focus.
Your above data was not questioned by myself, if you care to re-read my reply to it.
I take it from what you write that you find no real virtue in homosexuality that makes the couple bridge the gap usually observed between broken and in-tact families? If not please clarify.
I also take it that you find paying someone to have and abandon their children to be a magnanimous enterprise? Even for the children to whom the parent must remain anonymous to forever?
The point that is most salient here is that while a person’s orientation has no perceptible bearing on their ability to raise children, it has a real impact on their ability to *have* children. And that makes all the difference between a program that recognizes children’s rights, and the social responsibility it is to have them, and a program that pays parents to abandon children and teaches them that they have no unique importance to the child — so why stick it out at all?
Hence the erosion of marriage from an exercise in individual freedom, growth and responsibility to an exercise in Parens Patriae. Hence the erosion of marriage.
In short, saying that orientation doesn’t affect how people raise children is not sufficient to address the concerns being raised over neutering the definition of marriage for the selfish emotional needs of a small and already pampered segment of society.
This is my last word to the wondrously persistent OnLawn, who now resorts to seasoning his rantings with a little Latin — presumably to make them sound more intellectual.
I got what you were saying the first time you said it. But as I disagree that gays are “pampered,” that biological parenthood automatically corresponds to competent parenthood, or that the State has any damned business interfering with families in the first place, I am not moved.
Incidentally, you should have spared us all the intermediates and simply stated what you said in your last post as clearly as you did there. Nothing you have to say is either original or particularly new to anybody here. Again, it’s the same ol’ same ol’.
Whenever I fail to reply to the tiniest portion of one of your utterances, you condescend to me as if I’m an idiot — not to mention an immoral one. You, on the other hand, simply ignore any statement or question you either can’t or don’t want to answer.
Are you, or are you not, a closeted homosexual? Do you, or do you not believe that you would be better served by (A) admitting as much and (B) seeking some sort of psychological help instead of harassing people who don’t agree with you, aren’t likely to change their minds and think that YOU are the one making the fool of yourself.
Here is the self-hating “concern troll” at whom Dalea has been flailing. Perhaps he (she?) is indeed a “fundy housewife.” I would more likely bet single, childless, frustrated and totally alienated from the rest of the world.
Whatever you are, OnLawn, you are certainly a coward. I go by my real name, and anybody who wants to look me up and find a little trouble can readily do so. You — as I have mentioned more than once before — hide behind an alias. Small wonder we think you could be just about anybody.
Moreover, you are a poster child for the widespread reinstatement of corporal punishment. Your folks evidently spared the rod on you, and they did nobody a favor except for you — as long as you go on hiding in cyberspace.
A little friendly advice, here. If you ever make the mistake of speaking in person to a dyke the way you have to me here, you’d get the back of her hand all the way across the room.
I am done with you. Happy trolling from behind your safe little wall of pretend-hetero anonymity.
What a mindless rant. I forced my self to read all of it as a service to you, but I’m left with the same question I started with.
How many times are you going to state that you aren’t interested in discussing this topic? I think its obvious, the more I ask you to state real points, quote your silver bullet argument that convinced you either I or Fitz or anyone else was wrong, the more you start fantasizing about talking with some demonized characheture.
Thats delusion, you realize. That is trying everything you can to *not* deal with reality. It is the scared little girl running to the video monitor to re-live her live as Alice in Wonderland, the Little Mermaid, or some other tale instead of dealing with real life. It is imagining yourself in some fantasy, hoping that it will justify your actions. It won’t, and it hasn’t.
When you are ready to do some real discussion, let me know. In the mean time, I would suggest that what you keep threatening to do is probably your best plan. Your intellect vacated this discussion long ago, its time your typing fingers caught up.
the State has any damned business interfering with families in the first place, I am not moved.
Everyone for themselves, eh? I doubt you really feel that way when it comes to the state imposing on everyone a neutered definition of marriage. I doubt you feel that way when it comes to the father paying alimony. I doubt you feel the same way when the lesbian couple breaks up, and both demand partial custody of the child — and no custody from the father who should remain anonymous to the child their whole life by payed arrangement.
If you ever make the mistake of speaking in person to a dyke the way you have to me here, you’d get the back of her hand all the way across the room.
Are you threatening me? What has happened that has justified violence? Do you really advocate violence to make your point?
Or would you rather show reasoned arguments… What are you really doing here if you aren’t discussing the topic? Really, ask yourself. Re-read your posts and ask yourself, just what is it you are doing — because you certainly aren’t making any attempt at rational discussion.
Secure little wall. Oh, poor Lori, unable to solve the disagreement even though I’ve invited her repeatedly to engage in rational discussion. And because of that anonymity she is unable to solve it — her way.
By the way, show me one question I haven’t answered or one point made that I haven’t replied to. I’d be happy to rectify that situation. In fact, I’ve been asking you to quote any real argument from you for the past dozen or so posts. Go ahead, I’m hoping that you’ll finally do it.
Oh, goody…more childish posturing from this damn fool. I can’t help picturing Bert Lahr, in full lion costume: “Put ‘em up…put em uuuuuppppp!”
So his little bag is that he offers serious debate and that I am not going to debate him. There can be no other reason, he postulates, than that his argument is right.
Don’t get near a debate class with an attitude like that, or you’re gonna flunk it. They will tell you debate’s a game, and that whether somebody wins one or not is a matter totally separate from whether they are, objectively speaking, right.
Why am I being singled out? Because (A) I am a woman, (B) I don’t take his/her crap, (C) I tell uncomfortable truths about OnLawn and (D) this is intolerable to this little creep.
Am I threatening him/her? Not unless this damn fool is stupid enough to get that cheeky with me in person. I am warning him/her that if this mistake is ever made in person, “OnLawn” will be pounded into a gooey little pile of shit.
OnLawn knows this, which is why he/she hides in cyberspace.
Notice no answer as to his/her sexual orientation, no answer as to his/her identity. We can expect no answer as to motive or credentials, either.
I will explain, for the benefit of anybody else still hanging around this thread, where I am coming from.
I do not believe trolls who skulk around gay websites, attacking us anonymously, have any right whatsoever to posture about their own moral superiority. Who the hell IS OnLawn (or Fitz) to presume to do such a thing?
Does an accident of birth give him/her/them any superiority? And make no mistake, the condescending tone is definitely there. OnLawn speaks to us from an assumed moral superiority.
Where’s the beef? He/she is morally superior exactly HOW? Prove it.
I will not be condescended to, and I don’t think anybody else should either.
What great contributions has OnLawn made in his/her life to the well-being of children and families, that he/she has any damned right coming here to lecture us about the subject in the first place?
If this strutting little poseur would answer these questions, I would be, perhaps, interested in a debate. As it is, I cannot take this fool seriously enough to bother.
I do not confer superiority — moral or otherwise — on people simply because they are heterosexual. Or at least claim to be (I find that claim dubious — especially since OnLawn doesn’t even have the guts to answer a simple question as to whether he/she is heterosexual or not.)
If there’s to be some big debate, then this will have to happen first. Put up yourself, you cowardly lion, or shut up. I have asked a few simple questions, and I want answers.
To let this person come onto this website, talking to us all as if we’re simple-minded and morally retarded, and presume to lecture us as if we’re children, is degrading. I refuse to be spoken to like that in person, and I will not put up with it in cyberspace, either.
I’m still waiting for an answer to simple questions. I won’t get one. In the next post from this enigmatic entity, we will again hear the unmistakable strains of Bert Lahr: “Uh…put ‘em up…put em uuuuuup!”
(echoes from the last post…)
While Lori continues in her gossipy diversions, I will await Craig2′s response.
“While Lori continues in her gossipy diversions…”
Oh, this is rich! When I ask any questions, they are “gossipy diversions.” This character really wants to set the whole tone for everybody.
Anyone who disagrees with him/her is refusing to debate him/her. Anyone who asks pointed and meaty questions is being diversionary.
“Put em uuuuup!”
Let me explain why OnLawn (or his/her Ghost) will not answer me. OnLawn is a closeted homosexual. If he/she were straight, the answer would have come quick as thunder: “I am one hundred percent hetero, you betcha!”
Nor will this phantom tell us whether he/she is happily married to someone of the opposite sex, and the parent of children of his/her own. Gee, guess why that might (not) be?
Cherry-picking articles to cite here does not make one an expert. Puffing oneself up and strutting around with one’s dukes up doesn’t make one tough.
My “diversions!” I made it clear enough that I don’t agree gays or lesbians are any more selfish, “pampered” or anything else than straights are. Can this fool scrounge up articles that claim we are? Again, oh, gee…I wonder!
And Lawn, when it comes to your hurt feelings about my warning to you, get over yourself. I did you a favor. If you ever do speak like you have to me to just about anyone in person, you are going to regret it. That was what I said, and it holds true whether you say it to me or to someone else. It is, moreover, simply a matter of common sense.
C’mon, if you didn’t already know as much, you’d be off sharing your wisdom with folks in gay bars “in the flesh” as it were (where your wisdom would be SOOOOO much more convincing). You are in cyberspace, using an alias, for a reason.
Wow, this thread degenerated quickly. Please treat one another in a civil manner.
Reading this article and the following thread prompted an interesting (if tangential) idea to enter my head: what is your stance on gay adoption of orphans?
I understand the argument that it is fundamentally unfair for a homosexual couple to have a child and then deny that child the right to be raised by his/her biological mother and father. But what about children who have lost their parents?
Ooops, by “your” I was not addressing anyone in particular. Thanks.
Allow me to be the first to (delightedly) report that the bigot brigade represented by Fitz and OnLawn couldn’t even muster 25% of the legislative support needed to take steps to end marriage equality in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts — the least-divorcing, longest-married people in the country — unsurprisingly decided they didn’t want Alabama values.
How’s it feel to not even be able to muster 25% support for your supposed “pro-family” positions in the state with the most stable families, boys?
(And yes, I am gloating. So sue me.)
OnLawn’s objections appear to be on the basis that surrogacy is somehow to be opposed as ‘unnatural,’ and that surrogate mothers of (infertile lesbian and) gay male parents and coparents will have no contact with their biological
offspring.
Is that in fact the
case, or is the case in fact that
in some cases, contracts do provide for ongoing contact, often out of a sense of gratitude
toward surrogate mums for enabling such parenting?
For that matter, what about adoption and surrogacy compared?
I agree, closed adoption is deeply wrong, and injurious to the adoptive child and birthmother involved. I do have some doubts about closed commercial surrogacy on that basis. However, open adoption disclosure regimes, and open surrogacy contracts, don’t have those ethical drawbacks.
Moreover, in the case of
‘compassionate surogacy,’, the
gestational mother is often a
friend of the two lesbians or
gay men, and contact is likely to
recur. As well as that, given
the existence of intensive
deliberation before undertaking the responsibility of parenthood, exactly how can parents in such situations be said to be ‘pampered’ or ‘selfish?’
Moreover, you do not seem to have fully digested the implications of my earlier comment that Stacey/Biblarz’ research disloses that same-sex parenting enables better parent-child communication. Thus, I imagine that if it is the surrogate mum’s wish, the lesbian or gay parents will tell the child when they judge that she or he is able to comprehend that, if visitation hasn’t already been arranged at the onset.
Craig2
Wellington, New Zealand
I commend papa Cheney for supporting his daughter, who I think is a woman who is independent thinking, conservative, smart, and comes from a good moral background, and seems stable.
It takes cahones for someone to stand by his daughter like that with his political background and I respect him more for that. A lot of parents are so unconditional who mascarade as good parents.
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