Welcome, Baby Cheney

by John Corvino on 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).

88 Comments for “Welcome, Baby Cheney”

posted by libertycat on May 31, 2007

When gay coupls chose to become parents it is not a “oops” event. Whether thru adoption or artificial instemination methods it all takes careful thought, planning, and resources. These are children who are wanted and very much loved. In fact, I would venture to guess the rate of abortion with gay couples is pretty much non-existent..

I hope the Looney-Left and Right-wring nUt jobs will leave Mary, Heather, and Baby Samuel alone and let them raise their baby with the love and support he deserves.

I am not big Dick Cheney fan, but he can give the unconditional love and support to his family when it is needed.

Thanks!
posted by Fitz on May 31, 2007

?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.?

The ?nasty myths? are a convenient demon raised more by the left than the right.

The point of pro-family advocates is that a crucial, universal, and morally consistent principle is being undermined. Children should be conceived and born into the married couple of their natural Mother & Father.

Were not talking about adoption even, were a child is already born and whose parents abandon it or are unfit, and another couple steps into the breach.

Mary Cheney “acquiring” a child manifestly deprives that child of her Father.

No, we are talking about intentionally conceiving a child with the express purpose of its natural father abandoning it. To make matters even worse, no male is made the Father of this child.

When pro-family forces spent the last 40 years talking about ?family values? ? you didn?t really believe we were somehow confused as to what ?family? meant, did you?

It?s called a standard; and as standards go its more important than most.

Gay parenting as exemplified by Cheney is no moral benchmark or progressive development. Rather it represents the selfish desire of adults over the needs of children and community.

When a blue color male impregnates his girlfriend we need a consistent ethic that says he A) should not have impregnated her outside marriage & B.) Should marry the women and be a good husband and Father to his wife & child.

It is not altogether uncommon among the underclass for a young woman to have three children from three different Fathers.

By what ethical system can we admonish this young woman (or encourage her not to behave in that manner to begin with) in the face of acts like Mary Cheney.

All the platitudes about ?love? and ?commitment? and ?parenting? and ?wanted? wont help rebuild the family amidst widespread cultural consensus that the term has no essential meaning or core values.
posted by Greg Capaldini on May 31, 2007

“Gay parenting as exemplified by Cheney is no moral benchmark or progressive development. Rather it represents the selfish desire of adults over the needs of children and community.”

Selfish desires? Really? Any more than having a child out of a desire to have an heir? To meet the conditions of an inheritance? To gain status or favor from relatives or from the community? To appear to conform to society’s norms?

Heterosexual people have kids for all sorts of dumb reasons, so I’d be curious if the “selfishness” referred to above also counts for people of that ilk.
posted by Fitz on May 31, 2007

“Heterosexual people have kids for all sorts of dumb reasons, so I’d be curious if the “selfishness” referred to above also counts for people of that ilk.”

You answer your own question. Whatever else their motivations, when heterosexual couples have a child together they are providing that child with its own natural mother and father & are (hopefully doing so) within marriage.

The better analogy (and ones I believe equally hennas) are the Childfree by choice women & intentionally unmarried parents.

Since when is other peoples bad behavior and expectable excuse for more bad behavior?

I’ll let you connect the dots…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/…

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070…

http://www.choosingsinglemotherhood.com/

http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm ?

newsid=18352736&BRD=2729&a mp;PAG=461&dept_id=569342& amp;rfi=6

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/…
posted by Regan DuCasse on May 31, 2007

Fitz, your statements are specious and an oft repeated phrase which has no basis in how we respect GOOD PARENTS, period.

Regardless of whether they are the biological, adoptive or legal guardian.

Heterosexuality is simply a human condition. So is fecundity and fertility. None are indicators of a talent for nurturing, character or virtues.

It’s no guarantee that a child will be cared for properly. Otherwise you’ll have to explain why so many children are available to adopt and exhausting every social service for children.

Gay parents don’t live in bubbles where two mom or two dad families have no attachments or familial and social networks with the opposite sex.

Your argument makes as much sense as a white parent shouldn’t adopt a child of color, or else they are ‘depriving’ the child of a parent that’s their same color.

Good parents encircle themselves with everything their child needs. Heather and Mary have lived a long time with each other and their social situation. They know what it is, and what they can provide their son.

Judging them solely in a no dad or no mom issue, doesn’t keep heterosexuals from doing exactly what they always have.

Nurturing a child isn’t a talent bestowed on groups, it’s bestowed on individuals.

There are gay folks plenty capable of being good parents, the nurturing gene doesn’t skip homosexuals.

And having the same overwhelming urge to have a child to love and raise, shouldn’t be a surprise or even considered a detriment to society or children.

Besides, I know plenty of gay households, that if they don’t have children… have well tended pets.

A sure sign of a compassionate and nurturing tendency.

A couple is a better option than NO parents, or perhaps a single one.

Singlehood however, doesn’t always have to be permanent.

But marriage isn’t exactly encouraged for gay parents, now is it?

Straight folks too obviously need backup, when it comes to the care and support of children, whether directly or indirectly.

And few lives are static Fritz. People’s situations change, and often gays and lesbians are called on to look after children they ARE related to, like nieces and nephews.

Indeed, many children are being raised by their grandparents.

A generational tragedy if there ever was one.

At any rate, the man/woman model isn’t going anywhere, and it’s not gay parents that are part of the problem, but an obvious solution.

You’re wrong about the childfree by choice as analogous to selfishness, or intentionally unmarried parents.

The childfree are a different category and are often accused of being selfish, when the opposite is usually true.

These are people who lend their time, disposable income and professional dedication to children in a way that’s far more generous that couldn’t happen if they were parents.

Childfree couples are the most happy and financially secure and become excellent material and social support for nieces and nephews or other children.

Many are in caring professions that support children.

I’m not saying there aren’t any that simply don’t give a rat’s butt about children, but at least they are honest about what they can do for any BEFORE the fact, UNLIKE many straight people.

Mary and Heather aren’t INTENTIONALLY unmarried parents, if they could be, I’m sure they would be.

They aren’t the ones to criticize. It’s the system of government that’s so hypocritical and inconsistent that it KEEPS free citizens FROM doing their duty and enabling their commitment as couples and parents that’s not done to ANY other citizen whatsoever.

At least, not since black slavery, in this country.
posted by Brian Miller on May 31, 2007

The point of pro-family advocates is that a crucial, universal, and morally consistent principle is being undermined

I wonder if the statist-socialist “social conservative” right understands what they’re doing when they make this “point.”

If “family” is something that’s determined by popular vote with “crucial universal principles” to be enforced by “society” over the objections of gay and lesbian folks who think differently in their own lives, then isn’t it government — through “popular will and moral principles” (presumably dreamt up by the majority) that defines family?

In other words, social conservatives are not only arguing that it “takes a man and a woman” to have a family, but also that “it takes a village.”

And wasn’t there a book written by someone rather prominent with the same title not all that long ago?
posted by Lori Heine on May 31, 2007

Regan and Brian bring up excellent points.

What Fitz advocates is simply the latest, warmed-over version of totalitarianism. Periodically it gets a shiny new wrapper and is trotted out under this brand new guise. But underneath, it’s the same ol’ same ol’.
posted by Fitz on May 31, 2007

To Make it that much easier for you to connect the dots yourselves.

Its about are ability to maintain a standard. Any number of situations fall short (intentionally & unintentionally) below our standards.

None of that is to say that we can surrender or alter a social standard without neccessary consequences.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070…

http://www.choosingsinglemotherhood.com/

http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm ?

newsid=18352736&BRD=2729&a mp;PAG=461&dept_id=569342& amp;rfi=6

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
posted by Lori Heine on May 31, 2007

Another part of the “social standard” here in America is tolerance — and of the humility that comes from listening to other people instead of just shutting them down and turning them off.

The Taliban thinks it’s simply maintaining a social standard, too. Too bad we can’t ship some of the people who fail to understand this country over to a land where the maintenance of this “standard” is more vigorously attended to.
posted by Fitz on May 31, 2007

Well “warmed-over version of totalitarianism” & “The Taliban thinks it’s simply maintaining a social standard, too” are both rather far afield from trying to promote intact married childrearing.

Remember, multiple countries have prohibitions against IVF as well as many more with prohibitions against IVF for couples who are not married.

It is a consistent, intelligable & humane ethic that we promote.

The links above can inform.
posted by Lori Heine on May 31, 2007

Trying to cite the fact that “multiple countries” do something as the moral reason for continuing to do it is absurd.

“Multiple countries” used to trade in slavery. “Multiple countries” burned uppity women at the stake as witches. “Multiple countries” invaded countries in wartime and slaughtered even the smallest of children. “Multiple countries” let rape victims be stoned to death to preserve the “honor” of their husbands.

I’m sure the Islamofascists with whom you so heartily agree would consider their ethics to be “consistent, intelligable (sic) and humane.”

As for trotting out “married” versus unmarried, it certainly isn’t our fault we can’t get married. Your cutesy little argument is disingenuous to the extreme.

Moreover, there is nothing “humane” about it.

How revealing that when a genuine “fundy housewife” type shows up here, the Daleas head for their little hidey-holes.

They don’t care what is being done to gays and lesbians, supposedly in the name of Christianity. They’re too busy attacking gay Christians.

How many, many allies anti-gay Christians do have! Their supporters run the gamut from the Taliban to the anti-Christian bigots at IGF.
posted by Fitz on May 31, 2007

“If “family” is something that’s determined by popular vote with “crucial universal principles” to be enforced by “society” over the objections of gay and lesbian folks who think differently in their own lives, then isn’t it government — through “popular will and moral principles” (presumably dreamt up by the majority) that defines family?”

This is an excellent point. Yes, one of the problems with democracy is that fundemental truths can get politicized. If a majority votes for something, and it goes through the normal democratic process then it is ergo legitimante.

Obviously this is not the case, if people voted for slavery or torture they would not ssuddenly become humane or just practices.

Ass Benjamin Franklin wrote: “Democracy is the very worst form of government:

Except for all the others”

Democracy itself promotes this type of attitude (so does capitalist consumerism also, by the way)

Never the less, it?s our only civilized way of settling a dispute. The trick is not to let such fundamental issues become politicized to begin with.

Marriage and the Family are properly understood as pre-political, pre-liberal institutions. They are not about rights and equality, but rather about duty and obligations that transcend politics.Government does not create them, it merely helps encourage and codify their practice.

“In other words, social conservatives are not only arguing that it “takes a man and a woman” to have a family, but also that “it takes a village.””

There is a very real truth in this. (outside of the code-speak for massive new government programs) Its communitarian ethos is commendable.

It would be more correct to say ?it takes a village (a whole civilization, multiple government, civic, private & religious organizations ?the culture) to uphold the family? & then the family raises the child.

40 years of family and social breakdown should have taught us this by now. When the family breaks down you don?t get less government?.you get a whole heck of a lot more government.

LINK
posted by Fitz on May 31, 2007

Lori Heine

“Trying to cite the fact that “multiple countries” do something as the moral reason for continuing to do it is absurd.”

I site “multiple countries” (the most prominent that bans IVF even for married opposite sex couples is Italy) not as a moral argument – but as a way of demonstrating that other countries do in fact uphold different aspects of the intact married (i.e- opposite sex) couples as the standard.

?As for trotting out “married” versus unmarried, it certainly isn’t our fault we can’t get married. Your cutesy little argument is disingenuous to the extreme.?

I don?t ?trot this out? ?as you are well aware, the standard of childbearing (and sex as well) within marriage exclusively is a well established (although beleaguered) social norm.

If Mary Cheney went to Boston and ?married? her partner it would still be anti-social and inhumane to intentionally bring a child into this world outside of a married (opposite-sex) marriage.
posted by Lori Heine on May 31, 2007

“If Mary Cheney went to Boston and ?married? her partner it would still be anti-social and inhumane to intentionally bring a child into this world outside of a married (opposite-sex) marriage.”

Again, how artfully disingenuous. People like you, Fitz, are the ones who have made the situation as onerous as it is for same-sex couples. And then you want to turn around and cite the very situation you helped to create — as if it just dropped out of nowhere — as a supposed ironclad reason for why things “must” be a certain way.

That is priceless circular reasoning. But then those of your ilk will doggedly go right on believing whatever you want no matter what anyone else has to add to the discussion.

If I were Dalea, I would rage and sputter and fume at you, and threaten to get your ISP number so I could “deal with” you. But since I don’t deal with people that way, I’ll leave the sputtering, raging and fuming to people like him.

(I still say “him,” though it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Dalea is really Donna in Nebraska, penning her evil screeds while her proper Southern Baptist hubby brings home the bacon).

One of these days, perhaps the noble missionaries who venture into the darkness of GLBT cyberspace will actually display a willingness to explore the issues in a way that engages gay people as human beings. Until that happens, we’ll get…well, the same sort of mess we’ve been getting.

Some of us will actually bother trying to engage you. Others will lay in wait to attack us, as if we are the problem. For those who irrationally hate the Christian faith and all it stands for, it is nonconformity to political correctness that is the real transgression.
posted by Audrey B on June 1, 2007

New rule for the Independent Gay Forum forum; Nobody listens to Fitz at all, for any reason, ever.
posted by BobN on June 1, 2007

“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.”

Are you serious? Admire his fuck-you attitude? Asking the VP his opinion on how the government, HIS government, should deal with same-sex-headed families LIKE HIS DAUGHTER’S should elicit an honest, intelligent response, not nasty bluster. The man is a mean bully, protecting his family while actively working to harm millions of Americans.
posted by Fitz on June 1, 2007

Lori Heine

?That is priceless circular reasoning. But then those of your ilk will doggedly go right on believing whatever you want no matter what anyone else has to add to the discussion.?

Well certainly we are determined, as I suspect a whole lot of proponents of same-sex ?marriage? and child rearing is. However, there is nothing ?circular? about contending that society is more just and humane when it upholds the standard of married (yes that means opposite sex) childbearing and rearing.

What you seems to have missed is that one side (me) is concentrating on the whole of society and expecting homosexuals to conform to these norms for the good of the whole.

The other side seems to be more interested in its personal wants, and will treat children as consumer goods to the point were depriving a child of their natural father is a matter of coarse. (like Mary Cheney)

These same norms are consistent with our reasoning on everything from polyamory, to adultery & divorce, IVF, ?single moms by choice?, illegitimacy and the list goes on.

?One of these days, perhaps the noble missionaries who venture into the darkness of GLBT cyberspace will actually display a willingness to explore the issues in a way that engages gay people as human beings. Until that happens, we’ll get…well, the same sort of mess we’ve been getting.?

I consider it an engagement of gay people as human beings to expect the same strong standards and moral consciousness from them that I expect from everyone. To do otherwise would be paternalistic.

I don?t except single motherhood by choice, child abandonment, easy divorce, or polyamory as morally valid and socially healthy.

It would be inconsistent of us not to expect homosexuals to likewise share the same common and well established moral norms that we expect from all those other manifestations of selfishness.
posted by Lori Heine on June 1, 2007

It is indeed odd that Fitz chooses to obsess over a tiny minority within the overall population, harassing them on their websites instead of dealing with the single hetero mothers and divorced heteros he claims are equally his concern.

Then again, the fact that we ARE a tiny minority pretty much explains it. Why go after the big boys and girls when you can pick on a minority — especially in cyberspace, shielded by a cutesy alias.

I don’t have much respect for this sort of crap. By now that should pretty much be obvious. It is, of course, a free country — which means that you’re free to indulge in it, and I’m free to call it what it is.

What sort of morality do you practice, Fitz? In what sort of sexual conduct do you engage? Don’t you dare say Word One to me about how “rude” I am to ask you that. You come here and do that to us all the time. And if you’re going to dish it out, it’s fair you also learn to take it.

Heterosexual misconduct has done such devastating damage to society that reversing its ill effects would be a full-time job — a life’s work, in fact — for a whole multitude of well-intentioned people.

Instead, they vent and flail at us.

And of course we can all go adhere to HIS standard — which is the right standard because (A) most people have it (actually, they merely pay lip service to it, but what the hell) and (B) there are more of them than there are of us.

This is the attitude of a bully and a coward.

Hey, as a right-handed person, I get tired of those lefties out there. I think everybody ought to become left-handed. A single standard!!! What’s wrong with that…it’s fair.

It’s old, it’s consistent and most people adhere to it. (For centuries, left-handed children were actually bullied into switching to their right hands, so the reasoning I’m describing is not as silly or far-fetched as it may sound.)

There is a reason this sort cavorts so freely in cyberspace. You don’t see many in person anymore — unless they’re surrounded by a comfortable crowd. But this is a rare chance to look at a bigot up close and personal.

As long as you stay polite and behave as if you’re at least moderately housebroken, Fitz, vent and flail away.

But don’t expect everyone to buy into your attitude of condescension and automatic hetero moral superiority. We have every bit as much right to lecture you as you do us.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on June 1, 2007

Lori, are you channeling me, or am I channeling you? 🙂

Meanwhile, to the matter at hand:

The other side seems to be more interested in its personal wants, and will treat children as consumer goods to the point were depriving a child of their natural father is a matter of coarse. (like Mary Cheney)

Fitz, as I stated yesterday, when you see a child with gay parents, you can rest assured that a considerable amount of time, effort, screening, legal rigamarole, and cash went into the process. Indeed, if straight parents had to go through the same levels of required involvement, vetting, and whatnot that gay ones do, society would be far better for it.

I hear your concerns that gays and lesbians are having children as a trophy, and in some cases, I do believe that was one of their motivations. But we have all heard the married celebrity and politician stories about them having children as trophies and neglecting them, so having kids for selfish reasons is not exactly something that we can fix by looking at the external circumstances of the parents.

What I want to stress is that, in my opinion, we agree on several points. We agree that kids are a precious and special gift from God. We agree that kids should be treated with the utmost in respect and dignity regardless of their background. We believe that the motivations of the parents are paramount and most important in why one brings a child into the world.

Where we don’t agree is that a specific type of structure means success or failure. A specific structure, given our culture and population distribution, may have better odds of being more optimal than others, but a heterosexual married couple can screw up a kid just as easily as a gay single parent if they a) have it for the wrong reasons and b) don’t seek the right help.

Therefore, what I would suggest, Fitz, is that we focus on fixing the points at which we agree. I think we can honestly say that having a child for the wrong reasons is a major problem, be you gay or straight.

For example, a common statement of single mothers, especially teens, is that they just wanted “someone to love” — but that they are overwhelmed by what a baby requires and end up making decisions that negatively affect their lives. We need a strong outreach on both sides of the gay/straight fence to help people examine and realize what a great responsibility having a child actually is — and what a life-changing event it can be, for better or worse. We need to educate and inform people about the pros and cons of each, then let them make their own decisions.

Banning gay marriage, gay parenting, etc. may seem like a reasonable solution. But the simple fact of the matter is that you’re attacking something that represents a tiny, tiny fraction of families, many of whom have enormous potential to do great things for and with children — while ignoring things that are far more damaging to children, such as single parenthood and out-of-wedlock births.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on June 1, 2007

Good grief — die hyperlink, die!
posted by Brian Miller on June 1, 2007

about are ability to maintain a standard

Presume, if it’s about “are” (sic) standards, you’re going to have to define who the “us” is.

And in any event, again, you’re simply reviving Hillary Clinton’s argument that government, “society” and neighbors — “the village” — raises a child.

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.”
posted by heyref on June 1, 2007

The question isn’t whether you’re trying to “maintain a standard,” the question is whether the standard makes any sense. As Mary Cheney pointed out, there is no evidence of any harm to children of same-sex couples compared to those of opposite-sex couples. So, there’s no reason to have a standard that excludes same-sex parents and their children.

It’s still possible (maybe even probable) that children are generally better off having two parents who are married to each other than they would be in other situations. But, in this context, that’s an argument for gay marriage, not against gay parenting.
posted by dalea on June 1, 2007

Fitz says: It is not altogether uncommon among the underclass for a young woman to have three children from three different Fathers.

What is this fascination with ‘class’? It is also not uncommon in both the middle class and upper class for women to have children by three different husbands as they move from sacred marriage to sacred marriage.

What this points to, in my mind, is that demand by women for the services of a male is in decline. Men are rapidly loosing their economic value. The Economist, a Millian journal, examined the data and concluded that men are becoming obsolete. How do you propose to deal with this Fitz?

Ummm, you probably don’t know this but to produce a child without having sex with a male, all it takes is a turkey baster and a warm teacup. There is no plausible method of banning in home fertilization.

Fitz is always fun to watch. Between his inability to spell common English words and his cheerful willingness to promote parochial taboos as universal standards, great addition.
posted by Mark on June 2, 2007

Okay, Fitz really is too easy a target, but two of his comments (in the same post) struck me as interesting:

Fitz:

(1) What you seems to have missed is that one side (me) is concentrating on the whole of society and expecting homosexuals to conform to these norms for the good of the whole.

(2) I consider it an engagement of gay people as human beings to expect the same strong standards and moral consciousness from them that I expect from everyone. To do otherwise would be paternalistic.

It seems in comment 1 he is asking gays to “take one for the team.” If this is truly his stance, he’s asking a great sacrifice from a small minority and you would think his posts would take on a more charitable tone.

But then in comment 2 he proclaims he’s not asking any more of gays than is asked of everyone. It’s the old fallacious and disingenous argument: “nobody is allowed to marry or parent with someone of the same-sex, so we’re all equally ‘burdened.'”

You seem confused, Fitz. I’m hoping your true view lies closer to comment 1. The least you could do is clearly admit that your philosophy on “how things should be” explicitly requires that gays remain marginalized in a way that heterosexuals are not. After admitting this, the tone of your posts should also change. Rather than constantly blaming gays, you might, as a fellow human being, understand why gays and lesbians might be resistant to your insistence that they, a group who has already suffered a hugely disproportionate share of discrimination and persecution, take yet another one for the team.

Always remember, you extoll the great virtues of marriage, parenting and family as the bedrock of society and in the same breath request that gays and lesbians be excluded. This is why you are accused of not treating your gay brothers and sisters like human beings. You have the pompousness to claim perfect knowledge of what makes society tick and the audacity to tell some people they can play no part in it. And to top it all off, you then go and call these people “selfish.”
posted by Matt Sigl on June 3, 2007

“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”

This strikes me as a suprisingly poor argument from an usually rigourous thinker. If we except this argument then there is no circumstance in which we could harm a child by allowing it to be born since, after all, it is probably better than the alternative: non-existence. Catholic maniacs who fear contraception in any and all cases could take a similar line of argument. Anti-animal rights thinkers often use a reminescent example to justify the torture of livestock and poultry–after all without the meat industry so many cows and chickens wouldn’t be allowed to live at all. Certainly all sentient creatures have, post facto, basic rights that make claims on our moral behavior toward them but one cannot argue backwards that these current claims confer duties on us before the person or creature exists. In other words, the existence of Mary Cheney’s baby makes moral demands on Mary and society now, but one can still believe that bringing the child into existence in the first place was immoral and should not have been allowed. To be clear, I find the right wing view of this issue horrible but not from the argument Corvino uses in the above quote.
posted by Fitz on June 4, 2007

[QUOTE who=”Johnny Jazz”]

Yeah, but all the cool kids call it Balkanization.

You’re right tho’ – God doesn’t have walls so why do churches?[/QUOTE]

Yes they do, like the Balkans themselves.

That?s what societies look like that allows them to be “atomized”

The important thing to remember here is that all the different “sects” are not expressly religious. Many are secular cults of ideology (feminism, sexual libertinism, and homosexual-ism)

Societies travel on a common currency of sexual norms & expectations. The destruction of these norms and the replacement of them with an inferior and inhumane set of norms is the particular protagonist in this episode of sectarianism.

“Always remember, you extol the great virtues of marriage, parenting and family as the bedrock of society and in the same breath request that gays and lesbians be excluded.”

I don?t request that they be excluded…they are excluded. This may not make them feel included, but there are far worse injustices in the world than people?s bent feelings.

One such great injustice is the 70% illegitimacy rates among African Americans.

We have very real heavy lifting to do in this society and only the institution of marriage can do it.

You are being selfish, selfish people never think they are…that?s why their selfish.

My ?true views? lie closer to this?

“Marriage is neither a conservative nor a liberal issue; it is a universal human institution, guaranteeing children fathers, and pointing men and women toward a special kind of socially as well as personally fruitful sexual relationship. Gay marriage is the final step down a long road America has already traveled toward deinstitutionalizing, denuding and privatizing marriage. It would set in legal stone some of the most destructive ideas of the sexual revolution: There are no differences between men and women that matter, marriage has nothing to do with procreation, children do not really need mothers and fathers, the diverse family forms adults choose are all equally good for children. What happens in my heart is that I know the difference. Don’t confuse my people, who have been the victims of deliberate family destruction, by giving them another definition of marriage.”

Walter Fauntroy-Former DC Delegate to CongressFounding member of the Congressional Black CaucusCoordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march on DC
posted by Lori Heine on June 4, 2007

What marriage needs to make it solid has nothing to do with complementary gonads and everything to do with responsibility.

Where’s yours, Fitz?

Precisely what the hell are YOU — and I mean you personally — doing to repair the instabilities in the institution, caused by irresponsibiilty (and the “selfishness” you so decry but seem to think yourself incapable of)?

People like Fitz babble about secondary considerations precisely because they don’t want to deal with the primary considerations.

You quote various sources as piously self-righteous as yourself, and you bloviate and pontificate endlessly. What you DON’T do is offer yourself as a part of the solution.

No real mystery as to why not.

The whole hoopla about “homosexuality” boils down to this: straights will NOT take responsibility for problems that they — being the overwhelming majority in society — refuse to work or sacrifice to solve.

Again, as gays are a tiny minority, it is safe to pick on them.

Irresponsible and dishonest people — the sort of frauds perpetuating Fitz’s rhetoric — are merely using gays as convenient scapegoats. Scapegoating is always employed by those who cause the problems, so they won’t have to take the rap for them or do anything substantive to correct them.

You are a coward and a hypocrite. Offer a real solution. Put up or shut up.
posted by Lori Heine on June 4, 2007

Right after I posted that challenge, I already saw the futility in it.

You can’t have a battle of wits with an unarmed person. The premise that an overwhelmingly-heterosexual problem, obviously cause by heterosexuals themselves, could possibly be the fault of the tiny minority excluded from marriage is so insane that no rational person could make it.

Famous people? Surely. People involved in noble endeavors, such as the civil rights movement, who may be granted infallible status and quoted as if they were God-like authorities on every subject under the sun? Why not?

You caused it, Fitz, so you solve it. At your own expense, like a real grownup.

Fat chance.

Precisely because marriage is a “universal human institution,” it is an institution in which all humans should have the opportunity to participate.

It is marriage for love that has caused the instability in marriage.

“Take one for the team,” Fitz. Show yourself willing to sacrifice THAT for the sake of marital stability.

Again, fat chance.
posted by Craig2 on June 4, 2007

To add some evidence-based grit to the case for the benefits of same-sex parenting, might I suggest:

Judith Stacey and Tim Biblarz

“Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?” American Sociological Review April 2001:

159-183…?

It’s been repeatedly cited in Canadian court cases, Australian and New Zealand select committee hearings into same-sex parenting

reforms, and is available at a range of websites.

Craig2

Wellington, New Zealand

(And despite having profound political disagreements with Dick Cheney, may I congratulate him on his grandparenthood? Cute sprog, too)…
posted by Fitz on June 5, 2007

Craig2

“To add some evidence-based grit to the case for the benefits of same-sex parenting, might I suggest: Judith Stacey and Tim Biblarz “Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?” American Sociological Review April 2001:159-183.

The vast majority of these studies compare single lesbian mothers to single heterosexual mothers.

As sociologist Charlotte Patterson, a leading researcher on gay and lesbian parenting, recently summed up, ?[M]ost studies have compared children in divorced lesbian mother-headed families with children in divorced heterosexual motherheaded families.?16

Most of the gay parenting literature thus

compares children in some fatherless families to children in other fatherless family forms. The results may be relevant for some legal policy debates (such as custody disputes) but, in our opinion, they are not designed to shed light on family structure per se, and cannot credibly be used to contradict the current weight of social science: family structure matters, and the family structure that is most protective a child well-being is the intact, married biological family. Children do best when raised by their own married mother and father.

16Charlotte J. Patterson et al., 2000. ?Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents: Research, Law and Policy,? in Bette L. Bottoms et al., eds., Children and the Law: Social Science and Policy 10-11 (available from lead author at cjp@virginia.edu); see also Charlotte J. Patterson, 2000. ?Family Relationships of Lesbians and Gay Men,? Journal of

Marriage and Family 62: 1052-1069.

In 1995, prominent Berkeley sociologist Diana Baumrind reviewed various parenting studies, including the work of Charlotte Patterson and David Flaks. Diana

Baumrind, 1995. ?Commentary on Sexual Orientation: Research and Social Policy Implications,? Developmental

Psychology 31(1): 130.

In her review, Professor Baumrind evaluated, among other things, the claim that children of homosexual parents suffered no adverse outcomes, and were no more likely to develop a homosexual sexual orientation than were children not raised in such homes. Problems Baumrind found with the research she reviewed included the use of small, self-selected convenience samples, reliance on self-report instruments, and biased study populations consisting of disproportionately privileged, educated, and well-off parents. Due to these flaws, Baumrind questioned the conclusions on both ?theoretical and empirical grounds.??the methods used in these studies are so flawed that the studies prove nothing.? Robert Lerner & Althea K. Nagai, 2001. No Basis: What the

Studies Don?t Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting (Washington, D.C.: Marriage Law Project): 6.15 Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz, 2001. ?(How) Does The Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter??, American

Sociological Review 66:159, 166.

posted by Lori Heine on June 5, 2007

And all this babble means…what, Fitz?

You and your fellow heterosexuals have allowed marriage and family life to deteriorate to such a pitiful and pathetic state that you’re actually reduced to the comical spectacle of BLAMING A TINY MINORITY FOR IT ALL.

A “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

When non-religious gays tell me they think Christians are self-righteous, self-deluded bastards, this is the sort of bullshit they’re thinking of.

There’s a reason, fellow IGF-ers, why I keep asking my pesky little question about whether Jerry Falwell would have been a better person if he hadn’t been (at least supposedly) a Christian.

Is the sort of arrogance, pomposity and selfishness — selfishness so pathological it must resort to trying to deflect itself off onto others — the result of his “Christianity,” or is he simply a bastard?

And would he have been any less of a bastard if he hadn’t been a “Christian?”

It’s the content of their character, people. Or, more specifically, it is the lack thereof.

If anybody spoke to me in person the way Fitz does to all of us from the safety of cyberspace, I would knock him on his ass.

One thing I wouldn’t do would be to blame it on my Christianity.

posted by Bill from FL on June 5, 2007

Get ’em Lori Heine!!!!

What *I* love about Fitz is he spends so much time massaging himself and pontificating to us about how wonderful it is for kids to be raised by their natural parents. As if all he has to do is keep repeating that mantra and it will happen. While obviously they SHOULD feed what they breed, sometimes they don’t OR they fail miserably. Apparently Fitz doesn’t listen to anything I have to say!

posted by Lori Heine on June 6, 2007

Right, Bill. We keep making sharp and thoughtful arguments to challenge the Fitz mentality, to which he (and others like him) respond with:

(A) “Studies” made by people who already knew they didn’t like us, designed to prove predetermined “points” — “proving,” for example, that we would harm our children. And always without honestly recognizing that the conditions that supposedly make marriage and parenthood unfavorable for us and our kids WERE CAUSED BY STRAIGHTS WHO HATE US IN THE FIRST PLACE.

(B) Letters from obscure bishops, dug out of the dust of the early Middle Ages, that supposedly “prove” God has always been against us.

(C) Scripture passages, snipped out of the Bible the way want-ads are snipped from the newspaper — totally out-of-context, and often (as is the case with Romans Chapter 1) using the snippet to “prove a point” the entire rest of the epistle argues against.

Strictly because of an accident of birth, Fitz presumes to pass judgment on us. We see through this sham. He will, undoubtedly, keep on digging up “studies” to show how horrible and destructive we are, and we’ll just keep on laughing.

posted by Fitz on June 6, 2007

To bad the study I point out (the one I quote and you wont read) is from Charlotte J. Patterson and others who support gay rights. This was in response to Craig2 who brought her up.

Neither of the studies mentions anything about “harm by gays” to children. They simply bring up the fact that studies to date are insufficient, methodologically flawed and don?t draw the conclusions activists claim they do.

They also reaffirm what we do know for certain through science. That the intact biological married family is the best environment for raising children.

Your persecution complex is showing.

posted by Lori Heine on June 6, 2007

Fitz,

The study (which I did read) is indeed inconclusive — but your point, that only a “traditional” male-female family is the right environment for children, is still based upon evidence found in a culture that is drastically biased against same-sex couples raising kids. In a society that places so many hurdles in the path of gay families, of course there are going to be adverse effects on those families and their children. Your answer is to obliterate those families instead of helping them.

I would like to see a study that takes this basic fact into account, and discusses what constructive steps might be taken to change this.

Traditional families have come in many different forms — not simply the “Ozzie and Harriet” model. In many of them, men have little or nothing to do with raising the kids. Are you prepared to study whether some of those other forms might actually have better historical track-records than the one you espouse?

Of course not.

As the problems plaguing the family in our society are, to an astronomically huge degree, heterosexually-generated problems, it remains ludicrous to put such an unjustly disproportionate amount of the blame on gays.

The real reason why our “culture warriors” do this is (A) to raise money — as hate and fear are always so greatly able to do and (B) to move the focus off of heterosexuals — who don’t want to bite the bullet and make the necessary sacrifices to turn the situation around.

Whatever humane and equitable solutions we might find, they would certainly involve some degree of sacrifice not only for straights, but also for the sort of gay people (I think a minority within the minority) who want kids for the same reason that a kid would want a puppy.

Again, it’s a content of character issue.

Gay people, like straights, are individuals — and each of us deserves to be seen as such. I can do no more about the fact that some gays and lesbians are irresponsible and selfish than any individual heterosexual can about the fact that A GREAT MANY MORE straights are.

We can’t even begin to discuss the situation until all the stupid scapegoating of gays has subsided.

This whole panic, on the part of heterosexual men, about “fatherless families” can be remedied ONLY by these men themselves. Not by bashing or blaming gays, but by simply stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility for their own relationships and offspring.

Most of the dire circumstances they decry have come about precisely because they would not do this.

My own father worked very hard to provide for our family. He stuck around, he was always there, and he never abandoned us. His politics were to the Right of Genghis Khan — but he never sat around whining and bellyaching about all those evil feminists and queers. He was too busy being an adult.

The real culprit in all of this is the degree to which liberal victim-think has invaded the thinking of what now, pathetically, passes for the political Right.

Those who made America great never sat around bellyaching or scapegoating. They got off their asses and did all they personally could.

Individually.

Based upon the content of their character.

posted by Fitz on June 6, 2007

“Again, it’s a content of character issue.”

I agree..as I originally wrote

The point of pro-family advocates is that a crucial, universal, and morally consistent principle is being undermined. Children should be conceived and born into the married couple of their natural Mother & Father.

Were not talking about adoption even, were a child is already born and whose parents abandon it or are unfit, and another couple steps into the breach.

Mary Cheney “acquiring” a child manifestly deprives that child of her Father.

No, we are talking about intentionally conceiving a child with the express purpose of its natural father abandoning it. To make matters even worse, no male is made the Father of this child.

When pro-family forces spent the last 40 years talking about ?family values? ? you didn?t really believe we were somehow confused as to what ?family? meant, did you?

It?s called a standard; and as standards go its more important than most.

Gay parenting as exemplified by Cheney is no moral benchmark or progressive development. Rather it represents the selfish desire of adults over the needs of children and community.

When a blue color male impregnates his girlfriend we need a consistent ethic that says he A) should not have impregnated her outside marriage & B.) Should marry the women and be a good husband and Father to his wife & child.

It is not altogether uncommon among the underclass for a young woman to have three children from three different Fathers.

By what ethical system can we admonish this young woman (or encourage her not to behave in that manner to begin with) in the face of acts like Mary Cheney.

All the platitudes about ?love? and ?commitment? and ?parenting? and ?wanted? wont help rebuild the family amidst widespread cultural consensus that the term has no essential meaning or core values.

“We can’t even begin to discuss the situation until all the stupid scapegoating of gays has subsided.”

No one is doing this, you simply “feel” like this yourself. The pro-family movement has been researching and talking about divorce, illegitamacy and irresponisble sex since the begining. We have been actively politically engaged since the sexual revolution.

Its those on the cultural left who say “all family forms are equel” that champoined divorce and easy ses..(and still do)

Dont kid yourself into thinking your some poor burdened victim.

This is a situation of society trying to deal with the false notions of a sexual revolution.

Not some false dichotomy of straights vs gays.

posted by Lori Heine on June 6, 2007

“Its those on the cultural left who say “all family forms are equel” that champoined divorce and easy ses..(and still do)”

Your interesting spelling aside, Fitz, you are stereotyping again. Every gay in the universe cannot automatically be lumped in with “the cultural left,” as a long way from all of us agree with it.

That pesky truth and reality thing again, Fitz.

Gay conservatives are calling for a SINGLE STANDARD for both gays and straights — one that calls for individual responsibility. One in which people who become parents do so out of commitment to children and family — not out of any self-indulgent desire.

Gays are no less capable of that than straights are. Even though we get far less legal and societal encouragement for our efforts.

“Dont kid yourself into thinking your some poor burdened victim.”

Oh, really? My experience with straight men is that there are no bigger crybabies anywhere. If you had to put up with a hundredth of the bullshit you routinely expect us to just graciously accept, we’d really hear some hollering.

“This is a situation of society trying to deal with the false notions of a sexual revolution.”

Society includes gays as well as straights, and false notions of a sexual revolution have certainly been evidenced far more often in heterosexuals than in gays.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Nothing shows you people as the squirmy hypocrites you really are better than your attitudes about gay marriage. For decades you claimed you opposed us because we supposedly didn’t want to make commitments or raise kids. Then when you found out we did, the spin changed. Now we’re trying to destroy the world because we DO want to get married and raise kids.

Unless you are willing to offer evidence of your own moral superiority (real, rather than imagined — and based upon something more substantial than an accident of birth), no one here has any compelling reason to listen to you.

posted by Brian Miller on June 7, 2007

People like Fitz babble about secondary considerations precisely because they don’t want to deal with the primary considerations.

Yep.

This bears out in the statistics as well. States that embrace equal marriage (like Massachusetts) or even separate-and-sorta-equal status (like New Hampshire, Connecticut and Vermont) have very low divorce rates and are in the bottom 20th percentile of divorce frequency.

States seeking to “protect marriage” and “keep the institution sacred and enduring” by banning gay marriage — such as Alabama, Nevada, and Oklahoma — are well above the national average in divorces.

It’s not gay people getting divorced in those states, nor are gay people flocking to them in droves to “undermine” marriage. The states where gay people have some (or complete) equality in legal treatment have a lower divorce rate.

Looking at the statistics, Fitz and his cohorts should be embarrassedly sitting down and shutting up and taking lessons from married Vermonters, Massachuttans and New Hampshirites on marriage and “keeping marriage strong” rather than lecturing those states from their own high-divorce platforms.

Of course, that would assume that their concern grows out of actual concern over “marriage” — and not the anti-gay animus that is truly at the core of “marriage protection” initiatives.

posted by Fitz on June 7, 2007

I’m afraid (as you assume) that we are at an impasse.

Your fundamental worldview is different than mine and so you cannot see what I am trying to point out. (I on the other hand understand why you come at it from the angle you do)

Statements Like

“Gays are no less capable of that than straights are. Even though we get far less legal and societal encouragement for our efforts.”

While you may look at society through the prism of US against THEM; we do not.

When you say things like…

“Society includes gays as well as straights, and false notions of a sexual revolution have certainly been evidenced far more often in heterosexuals than in gays. ”

It reveals how you approach the topic. I see it as an entire society (gays included) roiling under the weight of 40 years of uninterrupted sexual revolution.

I see a marriage movement trying to confront divorce, illegitimacy, and promiscuousness and so on.

There is no US versus THEM in the world of family values. It is simply a question of what standards help produce what most people NEED, most of the time. (including giving children their Mothers and Fathers)

Blocking any advance have been sexual revolutionaries, cultural leftists, feminists and the like.

They shriek about a ?return to repression? and the 1950’s

Enter into this battle (suddenly) a supposed family values oriented subculture that insists on re-defining the ONE core foundational institution that human sexuality is geared towards Marriage & the Family.

#1.) I have no reason to believe the bulk of the cultural left will somehow (once you have made your gains) start promoting two parent responsible procreation.

#2.) I have no reason to believe that your new standard (if enacted) will actually not harm ?marriage?

I read IGF and occasionally comment with what I find germane. You are welcome at our site to do the same. (It will at least inform you as to our true perspective)

posted by Brian Miller on June 7, 2007

While you may look at society through the prism of US against THEM; we do not.

Sure you do — in fact, you’re writing laws that put the putative “us” in a legally privileged position and “them” in a legally hobbled position. Please abandon the laughable pretense that it’s otherwise.

a supposed family values oriented subculture that insists on re-defining the ONE core foundational institution

And yet again, you ignore the fact that the places that are supposedly “undermining” this core foundational institution by opening it up to gays have a lower divorce rate and lower single-parent family rate than the states taking your tack and excluding gays.

If your thesis was at all correct, “defense of marriage” jurisdictions like Oklahoma, Nevada and Georgia would have rock-bottom divorce rates while Massachusetts, California, Vermont and Connecticut would be falling to pieces in terms of divorce.

The reality is that the places that adhere to your worldview are in marriage meltdown, while the inclusive places have strong families and low divorce rates.

Ergo, it’s your perspective which is both qualitatively and quantitatively resulting in the destruction of families — there can be no other conclusion drawn from the empirical data.

posted by Lori Heine on June 7, 2007

Another dose of simple-minded demonization, stereotype and outright lying from Fitz.

He knows next to nothing about me, but concludes ALL SORTS of things — not only the basis of what I say, but simply because his mind was made up before he even started.

Brian Miller has made a wise and reasoned attempt (yet again) to respond to Fitz. But you can’t reason with the unreasonable.

One standard (the same one for all), emphasizing responsibility and commitment, would indeed be the best course.

But people like Fitz are too busy demonizing others to try it.

It is interesting to note that the states with the laws that treat gays the most fairly are doing the best in terms of keeping families intact, whereas the ones least fair to gays (particularly in the so-called “Bible Belt”) are those that are struggling.

I have noticed a similar trend in the individuals I know. Those who blindly condemn gays (and who like to rail against “liberalism”) have personal lives as untidy as the riot scenes painted by Picasso. This has proved true to a striking degree. While those with gentler, fairer and more reasonable views have happier and more stable families.

It’s the principle, set in motion, that proves the necessary part.

All too many of the loudmouths out there who trumpet their “conservatism” are actually immoral little creeps. They simply hope that if they go on shouting loud enough, we’ll all keep on condemning gays and pay no attention to their own messy, sordid little lives.

Are there exceptions to this? Of course there are.

But there are surprisingly few of them.

posted by Fitz on June 7, 2007

Uh- Brain. (you sosiologist you)

Are you accounting for the fact that you get less divorce when the marriage rate overall is less.

And are you correcting for income variations?

posted by Fitz on June 7, 2007

For the Junior Sociologist.

How to explain these differences? The following factors provide a partial answer:

More couples in the South enter their first marriage at a younger age.

Average household incomes are lower in the South.

Southern states have a lower percentage of Roman Catholics, “a denomination that does not recognize divorce.” Barna’s study showed that 21 percent of Catholics had been divorced, compared with 29 percent of Baptists.

Education. Massachusetts has about the highest rate of education in the country, with 85 percent completing high school. For Texas the rate is 76 percent. One third of Massachusetts residents have completed college, compared with 23 percent of Texans, and the other Northeast states are right behind Massachusetts.

Nope- nothing about same-sex “marriage” (& that was the Boston Globe)

posted by Brian Miller on June 7, 2007

But none of that is supposed to matter, Fitz, because you yourself are arguing that the institution is destroyed when gays are allowed into it.

If gays are a thermonuclear bomb that destroys marriages and cause divorce and family breakdown, then Massachusetts, Vermont, California, etc. should be in thermonuclear breakdown.

Since they’re not — and doing much better than the various states you’ve listed excuses for — your thesis becomes quite questionable.

Now, let’s assume that your statistics are correct, and the reason that marriage is melting down in “family values” areas is because of younger marriage ages, not enough Catholics, lower education, etc.

It then becomes clear that:

1) Gay marriage has no statistically significant impact on states that permit it, BUT

2) All these other excuses you’re making have a HUGE impact on marriage, divorce and “the family.”

THUS, if your position grew out of a sense of “protecting the family,” your “defense of marriage” law would consist of mandatory education, higher ages for marriage, etc.

Since they don’t (and you’d presumably oppose such efforts, or at least certainly not advocate them), we can reasonably assume that your motivation isn’t “the good of families, regardless of inconveniencing some people” but rather the simple exclusion of gay people from family life.

Either way, you are *soooooooo* busted as they say here in California. 🙂

posted by Brian Miller on June 7, 2007

I see a marriage movement trying to confront divorce, illegitimacy, and promiscuousness and so on.

I don’t. I see lots of people who are in strong marriages who don’t feel the need to tell other people how to live their lives — as well as lots of people in loveless marriages who are cheating on the side wearing a mantle of faux-righteousness to make up for the inadequacy and artifice of their own unsustained relationship.

The former tend to not care about gay marriage one way or the other, the latter tend to be “family values advocates” (and divorc

posted by Fitz on June 7, 2007

“But none of that is supposed to matter, Fitz, because you yourself are arguing that the institution is destroyed when gays are allowed into it.”

If gays are a thermonuclear bomb that destroys marriages and cause divorce and family breakdown, then Massachusetts, Vermont, California, etc. should be in thermonuclear breakdown.”

See Brian.. you cant show me arguing this level of hyperbowl anywere.

Same-sex “marriage” locks in and reinforces an already fragile understanding..

My ?true views? lie closer to this?

“Marriage is neither a conservative nor a liberal issue; it is a universal human institution, guaranteeing children fathers, and pointing men and women toward a special kind of socially as well as personally fruitful sexual relationship. Gay marriage is the final step down a long road America has already traveled toward deinstitutionalizing, denuding and privatizing marriage. It would set in legal stone some of the most destructive ideas of the sexual revolution: There are no differences between men and women that matter, marriage has nothing to do with procreation, children do not really need mothers and fathers, the diverse family forms adults choose are all equally good for children. What happens in my heart is that I know the difference. Don’t confuse my people, who have been the victims of deliberate family destruction, by giving them another definition of marriage.”

Walter Fauntroy-Former DC Delegate to CongressFounding member of the Congressional Black CaucusCoordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march on DC

posted by Brian Miller on June 7, 2007

. Gay marriage is the final step down a long road America has already traveled toward deinstitutionalizing, denuding and privatizing marriage.

It’s interesting to see that since your argument has been factually decimated, you’re going to present your idealized definition of what marriage should be.

Why am I not surprised that you’re calling for a socialist approach?

Government institution publicly funded, publicly evaluated, “not privatized,” and completely open to the evaluation of all.

I never understand the right wing socialists. You’d think that before government got in the marriage business (in the 1860s) that people weren’t having children or getting married.

What *were* families doing without government “institutions” to make their relationships a public affair? How *did* the human race survive?

The mind boggles.

posted by Lori Heine on June 7, 2007

“See Brian.. you cant show me arguing this level of hyperbowl anywere.”

What, on the Good Lord’s green earth, is “hyperbowl?”

Whatever it is, we hear Fitz arguing it all the time.

It bears the unmistakable odor of phoney baloney.

posted by On Lawn on June 7, 2007

Fitz is … correct.

There is nothing noble or even benign about two women deciding that a man is someone to hire for his gametes, and should remain anonymous to his children the rest of their lives. The same is true for the two men deciding that women are a womb for rent.

The egregious nature of sex-segregation does not equalize genders, and it hits children even more egregiously. It treats children like chattel, purchased and commissioned to adorn a relationship.

Someone (as no one has yet done this) tell me why this is something to celebrate. Perhaps it is impolite to look so narrowly at their joy and success, perhaps it is just so pitiful for the child that we don’t want to rub his/her nose in it. But those are excuses for not doing anything about it. I see no reason to celebrate this at all, and more reason to question the nobility of people striving to re-create humanity with family headed without the shared governance of the other gender.

posted by Lori Heine on June 7, 2007

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.

I know a lot of same-sex couples with kids (I daresay more than Fitz or “OnLawn” put together), and most of them have a substantial place in their family lives for uncles, grandpas and close male friends (if the couples are women) and aunts, grandmothers and good female friends (for those who are men).

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.

Unlike straight people, who behave, half the time, as if their kids are nuisances that just — oops! — popped up because somebody forgot to take a pill, we have to fight like hell for the right to have kids. And, very often, for the right to keep them.

It would be nice if these pseudo-conservative trolls lived in the real world for a while before showing their ignorance here.

posted by Bill from FL on June 8, 2007

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!

posted by Brian Miller on June 8, 2007

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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 8, 2007

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.

posted by On Lawn on June 8, 2007

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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 8, 2007

“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.

posted by Craig2 on June 8, 2007

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

posted by On Lawn on June 8, 2007

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.

posted by On Lawn on June 8, 2007

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?

posted by Lori Heine on June 8, 2007

“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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 8, 2007

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!!!

posted by Brian Miller on June 8, 2007

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.

posted by On Lawn on June 8, 2007

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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 9, 2007

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.

posted by Stefan on June 9, 2007

yea, thats’s correct

http://www.half-price-viagra.net

posted by On Lawn on June 9, 2007

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.

posted by On Lawn on June 9, 2007

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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 9, 2007

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.

posted by On Lawn on June 9, 2007

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…

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.

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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 9, 2007

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.

posted by Brian Miller on June 10, 2007

Lori, I salute thee.

posted by Xeno on June 10, 2007

Kudos to you Lori for standing up against such close-minded assholes.

posted by Bill from FL on June 10, 2007

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!

🙂

posted by Craig2 on June 10, 2007

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

posted by Craig2 on June 10, 2007

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

posted by Lori Heine on June 10, 2007

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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 10, 2007

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.

posted by On Lawn on June 11, 2007

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.

posted by On Lawn on June 11, 2007

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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 11, 2007

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.

posted by On Lawn on June 11, 2007

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.

posted by Lori Heine on June 12, 2007

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!”

posted by Ghost of On Lawn on June 13, 2007

(echoes from the last post…)

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.

While Lori continues in her gossipy diversions, I will await Craig2’s response.

posted by Lori Heine on June 14, 2007

“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.

posted by John Keenan on June 14, 2007

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?

posted by John Keenan on June 14, 2007

Ooops, by “your” I was not addressing anyone in particular. Thanks.

posted by Brian Miller on June 14, 2007

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.) 😉

posted by Craig2 on June 15, 2007

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

posted by JJWentsworth on June 16, 2007

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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