The picture of the lesbians with a baby ought to focus everyone on what traditional marriage folks are really worried about. Those folks don't mind occasional traditional marriages being for companionship, or if a partner is sterile, becoming a home where children are adopted (which is encouraged over lab babies).

No, what worries traditional folks is marriage has an ideal in which kids are born to their biological parents and are raised by them, creating biological ties, extended families, roots and knowledge of your biological identity and family history. Gay marriages threaten that traditional value by their ambiguous stance on kids. Will homosexuals take their newly won legal rights to the doctors and start families where children are missing one or another biological parent?

If gay marriages were clean up arrangements where kids were always adopted, much of the worry about them would be diminished, but that's a lot to ask. No one demands of heterosexual chicks that they forego making children from donated sperm, so complaining about homosexuals doing it sounds inconsistent. But then again, the folks mad about gay marriage very well may be mad about sperm banks and single moms making kids intending that they have no father ... so there may be consistency after all.

However that works out statistically, I think it's a growing concern that gay marriage will further legitimate treating kids a bit like pets, breeding for them with whomever and ignoring the prima facie duty of biological parents to parent their offspring. Does a kid's right to be parented by biological mom and dad trump the right of sexual expression?

Does a kid's right to be parented by biological mom and dad trump the right of sexual expression?

You raise some interesting points what opponents of gay marriage are actually worried about (whether or not those fears are reasonable is another issue).

But the above point in particular strikes at much of the basic disagreement here. I do not believe anyone has the "right" per se to be parented by a biological mom and dad in a nuclear family unit... in that it's an entirely unenforceable right if life circumstances do not allow for it.

One or both biological parents could die. One or both biological parents could be flat out disinterested or otherwise mentally or emotionally ill-suited for raising their own children. You can crow all you like about the rights of their children in that case, but your dismay will not provide them two fully functional biological parents. In short... we all have to play the cards we're dealt when we're born... socially ideal circumstances or no.

Encoding the married mom/dad family unit into law as the only "legitimate" way to form a family automatically excludes people who cannot or will not grow up in such an environment. Does it harm or help children to insist that they live in an inferior "sham" of a "real" family when they don't have a mom and a dad at home?

There is no way to stop people from having children outside of the proposed "ideal." It has always happened and always will happen. Unmarried women will continue to get pregnant. Gay people will pop out kids inspite of being gay. Unless you also propose forced sterilization of people who intend to reproduce outside of the married heterosexual paradigm, there's nothing you can do to stop any of this from happening.

Gay civil rights issues address the reality of people's lives, the hardships and injustices faced by people who already do exist. "Traditional" activists concentrate on their as of yet unsubstantiated concerns of what horrible things might happen one day if....dot dot dot.

In my mind the laws are here to serve the ENTIRE population in the here and now... Gay people and their children are already here and living amongst us, and more are on the way. They deserve and require the full support of the society they participate in. We all have to share this planet. We all have to pay taxes and share public space and institutions, which means having to tolerate people who live and act and breed in ways you don't like. The "right" to legislate what other people can do with their bodies and what kinds of families they can have is NOT a right if there is nowhere else for the people who disagree with you to go.

Well, ask yourself, can I let my biological offspring grow up without my care? Don't I owe my son or daughter some support? Life is hard, and when you act to bring a person into it, it seems to me you owe them. Humans require stability; biological families are supposed to provide identity and belonging that isn't based on someone's mood or whimsy. You don't have to get yourself killed by an abusive spouse in service to your kids, but you have to acknowledge some debt to them.

The 'we can't really do anything about it' line is exactly what traditionalists are responding to: we can do something about it; we can protect traditional marriage legally as something sacred. Make marriage a matter of honor and a protected, privileged institution. People who treat kids like pets they don't want should be ashamed of themselves. People who prefer their selfish sexual or monetary or romantic interests to providing a nuclear family for their kids should be ashamed of themselves.

Remember the Target Market campaign against smoking? Society can change when everyone agrees on the importance of change. Try lighting up in a public place today, see if social pressure is effective.

Life is hard, and when you act to bring a person into it, it seems to me you owe them. Humans require stability; biological families are supposed to provide identity and belonging that isn't based on someone's mood or whimsy.

This is not an unreasonable opinion to have. But it's hardly a settled issue. Whatever the advantages biological families provide vs. what non-biological families provide is something you merely assume. Your child being able to recite a long pedigree doesn't guarantee him a stable, loving, supportive environment to grow up in.

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that homosexuals are among this new class of people who treat their children as pets. I don't disagree that treating children as "things" to be acquired is wrong or that it happens. I disagree that homosexuals are somehow more liable to do this than heterosexuals. You seem to have a preconceived notion as to what homosexual families are like... and quite frankly it's wrong.

In every effed up family I've ever met or been a part of, the basic sexual orientation of the parents has never once been the cause of the family's dysfunction. That's just me speaking anecdotally, but hard research also bears this out. Kids growing up in same sex parent household show no greater incidence of psychological, physical, or emotional harm than the children of opposite sex parent households. Sorry.

tracker, what is it that makes "traditional" marriage traditional? And why do you define "traditional" families as "nuclear?"

And would it be a goal of your social pressure to ensure that children who aren't raised in nuclear families understand that they are second class by default, or is that just an unintended consequence? Or perhaps a boon extended to the most dysfunctional nuclear families? I.e., as long as they stay nuclear, they can always assert their superiority over others, regardless of their behavior versus that of the non-nuclears?

Tracker, you've identified an important factor in people's attitudes toward gay marriage. Legally, it's irrelevant, although it's still trotted out there among all the other half-baked arguments against gay marriage. Gay parenting in itself (or adoption rights) would make an interesting constitutional challenge--possibly even more difficult than the marriage case. You could be right that the parenting issue will be seen as subsumed within the marriage issue, but it's too easy to point out childless marriages, which need to be accounted for.

I completely agree (and studies bear this out) that children raised by two loving parents in a committed relationship are significantly more likely to end up healthier, happier, and generally better off. Which is precisely why gay marriage, which would keep gay couples (possibly parents) together in a loving, committed relationship, is good for any kids they might have. Few people on the religious right trotting out the "marriage is good for kids" argument seem to take it this next, logical step, and I always wonder why.

I love marriage! That's why I'm getting married to a wonderful lady. And why I want my gay friends to have the same privilege.

"Kids growing up in same sex parent household show no greater incidence of psychological, physical, or emotional harm than the children of opposite sex parent households. Sorry."

Sorry, but there are NO reputable scientific studies to support that.

Try searching on slate for "The research on gay parenting_ - By Ann Hulbert - Slate Magazine_files".

One of the problems is that gay parents won't give up their kids for study by reputable researchers - only the gay-friendly kind looking for a pre-determined outcome. And it will still be too un-PC for mainstream researchers to do a proper study until the number of damaged kids becomes too obvious to ignore.

Even putting aside the issues of being being raised in a household where an aberrant sexuality is presented as the ideal, you'd have to be naive to think that coming to the realisation in your teens that your two "parents" conspired against you to deny you a relationship with one or both of your biological parents is not going to cause psychological problems.

Even putting aside the issues of being being raised in a household where an aberrant sexuality is presented as the ideal, you'd have to be naive to think that coming to the realisation in your teens that your two "parents" conspired against you to deny you a relationship with one or both of your biological parents is not going to cause psychological problems.

Okay, wow so much wrong with that paragraph. First of all, what makes you assume that gay people would be presenting their gayness as the "ideal"? Perhaps you have witnessed straight households presenting heterosexuality as the ideal, or maybe you present it that way yourself, so you assume that gay households would do the same for gayness. I've never seen this happen... I've never even heard of that happening. Maybe it's possible.. but it doesn't sound like your concern is grounded in you knowing a damn thing about what real gay families are like.

Here is where I'm coming from: I know lots of gay people in real life. I have gay family, gay friends, and most of them have children, either biological or adopted. I may even be a little gay myself, as I've wondered more than a few times if I would be better off a lesbian. I even have a gay ex-husband who happens to the father of my son. I have no clue why my life has been an embarrassment of gay riches... but it has.

The only commonly recurring negative themes I've ever noticed in all of their gay lives are: 1) harassment for being gay, 2) lack of emotional support for their gay relationships.

I have never witnessed anything intrinsically toxic or wrong with two people attracted to each other who happen to have the same plumbing. I have witnessed firsthand, that my gay loved ones have been namecalled, shut out, publically called out, and even physically attacked for being who they are. I can recall specific incidents of harm from the time we were young children to just the other day. These things keep happening to my gay loved ones not because they are gay, but because people like yourself take issue with them being gay. Why do I say that? Because the perpetrators of these harmful acts have invariably been the so-called "champions" of traditional morality.

I seriously doubt you personally know any gay people, because it baffles me these things you are saying. Anecdotal evidence doesn't count for much in an argument, but good lord man... do get out of your shell and mingle a bit!

You leave no room for "proof" that your fears are correct.. you doubt any evidence to the contrary...and you yourself can't cite a single credible source that gay families harm children. Nor do you seem to care that you cannot. So where does this leave us but violently agreeing to disagree?

I wish that I was not left on a door step by my biological parents. I wish that as a child I was not rejected and made fun of because of my parents. If I were that child now, I'd beg you to let me have married parents and be able to stand up for myself.

I'm no longer that child. I've recently retired as a professor at a major university after recieving numerous acclamations from students and the university, and an international award. I have suffered depression since chilhood due to abandonoment issues but was able to achieve due to the parenting I later recieved.

Have a heart and let my parents be legally married before they die.

PaulW:

"Kids growing up in same sex parent household show no greater incidence of psychological, physical, or emotional harm than the children of opposite sex parent households. Sorry."

Sorry, but there are NO reputable scientific studies to support that.

Look, we can agree to disagree here and there. But if you're going to make a blantantly counterfactual statement like that you should know I'm going to call you on it. For instance, you completely misrepresent the 2004 study, which by the way, suggested, at best, that the evidence was inconclusive or outdated. Even taking these concerns into account the stunning lack of any indication of harm still speaks volumes, your tin-foil conspiracy theories aside.

Moreover, that was five years ago. Since then, you may have noticed, there have been five years of marriage equality in states like Massachusetts, so the results of before-and-after surveys, one of the most reliable kind of comparisons, are just starting to come in.

Here's one such result, hot off the presses from the Williams Institute: <link> (PDF). Some relevant excerpts:

Many parents reported that their children felt more secure and protected. Others noted that their children gained a sense of stability. A third common response was that marriage allowed children to see their families as being validated or legitimated by society or the government. Sometimes this feeling had a direct effect on children’s relationship to their parents, stepparents, or siblings by increasing the sense of being connected to those family members...

Two parents reported the flipside of teasing, noting that their children were actually perceived as being “cool” by their peers for having married gay parents...

According to their parents, children gain legal protection and, in some cases, health insurance as tangible benefits [of legalizing gay marriage].

Where else can you see more before-and-after studies? Ironically, in the book by the authors of this piece. Scroll down on their website for a few choice exerpts: <link>

Marriage isn't policed because it's too hard ... did this couple intend kids and then find they were sterile? Are they marrying at 18 and waiting till 36 to start a family? Did they wait too long and decide against kids honestly, or did they play the system?

If all traditional marriage folk have to give up is marriages between folks who are known to be sterile or too old (what's that number these days, 60?) in order to protect marriage from gay marriage, they might move that way. Everyone has an aunt to remarries after her first husband dies, and marries for the companionship and sex. If we called those civil unions and kept marriage for nuclear families, that at least captures the concern that marriage exist to ensure no one shirk their duty to their kids for freedom, sexual expression, to alleviate boredom, etc.

Why do you think that you have a window into the motives of people you don't know, and why do you think you are qualified to judge them? You can't even put forth an honest and well reasoned argument.

Unlike our current president who thinks marriage is between a man and a woman, but doesn't say why, I'm trying to say why ... and I've said more than anyone else I know ... and from a reasonable starting place, like moral responsibility for what you are causally responsible for, like offspring.

Why do you think you can attack me and then my position generally without specifying a problem?

Why do you think you can attack me and then my position generally without specifying a problem?

That's a fair question, but I'll have to come back to it to cover it properly. Let me begin by saying that after posting last night, I asked myself what specifically bothered me so much about your posts. It's not as if the Fray doesn't have its share of offensive posts. Then I realized that you are attacking friends of mine who you don't even know. I think that if you were attacking me, I wouldn't have such a knee jerk reaction because I would be used to such attacks and would have long ago steeled myself against them. But you aren't attacking me. You are instead attacking some of the best people I know, and they don't deserve it. Nor do their children deserve to be relegated to second class status by people who pretend to want the best for all children. That is my basic problem with your posts, and I'll come back and show you specifically what you've written that I find so offensive, but hopefully this summary helps in the meantime.