I think its a good topic. plus I found this interesting article

Here is a bit of it, but read the whole thing...its interesting

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... lladjusted

Good for those kids. I actually never realized there were so many of them living with gay parents.

Me either, when I saw the number I was like

I think that is great. I know many homosexual couples who would be wonderful parents. Better than many parents I know currently

Just finished reading ... I remain very spectical about this study.

Yep. End of discussion.

-Dolce

Well, I wouldn't be so fast. There are legitimate questions about how the demographical makeup of a family shapes such a family and the child's behavior.

Oh Krem, I urge you to go down to Davis square and watch benign lesbianism in action. Demographical makeup? Id prefer two parents that sit over coffee and enjoy eachother's company while reading some books or newspapers, who happen to both be women, than to some heterosexual couple where the guy verbally and/or physically abuses his girlfriend/wife. And there is plenty of that to go around.

I have a proposal, instead of banning gay marriage we should be pushing, on a national agenda, to ban marriage of anyone that has a history of initiating psychologically or physically abusive relationships. Where the hell are our priorities?

-Dolce

Dolce, that's all fine, but did you know that, for example, a couple with a daughter is more likely to get divorced than a couple with a son? That raises a perfectly valid demographics issue.

Which have nothing to do with the sexual prefence of the parents, but more so with cultual values around the gender of the kid. You commentary does not directly respond to the question of same-sex couples, so I don't really see how it fits in?

-Dolce

It fits in, because it is also a question of demographics and how it applies to the cultural values (or maybe other factors). Why should sexual preference be exempt from such scrutiny?

Well, I think the whole point of the research studies and findings is that it has been scrutinized and has held its own quite well. I think these research studies are honestly just a physical manifestation of the currently ridiculous social discourse around gay unions right now anyways. They could have taken that same study funding and done research on how many pre-teen kids are well adjusted that have parents that work 60 hours per week, or how well adjusted goddamn rich kids are. How well adjusted kids are that grow up in an abusive household, etc. The choice of topic alone, IMO, is pretty conservative, but I guess it is trying to just respond to the immediacy instead of building a broader discussion of family values that has to do more with personal identification than social condemnation. The fact that, as you say, couples are more likely to divorce if they have a daughter instead of a son should already send of warning signs that we haven't yet shaken the regressive gender ghosts of primogeniture and male worth.

-Dolce

Why jump to conclusions? It could also be likely that having more females in the household somehow affects chemical makeup of the brain, and that leads to greater confrontation. Or that people with certain traits are more likely to have females as offsprings than males, and that same trait leads to divorce.

In any case, as the article says, this was the first comprehensive study on the subject, and I think it's perfectly valid AND overdue to have such a study. Whether the results are PC or not, we need to know them to better frame the debate.

And by the way, the majority of the country is not opposed to the same-sex unions.

Yes, but they are against adoption rights. And this is a disscussion about families. Furthermore, I really don;t think that silly nature vs. nurture thing is relevant anymore. I don't think people are necessarily born with certain straights, and that those traits are genetically linked to x or y chromosomes and/or divorce rates. That's a careful line to toe.

-Dolce

Dolce, not dismissing any of the arguments nor voicing my own opinion on this matter but:

I'd rather live in Iraq with a well to do family, away from the bombings, where I can go to school everyday and back to loving parents than grow up on the streets of NewYork with no home and 2 meals a day.

That doesn't mean if the opportunity comes, I'll live in Iraq. I'll live in the States.

Back to topic.

See, adoption rights thing wouldn't even be an issue if the government didn't regulate adoption so much (we return to square one ;-)).

And you shouldn't discard people's behavior being linked to genetics. That's not to say that people shouldn't be responsible for their own choices, but genetics CAN explain a lot about groups of people.

That statement sounds a bit eugenic in nature. I know you better than that. Perhaps its best you elaborate on what you meant?

-Dolce

I don't want to be PC for the sake of being PC. We know genetics affects our physical characteristics. Why can't we entertain the possibility that it also affects our brain?

You're not going to argue that gay people are born that way, for the most part, right? Well, there's nothing different about the outward appearence of the homosexual people. So there's gotta be something in their brain. Now, why can you accept that, but not other behavioral characteristics as being genetic?

Nor do I care for being politically correct right now, and that was not the point I was getting at. I do not care to spend my energies leading to potentially regressive discussion about if people are born one way or if people are influenced by particular cultures and can be "changed." Neither one deals with the issue that people are in fact one way or the other, and that we need to find the best way to make these people part of a healthy society.

2 Examples: 1) Lets take adhd. If we spend too much time argueing that it is genetic, and that we could possible altar people's genes to "eliminate" lesser individuals, than we're just falling into idiotic discussions about "building" a superior race.

2) Nor am I going to say that being gay is an exterior influenced desicion and that with proper "training" one can "change" their sexual identification.

I just think, as I mentioned earlier, making people's habits and identities into such black or white issues as genetics and proper *education* get us nowhere except for maybe one step closer to 1935. For me, it is better to just identify the fact that there are people with adhd, and that there are people attracted to other's of the same sex, and how are we, as a society, going to handle that instead of just sitting around argueing how we could "change" (either through genetic manipulation of silly re-education) people to better conform to one societal ideal. I'd rather we talk about pill-popping as being a bad solution and a band-aid to larger issues than to say maybe we could tickle the human genome a little bit. I'd rather we say, great, some men like men, and some women like women, and how are we going to respect that as a society instead of trying to identify the ways in which we could change it.

Do I think that their is some conditioning? Yes. Its well known that women with abusive parents tend to later form abusive relationships. But I'm not going to sit around and say maybe its something in the genes of the women that they like to be beat up on, or the genes of men that they prefer exterior aggression...or that the genes of that family tend to lead to abusive interations. Lets play around with their dna. That'll fix it all right up. These discussions get us nowhere, and should have died along with the third reich.

-Dolce

I agree with the general premise (that we should just accept that there are different people out there, and not try to eugenize); besides I find eugenics in any form - even aborting a mentally retarted child - to be immoral.

However, that does not make the study in question detrimental. It's important to know whether children of same-sex couples grow up the same as others, regardless of whether we like the results or not.


And like I said before, I never said we should be trying to alter the DNA; I said that it doesn't help us to be blind to it.

I really don't get what the "bgi deal" with gay adoption is. Honestly, why is it NOT better to be in a loving stable enviroment, even if it is with two guys or two women, than to grow up in the foster system and go form group home to group home. People's priorities are fucked up in this country. They care more about homosexuality being a "sin" than they do about our own children


And Krem

Do you have any knowledge on our adoption system? Foster care system? Child welfare systems??? Since you seem to think it shoult not be "regulated" so much by the government. This is a serious question, I am not being sarcastic.

No, the majority of people are afraid that the children who grow up with gay parents will, in turn, grow up to be gay. To them, it is unacceptable, hence they charge the government (which is the representative of the people) with filtering out gay couples out of the adoption process (thought not everywhere). You may not agree with their reasoning, but as long as you charge the government with managing adoption, you will always have to answer to the people.



The fact that there is a number of kids waiting to be adopted AND there are waiting lists of people who want to adopt children, indicates to me a government failure, which is not surprising to me at all.

It goes beyond that Krem, Its not that simple. Its not like "hey i want a kid, lets go pick one up since there is so many waiting to be adopted" Its not like buying a car, or a house. It's a much more complicated process.



Anyways....about the gay adoption thing. How is it even legal to prohibit gay couples from adopting? Whats the basis? There is no way that the only reason people are opposed is because they think the kids will turn out to be gay....everyone isnt that ignorant...at least I hope not.

The answer to your second paragraph is in your first paragraph. You are the one who wants to make adoption a complicated process (which, I would argue, is not in the best interests of the child), and then you wonder why is it that the government has the right to filter certain people out of the process. It's because it's the government; if it does something on behalf of the people, then it should do it in a manner in which the public sees fit.

How do I want to make adoption a complicated process...well more complicated that it should be? Explain to me?