Same Sex Marriages and Sexual Orientation

[Cow Poke]

Christians are not entitled to special treatment.

But, in your world, gays are.

[Psychic Missile]

Sure! In order to justify your desire to shut down agencies that don't advance your pro-gay agenda, you'd need to prove that there is harm to children who are NOT placed with homosexual couples. You'd need to show that there is some legitimate reason - from the child's prospective, not just from a social engineering perspective - to require the agency to include homosexual couples as recipients.

The harm to children who are not placed with homosexual couples is that they will have to stay where they are instead of going to a loving family. Not as many children being adopted as there is qualified demand favors the needs of the agency over the needs of the children. Also, I don't see how any agency that does not adopt to gay people can be trusted to take care of and properly place gay children.

It's rather extreme that you would want an adoption agency shut down simply because they do not fit your agenda.

Sure, there are a number of studies that show that homosexual couples do just as well as homosexual couples, but you'd really need to look at those studies, how they were researched, and who authored them....

Many studies have been done allegedly proving that children of same-sex parents fare just as well emotionally as those of heterosexual parents.

The problem with most of those studies, however, is that the parents were the ones who were interviewed. So how do you think those parents would have answered questions regarding child abuse – whether physical, sexual, or emotional? Obviously, they – like most parents – would downplay any abuse toward their kids.

Not only that, but study subjects were obtained through newspaper advertisements, LGBT events, and LGBT bookstores. These were people who understood what the study was about and had a vested interest in giving same-sex parenting a good name.

A new study – conducted by Donald Paul Sullins, a sociology professor at the Catholic University of America – has been released that is the first of its kind with regards to homosexual parenting. It took a longitudinal approach – meaning that the study focused on the same participants of the representative sample over the course of many years for the purpose of exploring the long-term effects of living under same-sex parents. This time, the children of same-sex parents were interviewed at different times in their lives – ages 15, 22, and 28. Not surprisingly, the study yielded a much different result compared with previous studies.

And, naturally, you'll probably want to discount THIS study because it was done by Donald Paul Sullins, a sociology professor at the Catholic University of America.

I'm not going to trust unsourced metastudy criticism, but as for the Sullins study, I didn't notice any major issues from a normal read-through except that it used data 20 years old, only included 20 same-sex parent couplings, and wasn't able to show any causation, which are totally understandable.

And shutting down an adoption agency because they didn't advance your pro-gay agenda would aggravate the problem of children having no parents. You care more about the pro-gay agenda than you do about children getting parents.

Does the mere existence of an adoption agency necessarily result in more children being adopted? Wouldn't the number of couples looking to adopt remain the same regardless of how many adoption agencies there are?

[Cow Poke]

The harm to children who are not placed with homosexual couples is that they will have to stay where they are instead of going to a loving family.

That is ONLY assuming that the homosexual couple is the only choice, and that's just nutty.

Does the mere existence of an adoption agency necessarily result in more children being adopted?

That's like asking 'does the mere existence of a car dealership necessarily result in more cars being sold?" WADR, it's kind of a dumb question.

Wouldn't the number of couples looking to adopt remain the same regardless of how many adoption agencies there are?

Apparently, you've never tried to adopt a baby. The process is long and tedious, and most prospective parents I've known have checked multiple options. Why wouldn't a gay couple be more comfortable working with a gay-friendly agency? Why is it the pro-gay crowd has to be so controlling and manipulating? Why not allow CHOICE?

[oxmixmudd]

It's not about promoting the "gay agenda" or promoting the Evangelical agenda. Its about Constitutional rights. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments limit the power of the federal and state governments to discriminate. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly prohibits states from violating an individual's rights of due process and equal protection. This applies to gays as well as every other citizen as has been so ruled by the Supreme Court. Christians are not entitled to special treatment.



No, the "reasonable remedy" is to obey the Constitution and don't promote bigotry.

When you have 3 generations worth of data on the effects of gay parenting on a large population of children generation to generation - you will be able to say that with authority IF the results support that conclusion.

Right now it is a great big hopeful experiment ... on kids.

The assumption is on your part, and on the Supreme court's part, is that same-sex is just another flavor of 'sex', and that there are no inherent differences that would affect the outcome for a child raised by gay parents in a negative way.

There simply is not enough data to know if that is true. And many Christians believe that the prohibition against acting on same-sex attraction is there for a reason that is not simply cultural bigotry. Given that the other restrictions on sexual behavior in the Bible tend to be for the best of society and individuals, it would be reasonable to assume this could also be true of the prohibition against acting on same-sex attraction.

Further - most of the resistance in the general population to things like "no sex before marriage" isn't related to a belief it is bad, or that is isn't a high moral standard that is ultimately good, it is that it's just inconvenient and not a lot of fun. It is EASIER and a lot more 'fun' (in the short run) to just hop in and out of bed with whoever one pleases. The cost of that is demonstrably high, but people and the general (im)moral bend of our current society is to place the personal freedom and personal pleasure of the individual above the good of the culture and the society.

The willingness to grant same-sex relations equal place is just part of the general trend of removing all restriction on sexual behavior. Whether it will ultimately be good or bad will be seen. same-sex marriage on the surface has the potential to reduce the spread of disease, if same-sex couples will opt for it and actually live by what it means. But as I pointed out earlier, at least in the male same-sex population, common practices can be as must as 30 times more likely to spread disease. Natural law is natural law. It plays out regardless of the personal opinions of the participants. Promiscuity in the same-sex population still exceeds that in the heterosexual population by a significant factor. And promiscuity is a great predictor for disease and disease transmission.

It is good that there has been great resistance to the bullying and hatred that is expressed towards people with same-sex attraction. But that doesn't mean that acting out same-sex attraction is necessarily good for society or the people involved. The two issues are in reality orthogonal vectors.


Jim

[Tassman]

But, in your world, gays are.

Nope! Nobody is entitled to special treatment. ALL citizens are entitled to equal protection according to the Fourteenth Amendment.

[Tassman]

When you have 3 generations worth of data on the effects of gay parenting on a large population of children generation to generation - you will be able to say that with authority IF the results support that conclusion.

Right now it is a great big hopeful experiment ... on kids.

“There is no harm caused by same-sex parenting. Studies suggesting otherwise are skewed”.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ise-are-skewed

...as the bias against LGBT's in the rest of your post indicates.

The assumption is on your part, and on the Supreme court's part, is that same-sex is just another flavor of 'sex', and that there are no inherent differences that would affect the outcome for a child raised by gay parents in a negative way.

There simply is not enough data to know if that is true. And many Christians believe that the prohibition against acting on same-sex attraction is there for a reason that is not simply cultural bigotry. Given that the other restrictions on sexual behavior in the Bible tend to be for the best of society and individuals, it would be reasonable to assume this could also be true of the prohibition against acting on same-sex attraction.

Further - most of the resistance in the general population to things like "no sex before marriage" isn't related to a belief it is bad, or that is isn't a high moral standard that is ultimately good, it is that it's just inconvenient and not a lot of fun. It is EASIER and a lot more 'fun' (in the short run) to just hop in and out of bed with whoever one pleases. The cost of that is demonstrably high, but people and the general (im)moral bend of our current society is to place the personal freedom and personal pleasure of the individual above the good of the culture and the society.

The willingness to grant same-sex relations equal place is just part of the general trend of removing all restriction on sexual behavior. Whether it will ultimately be good or bad will be seen. same-sex marriage on the surface has the potential to reduce the spread of disease, if same-sex couples will opt for it and actually live by what it means. But as I pointed out earlier, at least in the male same-sex population, common practices can be as must as 30 times more likely to spread disease. Natural law is natural law. It plays out regardless of the personal opinions of the participants. Promiscuity in the same-sex population still exceeds that in the heterosexual population by a significant factor. And promiscuity is a great predictor for disease and disease transmission.

It is good that there has been great resistance to the bullying and hatred that is expressed towards people with same-sex attraction. But that doesn't mean that acting out same-sex attraction is necessarily good for society or the people involved. The two issues are in reality orthogonal vectors.

[Starlight]

When you have 3 generations worth of data on the effects of gay parenting on a large population of children generation to generation - you will be able to say that with authority IF the results support that conclusion.

Right now it is a great big hopeful experiment ... on kids.

Single parenting is a well-studied phenomena at this point. If a single parent of either sex can successfully raise kids without a member of the other sex being present, it is hard to fathom why them having an assistant in the form of a same-sex spouse would make the job they do worse rather than better.

The assumption is on your part, and on the Supreme court's part, is that same-sex is just another flavor of 'sex', and that there are no inherent differences that would affect the outcome for a child raised by gay parents in a negative way.

There simply is not enough data to know if that is true.

Psychologists and sociologists have been studying the various effects of different things on the development, happiness and successfulness of children for the past 50 years or more in all sorts of different cultures and family structures. The experts in the subject that I have read seem pretty convinced that the thousands of studies done around the world have identified all the variables that have significant effects, and from their knowledge of those variables they seem pretty confident in their statements that the sex of the parents doesn't matter. As I mentioned above, it is hard to imagine how same-sex parents might do worse than a single parent, which is a common (and well-studied) household situation today. While the experts note that the major studies so far on the effects of same-sex parenting show it is as good as or slightly-better than (same-sex couples adopt at a higher rater that heterosexual couples, and adopted children on average have better outcomes because their parents acquire the child at a life-stage where they can afford to support them whereas sometimes heterosexuals have children by mistake/surprise at a time when they struggle with finances/time to raise them properly and that drags down their average) opposite-sex parenting, a lot of the experts seem relatively disinterested in these studies because the results could already be predicted from the thousands of studies already done on the effects of different types of family structures on children.

Promiscuity in the same-sex population still exceeds that in the heterosexual population by a significant factor. And promiscuity is a great predictor for disease and disease transmission.

Data I've seen does not support that claim. I think it might have been true historically - particularly as a result of people like you pushing against marriage rights for same-sex couples and denying them society's support for their commitments to each other - but is no longer true.

I feel you're having a bit of a double standard when you simultaneously (a) reject marriage rights for same-sex couples and want to deny them the ability to commit to each other in the traditional cultural/social/legal manner for declaring public commitment as a couple; and (b) try to use their alleged lack of commitment as a reason they shouldn't have marriage in the first place. You're wanting to deny them the very tool that society uses to fix the problem you claim they have.

[seer]

I don't think the statistics comparing straight and gay couples back you up on this, but even if they did, a qualified gay couple or single parent would be superior to no parents.

I'm sorry, in this political climate even if there were studies that demonstrate the superiority of straight parents (like nature and God intended) no one would have the guts to publish. They would be pilloried.

[seer]

Which is as it should be...IMO. The same principle is at work.

Of course you do. They were one of the best NGOs for placing and following up on kids, and now they are out of business. So the kids are again sacrificed for the sake of political correctness. See this is what is wrong with you leftists - everyone must think and act like you, or they will suffer - in one way or the other.

[Cow Poke]

Of course you do. They were one of the best NGOs for placing and following up on kids, and now they are out of business. So the kids are again sacrificed for the sake of political correctness. See this is what is wrong with you leftists - everyone must think and act like you, or they will suffer - in one way or the other.

Leftists are Pro-Choice ONLY if they get go control all the choices.

[Cow Poke]

Nope! Nobody is entitled to special treatment. ALL citizens are entitled to equal protection according to the Fourteenth Amendment.

You are a hypocrite in the extreme, and too blind to even see it.

[rogue06]

Leftists are Pro-Choice ONLY if they get go control all the choices.

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And Health Care, Large Sugary
Drinks, Wearing Fur, SUVs etc...

[carpedm9587]

Sure! In order to justify your desire to shut down agencies that don't advance your pro-gay agenda, you'd need to prove that there is harm to children who are NOT placed with homosexual couples. You'd need to show that there is some legitimate reason - from the child's prospective, not just from a social engineering perspective - to require the agency to include homosexual couples as recipients.



It's rather extreme that you would want an adoption agency shut down simply because they do not fit your agenda.

Sure, there are a number of studies that show that homosexual couples do just as well as homosexual couples, but you'd really need to look at those studies, how they were researched, and who authored them....

Many studies have been done allegedly proving that children of same-sex parents fare just as well emotionally as those of heterosexual parents.

The problem with most of those studies, however, is that the parents were the ones who were interviewed. So how do you think those parents would have answered questions regarding child abuse – whether physical, sexual, or emotional? Obviously, they – like most parents – would downplay any abuse toward their kids.

Not only that, but study subjects were obtained through newspaper advertisements, LGBT events, and LGBT bookstores. These were people who understood what the study was about and had a vested interest in giving same-sex parenting a good name.

A new study – conducted by Donald Paul Sullins, a sociology professor at the Catholic University of America – has been released that is the first of its kind with regards to homosexual parenting. It took a longitudinal approach – meaning that the study focused on the same participants of the representative sample over the course of many years for the purpose of exploring the long-term effects of living under same-sex parents. This time, the children of same-sex parents were interviewed at different times in their lives – ages 15, 22, and 28. Not surprisingly, the study yielded a much different result compared with previous studies.

And, naturally, you'll probably want to discount THIS study because it was done by Donald Paul Sullins, a sociology professor at the Catholic University of America.

So now I'll respond to the second half of this post, CP. To dismiss this new study because its author is a Catholic priest that is a member of the Family Research Council‘s Marriage and Religion Research Institute (which has a strong position against same-sex marriage) would be the genetic fallacy at play. But anytime a study is done by someone with a vested interest in the topic, it should raise the level of sensitivity to possible bias, and make one look closer to see if the study is indeed valid.

The study used information from a National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). This information was collected between 1997-2013. The research analyzed 207,007 children. 512 of these children were identified by the study as having at least one biological parent in a same-sex relationship. The NHIS rated the emotional well-being, associated health care and treatment, and developmental issues, using a dozen standard measures. The study controlled for age, sex, race, and parent education and income to avoid biasing the results by these factors. So far so good. But there are more than a few problems with the study.

First, there are married heterosexual couples with children, and unmarried heterosexual couples with children. But in the homosexual community, in the studied period, homosexual marriage was rare. Marriage itself brings benefits to a relationship and household, and the study does not control for these.

Second, the study does not control for all of the other factors that contribute to child well being. There are several of these at play. For example, the study also does not control for how the homosexual partnership formed. Many of the children in these relationships are the result of a previous heterosexual relationships, which means a percentage of these children are living through the initial breakup/divorce of a set of parents. The study does not control for this. Sully also defined "same-sex parents" as "those persons whose reported spouse or cohabiting partner was of the same sex as themselves." There is not even an assurance in the study that both partners are actually in a mutual parenting relationship or the relationship was long term. This is true, apparently, for both heterosexual couples and homosexual ones. Finally, emotional well being is a factor affected by more than what happens in the family. Homosexuality still carries a significant social stigma, that varies by location. Children of same-sex parents often confront this stigma in schools and other extra-family contexts. The study does not (and cannot) isolate these factors to determine what part of the increased stress is due to extra-family factors.

Then Sullins goes on in parts of his study to make some flat out assertions that are just not supported by his data, like claiming the because at least one of the parents (and possibly both) in a same sex union are not the biological parent of the child, they are inherently less capable of providing the same level of care as two biological parents. To those of us who have adopted their children, this is an onerous statement in the extreme. There is very little care adoptive parents cannot give that biological parents can. Breastfeeding comes to mind. Beyond that, a strong argument can be made that adoptive parents have a structural edge to being good parents: we are not surprised by our "pregnancy;" we choose to bring a child to our home. We are thoroughly screened before we are permitted to adopt; any two people with the right sex equipment can conceive a child with no assurance they are actually ready to BE parents.

All in all, I find Sullins' study to be very weak. I can see why it would be jumped on by the right, but it is a badly flawed study that doesn't tell us much of anything. It appears that Sullins' pre-existing bias colored his work. His study comes to conclusions he cannot justify on the basis of the data (i.e., that the differing psychosocial issues in the children was due to same sex parenting). I also think the studies from the left are problematic. The problem is, same-sex marriage is new, and same-sex relationships are still resisted by 40% of our population. Until those two things are not true, we can study all the kids we want, but we cannot compare apples to apples because we cannot screen out these other factors and make a true 1-to-1 comparison AND determine a causal relationship.

[carpedm9587]

Bring white is something you are. Being a white supremacist is to be a subset of the group that is white with a specific opinion about how being white should be expressed.

Being same-sex is something you are. Being same-sex and for same-sex marriage is to be a subset of the group that is same-sex with a specific opinion about how being same-sex should be expressed.

I can go however many rounds of this you like carpe. If the analogies are equivalent, and I believe I have shown quite clearly in logical terms that they are, then that would mean that no matter what element you pull out and try to claim defines some critical difference, I will always be able to express each component you have picked in terms that show they are logically the same.

Jim

I've already responded to this, Jim. Your injection of "supremacy" breaks your rigorous symbolic breakdown, for the reasons I've already cited. You are changing one of the symbols midstream and then claiming it is still valid. It's simply not.

Being "white" is a matter of being. Being a "white supremacist" is not. You are shifting the context when you go from "white people" wanting a cake to "white supremacists" going to a meeting. The baker is not objecting to white people and refusing to engage in a rally comprised of only white people. They are objecting to white supremacists and refusing to engage in a rally for that cause. But when it comes to homosexuals, they are objecting to the same-sex nature of the participants in the gathering. There is no shift of context.
Being oriented to same-sex is a matter of being.

The analogies are not equivalent - which is why it doesn't work.

[carpedm9587]

We're going to disagree on this - any other person or entity can start an adoption agency that is "gay friendly". If I were to - for whatever reason - have to give up a child for adoption, I would not want them raised in a manner inconsistent with my faith. To rob me of that religious conviction is against the first amendment - prohibition clause. I should have the option of 'giving up for adoption' to an agency that will honor my faith.

No. Sorry, CP, but you apparently know very little about adoption. If you choose to find alternative parents for your child, you have two alternatives: an open adoption or a closed one. In the latter, you transfer your rights to the agency, and they find a set of parents for the child. If you choose that route, you release ALL control over what parents are chosen. But if you go the open adoption route, the adoption agency becomes the facilitator and you maintain your parenting rights until you choose an alternative set of parents. So you are completely able to select parents that match your desired profile, including religious affiliation, like moral frameworks, etc. And, even though the adoption is open, you are free to set the terms of contact. So by saying "an adoption agency cannot discriminate," no one is robbing you of any first amendment rights.