A country that does the right thing, finally.

Talk about beating a dead horse, but hey, looks like none of us have anything better to do.

I'm getting that part just fine, and I've explained what you seem to think is a contradiction (which it really isn't, because it doesn't apply to the same issue, as I said). If you still aren't happy with my explanation, try to focus on something that actually has bearing on the overall discussion.

I think you still don't get what I was talking about (either that, or you're just not making sense). I was talking about a gay couple (as in, 2 gays seeing each other), one playing a typical male role, while the other one plays a female/feminine role.

Well, the topic IS homosexuals, so I didn't see much point delving into everything heterosexual.

Define "damaged". Certainly there would be a high potential for negative psychological influences that could mark a child subconsciously for life. But this isn't exact science. Some children can take a lot of abuse (physical and/or mental) during childhood and still lead a perfectly normal adult life. Some simply can't, and break down in one area or another. There's no clear rule, because it depends on the nature of every individual child. There's just a much higher likelyhood of negative consequences caused by deviant behaviour in adults that the child looks up to than with what is considered a typical family where the adults take on standard gender roles. Children build their own identity in large part by imitating and internalizing the behaviour of their fathers (for boys) and mothers (for girls). Having an extreme either in the case of the mother or the father would make it that more likely for the child of the same gender to take on the traits of their parent of the same gender. Which would be bad either in the case of an aggressive mother OR father.

As I wrote back in the beginning of the thread, that's always the next step in countries that only legalize gay marriages or civil unions.

Well, all the adoption rules for heterosexual couples would naturally also have to apply for homosexuals, so that's not really an issue. But the fact is that the gayness of parents is really the only issue that's debatable in this case. All the arguments against gay adoptions only stem from the fact that gay people also want to have the privilege to adopt children. Being against it doesn't mean we're "not treating them like people". This issue is so complex exactly because it involves a 3rd party that can't defend itself - the children that would be involuntarily given to gays to raise. Given the option of being raised in a regular vs. a gay family, how many children old enough to decide for themselves do you think would pick a gay one?

I think I've answered that a bit higher up in this post, but yes, certainly, I don't think that just anything a heterosexual couple comes up with is ok by default. I can see results of bad heterosexual parenting all around me. And yea, it's easy for me to talk without having any children of my own yet, so I guess I'll have to wait and see my own grow up to be able to judge how well I've managed to put my theories to practice. But as far as I can tell, most of the cases of children turning out bad (by my standards) come from parents either caring too little for them, or too much (in the sense of allowing them everything just because they love them so much). The last one is probably the biggest pitfall of modern parenting.

The primary topic here is adoption, and speaking of that, I don't think such heterosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children either. But such behaviour is hardly something a social worker could determine at a brief glance into their life and home (unless evidence of abuse is obvious), so it's not really something that could be generally enforced. But in an ideal world, I'd think it should be, sure.

Because children primarily learn from their parents. And the first thing they'd learn from gay parents is all about being gay. That's the problem. The argument that they'd see heterosexual behaviour everywhere else doesn't really hold water, because "everywhere else" doesn't even remotely have as much influence as what mommy and daddy do (or the two mommies or daddies...). Say, for example, that a gay couple lives in a remote location and decides to home school their children. What do you think would happen, and who would the children primarily take after?

Um, just being loud and decisive doesn't make a woman into a man, or extensively "manly" (there's a whole bunch of other potential factors that figure into it). Whereas a gay man consciously playing a role of a woman in many more aspects is something else entirely. But again, both of these are extremes, and arguing about extremes is pretty futile.

Yea, sure, in theory you're right. But manly women and feminine men are exceptions to the general rule potentially still retaining most of the qualities of average men and women, whereas gays are an entirely separate category through sheer nature of their union. As for gay love and sex being a private thing - funny you should mention that. One of the most obvious differences about my gay friends is that they are way, way more open about sexuality and switching partners than any heterosexual people I know. Even to the point of public French kissing and fondling. I can only imagine what it'd look like in their home with children watching. I'd like to believe they'd stop doing it for the good of the children, but trusting into that would be quite naive.

There's a world of difference between the words bad and unfit. People can be unfit for adoption for a whole number of reasons, which can be very unfair - say, not having a separate room in their home for an adopted child. How unfair that couples who have their own children can put a whole bunch of them into a single room if they so decide, huh? But that's how the system is set up - everything should be in the best interest of the adopted child. NOT to satisfy anyone's perceived right to adopt. How do you think is in any child's best interest to be adopted by gays over a regular heterosexual family?

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

 

Geez... YES! 4 gay people, 2 couples! You know, 2×2=4.

And I never said I was sure I knew everything about them, so please don't put words into my mouth. I know them reasonably well to draw some conclusions, but that's it. Of course there's still the possibility I'm wrong, I just don't think it's very likely.

Well, naturally no child would ever get stuck with gay parents, considering they can't have children on their own.

Indeed it would, and I'd certainly have no problems with that. As long as it's the kid's own choice.

Gay people normally don't live with their parents, so I'm not sure what your point is.

As for teaching, you can teach children all you like, but theory is one thing, while seeing something else in practice 24/7 is what will have the most profound influence. Like teaching children not to swear, or smoke, or argue, while the kid sees the parents doing exactly that on a daily basis.

It's not about actually *becoming* a woman. But still, the propensity to dress in drag is rooted pretty firmly in the gay domain. Do you think two drag queens would still make suitable parents? Or one drag queen and another homosexual?

I don't know about children watching, but I was pretty disgusted with it myself when I saw it, so it's not like most adults would feel any better about it.

That's not exactly true. There's more older/problematic children that no one wants to adopt, but there are always more parents wanting to adopt infants and babies than there actually are available. If anyone would care for a compromise, I'd suggest allowing gays to adopt children who are old enough to decide on their own if they want to live with a gay couple. That way they'd actually be doing the society a service by taking care of children no one else wants to adopt, as well as not infringing on the children's own rights.

 

Yea, I thought you'd guess I was speaking about 2 couples from the context... my bad.

Err, attempted lesbianism? What exactly does that mean?

I have a problem with kids being taught everything about being gay first, with the regular heterosexual behaviour coming second. The chances of gay parents actually winding up with gay children (unless they indoctrinate them into being gay) are pretty slim.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Practically all of the research in this area that comes up with results that are not disconcerting is either conducted or funded by gay interests groups, and unreliable by default. Those few that have been conducted independently of any interest groups have shown a much higher rate of children raised by gays leading a gay lifestyle as adults - a number as shocking as 25% of all gay adopted children. That definitely IS something to be very concerned about.

However, in most countries where gay adoption has been allowed it hasn't been so for 20+ years, and you can't get very accurate statistics in this case until at least a generation of children raised by gays grows up. But the predisposition to gayness in gay-adopted children can be measured much sooner, and the independent research I've read about this alarms me (sorry, this was in newspapers and magazines here, so I don't have any links).

That's not really it, because people of any colour or ethnic group naturally wish to adopt a child that resembles them, so it's just a small contributing factor. The real issue are disabled children, or children with mental or psychological problems, or HIV, or children above a couple of years old, etc. No one wants these children. Allowing gays to adopt on the same level as heterosexual couples only means that fewer babies being available for adoption into regular non-gay families. Because gays are no more interested in adopting anyone but non-problematic infants than heterosexual parents are.

 

I don't think that's true. Do you have anything to back up that statement with?

Again, I don't think you can really speculate what illusions most gay people have or don't have. As for cross-dressing as a sexual fetish vs. drag; they're two quite different things.

No, you're probably just reading me wrong. I meant to emphasize that the chances of a gay couple actually adopting children who will be gay by nature (and not become such through their indoctrination) are pretty slim. The fact that the number of children raised by gay parents who also lead a gay lifestyle as adults is much higher than it naturally should be is the primary cause for alarm.

Well, as I said, I don't have a handy online source to quote and check, but even allowing for a significant margin of error, that percentage is still enormous. As for the number of people studied; it wouldn't be much of a research if the number was small. It had to be at least a representative sample of the gay parents.

And it's really only an issue where there is a large non-white population present alongside the dominant white population, so US, UK, France and some other European countries. But hardly everywhere. And as far as I recall, some of these countries don't let people choose the ethnicity of the child at all, eliminating the problem completely.

We have friends of the family here in Slovenia, where the population is almost exclusively white, who've had to wait on a list for 5 (five) years before they could adopt a baby daughter. One of the biggest problems is that countries where people want to adopt children the most have the least available children for adoptions. Adoptions of children from other countries are unfortunately nearly non-existent everywhere in the world, despite the fact that this could immediately solve the problems of having to wait for several years before being able to adopt a child.

[ January 02, 2006, 19:41: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

That's one way of looking at it. However, the other one (which I think is much more likely), is that the children are being indoctrinated into being gay by their gay parents. When you live your entire formative years with gay parents, it'd be hard for a certain percentage of children not to pick it up (as a learned behaviour, if not natural to them) unless their gay parents went to extreme measures to prevent it (which is quite unlikely - I'm sure every gay parent would jump for joy if their adopted children started showing gay tendencies as well - and how many children would do just that simply to make their gay parents happy?).