Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 6:06:55 PM
There was no way the marriage neutering advocates at the Los Angeles Times were going to run David Blankenhorn’s piece in support of Proposition 8 without running some letters trying to counter the piece. Considering their bias, I’m sure they’ll run the best opposing letters they can. So far, it looks like there wasn’t too much good stuff to choose from.
Marc Jones of San Diego, instead of dealing with the arguments, attempted to subvert Blankenhorn’s claim to be a liberal Democrat by noting that one of the academic advisors listed at Blankenhorn’s Institute for American Values proposes that “evangelical Protestant father-mother families provide the ideal environment for raising well-adjusted children”, which probably means that advisor is an evangelical Protestant. Shocking that people would actually think it ideal to pass along their own culture, I know. But Jones also notes that the Heritage Foundation “considers Blankenhorn an expert on family issues”. I suppose Jones would reject statistics from the Census Bureau if the Heritage Foundation used them?
Tara C. Woods of Rancho Palos Verdes tries to convince us that marriage has traditionally been mostly about economics, and also does nothing to refute the arguments that bride-groom marriage licensing benefits children.
Finally, Laura Durso of Honolulu goes with the expected counterargument:
It is shocking to me that in this yearlong study of the history of marriage, Blankenhorn never happened upon the wealth of studies that demonstrate that when it comes to raising children, gays and lesbians are as suited to the task as their straight counterparts.
"Wealth" is stretching it.
Sure, a homosexual man can raise a child as a straight man can. However, two men can’t be a mother, nor can two women be a father. Also, most children will grow up to deal with mostly straight men and straight women when it comes to personal and professional matters, and having a parental role model representing each is ideal. Only someone who didn’t have a father or had a creep for a father would disagree that a father is important to child – same goes for mothers – and even many people who had that situation know the importance. Or maybe there are a few clueless and unappreciative people who did have good fathers and mothers who fail to recognize their importance.
One need only ask the American Medical Assn., the Child Welfare League, the American Academy of Pediatrics -- the list goes on.
The real question is why do those organizations take those positions? If it is because they caved into political pressure, then that doesn’t help. I don’t trust people who honestly can’t tell the difference between a mother and a father.
I can agree with Blankenhorn on one thing -- marriage is about protecting children -- but I am saddened that he does not include the millions of children who would be protected if their same-sex parents were allowed to marry. He's tried to explain his position to us. Now try explaining it to them.
What protects the children most is having a mother and a father as their married parents. That is the main reason marriage is good for children - it gives them both.
But what about the children living with a homosexual parent? Where did those kids come from? Not from the union of two men or two women. Nature knows children should have a biological mother and father (Why is this one of the few areas where Leftists have no respect for nature?). Those children are the result of previous relationships or encounters with someone of the opposite sex, third party reproduction, or someone arranging for an adoption. Someone intentionally decided to deprive the child of a situation where they’d have a mother and father married to each other. All of those children are in those situations because of deliberate choices of the adults that are supposed to care for them. So because a few people are choosing to make a mess of things for these children, we’re supposed to try to clean it up by neutering marriage for everyone? If someone was heterosexual long enough to make babies with someone else, surely they can marry that person and stay with them? Don’t want your children raised outside of marriage? Then don’t make them or adopt them unless you are in a healthy and stable marriage with the right person who can be the mother or father you can’t be, and treat that person kindly so that the marriage will last. Should it not last, concentrate on raising your child instead of exposing them to the physical and emotional risks of new people in their homes that are there for your sexual pleasure.