One of my favorite sayings, which I learned from Christians, is "Hate the sin, love the sinner". Since I'm not keen on the Christian concept of sin, I translate it as "Recognize the negative consequences of certain behaviors and habits of thought, but accept and love the person who is caught up in the exercise of those behaviors and thoughts'.

Doesn't have the same ring.

I am 'denied' the same pay as my boss,, presumably because it is ASSUMED his responsibilities and significance within the company are harder to replace.

It is hard to REPLACE the presence of a mother AND father in a childs life. ,,it can happen, but it is presumed that the responsibility and significance of the male female union to the family is one that is harder to replace or duplicate than any other


so in that, I feel mother and father unions SHOULD be held at an ESTEEM and encouraged above all others.

mother and father unions SHOULD be held at an ESTEEM and encouraged above all others.”

So hetero couples with children should be held in higher esteem than hetero couples without children?


And gay couples that adopt should be held in higher esteem than childless hetero couples.

I can agree with that.

actually I said MOTHER AND FATHER, so that wouldnt apply to anyone with children

I hold the union of a MOTHER and FATHER (or potential mother and father) in higher esteem than other unions,

Unless we are going to start insisting mother and father be non gender specific titles,, that complement is of a unique significance in a childs life

None of those children have ever suffered ill effects - or those cultures would not have existed as long as they have.

The logic in that statement escapes me. There are any number of routes that can be taken to resolve the dissatisfaction of pay discrepancies. While there is only ONE route which can be taken to gain full responsibility and benefit of more than 1,000 laws specifically tied to marriage.





The divorce rate is at or near 50% and I imagine the number children born outside of marriage bring the broken family unit to well over 50%. Consider the number of children who are born of the same mother and various fathers who were never long (if at all) part of the family unit. Consider the number of men AND women that choose to work in fields where long hours and travel put them in second place to those who care for the children in their absence. And then there are those children being raised by a grandparent or aunts and uncles because the real parents are in prison or off the radar in some personal excursion of drug or mind. We have long since ceased to even be qualified as the society of your ideology.

Finally, we can't forget the many cultures in existence today that place a varying degree of importance on the roles of members in the family unit. A whole tribe can be a family. In the Matriarchal family the birth father has less status to a child than the more distant female relatives. The language of some cultures has one word that is used to denote father, uncle, and grandfather, just as there is only one word for the female counterparts because they are all equally revered.

None of those children have ever suffered ill effects - or those cultures would not have existed as long as they have.

So in the ideology of



I have to ask WHY? Considering the reality (stated above) why should that ideology be the socially accepted view? Instead, why not give others the opportunity to add whatever family stability can be had out of marriage, by extending their rights to be wed under the law?

I grew up with a very strong sense of self and I only had one parent. My mother never married nor does she intend to. She is religious and as far as she is concerned, her happiness comes first. She raised the 3 of us very well on her own.

My youngest sister had her real father and her step father and turned out worse than my other sister and i did growing up with only our mother.

Sense of self comes from family and upbringing not from making sure there is a father/mother pairing. It is HOW you are raised, not WHO you are raised by.

one never knows...but I suspect that if and when we do start seeing an increase in impotency,,,it wont be the result of any ONE sexual lifestyle,,,,

because in AMERICAN culture, there has been a very real correlation between how the absence of one half of that partnership is MORE LIKELY to produce terrible consequences for children

In AMERICAN culture, the mother-father partnership deserves to be held in high esteem for the positive impact it has on childrens sense of self and self esteem and stability.

certainly, in a comparison of HEALTHY relationships,,a child grows up with a stronger sense of self if they can know and see whom it is they came from on a regular basis,,,,one possible reason why so many adopted children still dont feel like they 'know who they are'. Genetics, or God, or whomever or whatever designed human life,, designed it to come from the male female union and none other,, NATURE made that male female union pretty uniquely spectacular,,,,,not me

" ... Childern grow up with a strong sense of self, when they grow up believing they are loved and valued for who they are. It doesn't take a mother AND a father living in a household to make that happen ... "

Yes, I would have to agree, but not for the same reasons you would. Until WWII few women were gainfully employed. Most married women in the 1960's didn't work, and if they did their wages could not sustain a family beyond poverty level. Yes, children in those situations were MORE LIKELY to face terrible consequences.

Of course in those times you would be hard-pressed to find same-sex couples openly raising their children together, so we can't possibly attribute any consequences -good or bad- to the lack of a father/mother in a two mother/father home.

What we do know today is that children of same-sex parental households face a plethera of various peer pressures, and cultural bias. So any attempt to validate the "terrible consequences" of a family headed by same-sex couples through statistics would have to consider how those kids are treated by society.




What stability? - when 50% (or more) of kids do not live in the same home with both natural parents. Where do you think that self-esteem comes from? Do you think society has anything to do with that?

There was a study done several years ago in which little girls who were all Black were given their choice of dolls to play with. Almost all of them chose white baby dolls over Black ones. When asked about their choice they saw white as good, angelic and black as bad and evil. Do you think whether there was both a mother and father in those households had anything to do with that kind of self-esteem?



Childern grow up with a strong sense of self, when they grow up believing they are loved and valued for who they are. It doesn't take a mother AND a father living in a household to make that happen

Put a homosexual teenager in a household with a strong family conviction and a total bias against homosexuality and ask the kid (who lives in a dark closet) how he/she feels about him/herself?