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Post by Kit Walker on Sept 7, 2011 17:46:38 GMT -5
I take issue with "tragic". Any situation where a child has a loving, supportive, and comfortable home life - regardless of what the parental arrangement is - is by definition the opposite of a tragedy. Having your mom die of cancer is a tragedy. Having a single father raise you is not.
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Post by cestlefun17 on Sept 7, 2011 18:32:36 GMT -5
By your definition. When a see a set of grandparents raising a grandchild, my first thought isn't "Oh isn't that wonderful, an alternative family! Isn't diversity in family structure a wonderful thing?" I think: "Oh no, what happened to that poor child's parents?"
It is certainly a good thing that the child could be taken in by someone who could care for him — an event which overcomes, or at least mostly overcomes, the original tragedy that a man and a woman made a baby they couldn't care for.
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Post by Amaranth on Sept 7, 2011 19:41:43 GMT -5
Well, I'm finally up for another round of wrist damaging, head-bashing crap.... Then please outline for me what your argument is and what my distorted version of it is. I took issue with the previously quoted text. You then rephrased things to ask what was wrong with things I never addressed. This is, admittedly, on the edge of "strawman" territory, but you couldn't have gotten there without an outright lie, a complete misunderstanding, or a desire to knock down strawmen. It's bigoted to assert double standards based on the same. Irrelevant to bring up whether or not you want it into law. A bigot is still a bigot, even if they do not seek legislation to enforce their bigotry. Except, of course, that wasn't what I was replying to. I was replying to your quote about adoption. It's not adoption if one of them is inseminated. Insemination is also only possible for roughly half of gay couples, which doesn't apply to the other half. Please don't argue unless you can pay attention to the context. You defended the urges of one group and not the other. You talk of irresponsibility of women having children alone for the wrong reasons but were still silent on coupls having a child for the wrong reasons. You assert that because biology matters to you, it should matter to a gay couple of who opts for insemination, or at least that it's a problem. Of course, that's about as true as the fear that homosexuals will "spread teh ghey." I'm too bored to read the next five pages. Maybe you've altered your stances, but I'm not sure I want to read through five pages od headdesk logic. |
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Post by cestlefun17 on Sept 7, 2011 20:06:52 GMT -5
What double standards am I advocating for? I have said over and over that to me, it is only acceptable to make a baby and contribute to the world population when both the people involved in making that baby are fully capable of caring for him or her.
Bigoted against whom?
I was imagining scenarios with a couple where if one person is inseminated the other person would go through a second-parent adoption to become the second legal parent. I thought this was the norm (at least in states that permit same-sex second parent adoptions). Insemination is only possible for lesbian couples, but surrogacy is the equivalent option for male gay couples, which I am also wary of. But with surrogacy you at least have to know who the woman is, and it is easier to later incorporate that woman into an involved relationship with her biological child.
My concern with biological ties rests in the child not the couple (or single parent): I feel it is the child's right to have a close relationship from birth with both his or her biological parents. A man who sells his sperm for a quick buck, fathering 150 children with whom he has no plans of developing a relationship with, and a woman who purposely goes out of her way to become a single mother, bringing one of those 150 children into this world knowing that child will not have a relationship with their father, is to me committing an injustice to the child.
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Post by Smurfette Principle on Sept 7, 2011 21:29:45 GMT -5
Yes, it would be nice if every child could have a close relationship with his or her blood parents. Unfortunately, a lot of parents and children don't have that option. Some people who would be perfectly wonderful parents can't have children. Sometimes assholes, unaware of their own assholery, bring children into what they think is a normal relationship. Sometimes a girl gets pregnant accidentally and doesn't get an abortion for religious or personal reasons. Single parents, gay parents, and adoptive parents are still parents, and to suggest that they are lesser because they are not related by blood is, quite frankly, offensive.
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Post by cestlefun17 on Sept 7, 2011 21:42:05 GMT -5
Good we agree 100% up to this point.
And for the billionth time, this is not what I'm saying. I believe in an ideal situation, and I believe society would operate best if everyone acted to uphold this ideal (it's no different than any other political opinion: for example an ideal to have universal healthcare, believing that society would operate best if we all elected honest politicians who would construct such policies). This ideal is that, since it takes a man and a woman to make a baby, that this man and this woman, in a loving and stable marriage, should, lovingly and competently care for their own children that they themselves produce.
In reality, of course, this ideal is not always upheld. And when it isn't, and the responsibility for caring for a child must devolve onto people other than the two people who made him or her, these adoptive parents should be admired, given the utmost respect, and treated equally as a family in all cases whatsoever. My criticism does NOT rest with these people. Furthermore, adoption agencies should not distinguish between opposite-sex and same-sex married couples when looking to place children.
My criticism rests with all people — gay, straight, single, or coupled — who intentionally go out of their way to create children under this less than ideal scenario. To create a child with a perfect stranger, knowing that your child will have no relationship with this other parent, and for the rest of the biological parent's life, adopted parent's life, and the child's life having to pretend that this other biological parent simply does not exist.
I should add that, while still not the ideal scenario, it would at least be acceptable to me if a gay married couple or single person, after carefully considering adoption, still wanted to have a biological child, that the biological parent know and trust the donor, and that the donor be involved in the child's life. This way the child is no worse off than a child of heterosexual divorced parents with joint custody (actually probably even better off since the biological parents will be on friendly terms).
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