Efficacy and Reason

prop 8, heterosexual, homophobia, homosexual, gay, marriage, tradition, traditional, adoption, children, logic, reason
I can't say as I've ever heard "efficacy" used in quite this context before:

The whole argument about “fairness” misses the point on marriage. Marriage isn’t about fairness…it’s about efficacy. It’s not a gay/straight equation, it’s a marriage vs. everything else equation.

No other living arrangement works as well for the stability of children and families as a loving lifelong marriage between a man and a woman.

That is the true case, and that’s why gay “marriage” will never be equal.

Um . . . efficacy? And who will be deciding the efficacy of marriages? Clearly, simply being straight isn't all there could be to efficacy. I mean, the whole basis of her argument is marriage and children. What about my marriage? There's no children involved. There never will be. There can't be.

So, as efficacy is being determined by children, and I can't have children (and don't want to), my marriage will automatically be . . . what? Denied? Just like she's denying marriage to same sex couples?

I rather think so.

Methinks someone might enjoy wearing a brown shirt a little too much.

For the reason portion of this post, we revisit our old friend emissary, who seems to think he can reason his way out of a wet paper bag. (Hint: that part you see light coming through- it's the opening.)

The Best Place for Raising Children

Traditional marriage is being attacked from all angles. you're a bunch of bigoted morons is not "all angles". But one of the most damaging cause it's true! is the idea that "there is no best place to raise a child." i'm voting for sweden, but i'm a big fan of their tiny deer. Studies have supposedly been done showing that children raised by same-sex couples are not harmed in any way because of it. yes, they have been done. it's science! But if we try to counter with other studies debunked flawed studies comparing two parent households to one parent households. (as if two gay guys is only equal to one woman or something). or stories of the opposite stories are not science, it's claimed that statistics are misleading or studies can be biased. yeah. that's not a claim, that's fact. stop using debunked studies.

If we can't use statistics, studies, or personal stories, you can use statistics, just not debunked ones. what does that leave us with? bigotry. We can reason through it. who is this "we" you refer to? To do so, I used a tool called a "best-best comparison". wait, you're tool-using now? who knew? It basically acknowledges that any individual may be an incredible parent. maybe, ya know, unless their gay. So we compare the BEST married father and mother to the BEST same-sex couple to the BEST single parent. how do we do that? do we hold tryouts? what exact criteria are we using for "BEST"? did you interview everyone on the damn planet to determine this? probably not. This removes the "it depends on who the parents are" argument. why keep the good arguments when you can use bad ones instead? And what does it leave us with? a lot of bunk? Is there anything that makes the best married parents superior to any other form of parenting? did he just ask if best is better than better?

The answer is a resounding YES. Yes-es-es-es-es

While I encourage everyone to do this experiment, other than yourself? i see no evidence of an experiment here. this word, i do not think it means what you think it means. here are three main advantages that my "best-best comparison" shows. I have mentioned some of these in other contexts, but want to include them here.

First, it provides a parent to emulate. Girls learn how to be women from their mothers. Boys learn how to be men from their fathers. nothing like turning conformity to gender stereotypes into the highest form of parenting. asshat. This is especially important in the context of big changes, like puberty. One of the most valid comments I read was, "When a girl is starting her menstrual cycle, which of her dads will really understand?"

no, that's not a valid question, it's a stupid question. clearly, emissary has never menstruated. i'm menstruating right now, and i can tell you, there's not a lot to understand.

Second, it provides a parent to represent the other sex. In the vast majority of society, girls grow up to marry men, and men grow up to marry women. They see from their parents how to find someone they want to be with, and how to make the marriage work well. Many girls know how to find a marriage partner by looking for someone like their fathers. Boys look for someone like their mothers. There are so many problems caused in today's society by girls who never had fathers. They don't know how to find a good man, so many of them try to find just any man.

by this logic, hetero couples should not be allowed to raise gay children, because their gay children will have no representation of a loving gay marriage. i don't think he means that.

Third, it provides security and belonging. which a same sex couple couldn't provide . . . why? There is nothing quite like security to a child. To know that your parents are the same people who wanted you, conceived you, bore you, legally own you legally OWN you?, and will raise you to the best of their abilities . . . . It is almost impossible to describe the belonging that gives to a child. Adopted children have similar feelings because they have a father and mother who stand in the stead of their biological parents. so children adopted by hetero couples have this security, but children adopted by same sex couples do not? why? in fact, according to asshat here, the biological child of one half of a same sex couple should feel more security than the unrelated adopted child of a hetero couple. it's your logic, asshat, own it. But any other arrangement eventually produces a loss of that security. When children realize that it takes a man and a woman to produce a child, children in same-sex homes or with single parents realize that something is missing. lulz! They are missing their other half -- the other parent they should have. you mean like the adopted child of a hetero couple who is missing BOTH halves? be very careful with the logic that is pointy on both ends, my dear.

So what does this mean? not what he thinks it does.

Does this mean that other kinds of parents cannot raise healthy, successful children? No; but it requires concerted effort to give them good role models they can interact with on a consistent basis. not their parents, because we can't trust gays to parent properly. The intact, married family, on the other hand, is self-sufficient (so to speak). that's why hetero couples never need daycare or baby sitters. As such, I believe it's important that society and government support the married family to give children the best chance. I do not believe that the government should support, promote, or pay for any procedure that will purposefully not give a child a mother and a father. is this a screed against IVF or something? i can't even follow the illogic at this point. hell, he proved half my points for me, which is no fun at all.

An Honest Look at Adoption

abortion, adoption, birth, mother, prochoice, prolife,
Look, I'm not saying adoption is a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. It's certainly a wonderful thing for people who can't have children and desperately want them. But I have never, ever, seen anything written from the point of view of the birth mother (who in this case had previously had an abortion). Now I have.

****Warning****

The post is a tough read. It's not freakin' Juno. It made me very sad, and very angry. Maybe, just maybe, before we suggest adoption as the panacea to unwanted pregnancies, we need to address the very real concerns brought up by a very real birth mother.

Just a few highlights for those who don't like to click.

Adoption fucked up my head far worse than abortion. I've googled over the years about the psychological aftereffects of giving up a baby, and what little I found is astonishing. Depression and suicide rates ridiculously high, comparable to PTSD - and beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is no way you can cook any post-abortion trauma study to come anywhere near post-adoption trauma levels. Strange how peer-reviewed studies on this are damn near non-existent; strange how nobody mentions any of this when it's not just your mind on the line, but also that of your kid or kids (more on that later). Strange how this is never on the radar when these stupid obstructionist anti-abortion rules are proposed by retrofuckwits.

. . .

Emotional fallout only matters to [pro lifers] as a political talking point, in a conversation that includes space only for what is convenient to their preexisting narratives. There's no space to talk about, for example, how, to give a baby up for adoption, you've got to get the father's signature on the papers, or else face legal hell (now, or later). I was raped, by a so-called friend; I had to go through legal hell to get a signature anyway. It was pretty damn adversarial.

. . .

To wind this down: one size fits all doesn't apply to adoption, any more than it does to abortion. If there's going to be discussion about mental issues arising from abortion, then there had damn well better start being just as much - if not more - discussion about mental issues arising from adoption. I cannot say that I'd be surprised to find out that any concern on the part of pro-lifers about birth mothers ended the second she signed the papers; I will scream "Hypocrisy!" as loud as I can if they try to pass off their latest brainfarts as such. You've seen this already: they also argue about the sanctity of a fetus' life, but I see no legislation addressing the quality of life of adoptees.

None of which matters to the kind of people who picket clinics. Not me, not the kid, nothing. All they care about is whether or not they win.

Truer words were never spoken.

The DNA Continues to Define Two-Faced

dna, gay, homophobia, homosexual, marriage, adoption, children, stupid,
Once again, the DNA gives us an excellent example of what "two-faced" means.

Exhibit "A": members of the DNA protesting the use of government funds to advertise the benefits of allowing gays to adopt children.

Exhibit "B": members of the DNA happily supporting the use of government funds to advertise the benefits of marriage.

So, are we in such a fiscal crisis that we can't use money to promote social programs, or not? Which is it, asshats?

American College of Pediatricians

pediatrics, pediatricians, children, gay, adoption, marriage, prop 8, stupid, parents
This made me wonder: Pediatricians hate gays?

The organization referenced in the article is the American College of Pediatricians, a wingnut breakaway group (founded in 2002) from the American Academy of Pediatricians (founded in 1930).

The American College of Pediatricians supports:

Opposition to adoption by homosexual individuals
Support for parentally guided access of young children's television viewing
Support for parental choice regarding HPV vaccinations for young children (as opposed to legal mandates)
Opposition to the legalization of marijuana use
Support for the right to life of preborn children
Defense of traditional mother-father heterosexual marriage

The American Academy of Pediatrics, on the other hand, believes:

Children who are born to or adopted by 1 member of a same-sex couple deserve the security of 2 legally recognized parents. Therefore, the American Academy of Pediatrics supports legislative and legal efforts to provide the possibility of adoption of the child by the second parent or coparent in these families.
Children deserve to know that their relationships with both of their parents are stable and legally recognized. This applies to all children, whether their parents are of the same or opposite sex. The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes that a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual.1–9 When 2 adults participate in parenting a child, they and the child deserve the serenity that comes with legal recognition.

Not all academies are created equal.

All Words Are Made Up

The proProp 8 crowd is desperately trying to convince us that they are not bigots. Ummm . . . yeah. Sure. Good luck with that. (Don't even start with "some of my friends are gay".)

People who support traditional marriage are not “homophobes” (a made up/etymologically incorrect word).
People who support traditional marriage are not bigots.

Sure you are. Are you trying to deny any other nonheteronormative groups marriage rights? Furries can still get married, to the best of my knowledge. (Apologies to the furries, I think you have the right to do what makes you happy, but I'm kind of surprised that the religious right hasn't started boycotting you yet.) Besides that, how can you construe denying a group civil rights as anything other than bigoted?

As to "entymologically incorrect/made up word": all words are made up. At some point, somebody pointed at a tree, said "tree" and there we were. Does this asshat honestly think that sounds have inherent meaning? If so, why are there so many different languages?

People who support traditional marriage most likely see it as a wise move for society.
Children do best with a married mom and dad. People who support traditional marriage want to do everything they can to help their society present the best possible situations for children: keeping marriage exclusive is one way to achieve this goal. Look, in a perfect world, every child would have a mommy and a daddy and a doggy and a house with a white picket fence. Do we live in that world? For the most part, gays ADOPT children. (not that i have anything against gays using surrogates and/or sperm donors, i'm just dealing with what the law addresses) If a child is adopted, clearly they didn't have a mommy and a daddy, etc. So, yonicsymbolsquared thinks bouncing from foster home to foster home or group home to group home is better for a child than a stable home that involves two daddies or two mommies.

See, here's the part of that these bigots never address. Gays aren't stealing children from stable, heteronormative homes with stay at homes. They're getting children that have no other chance at love and stability. Way to go, asshat, you helped pass legislation that makes it harder for children to find love.

Marriage is exclusive for a reason. Its exclusivity encourages participation (which means commitment, stability, sacrifice). Sure, marriage is like the latest hot club in LA, the more people who can't get in, the more people who want to. Which is why the divorce rate is so high. Gays just want to get married because it's the cool thing to do. By that logic, we should allow people to marry their livestock, and then the gays won't want to get married at all.

People can support traditional marriage and love their brothers at the same time. as long as he's not gay.

A gay brother is not justification for stripping children of their right to a mom and a dad. nobody is suggesting removing the right to marry from heteros. nobody is suggesting taking children from supportive, loving hetero homes and moving them to gay homes. the only thing the removal of prop 8 would accomplish is to make heteros not quite so special.

The existence of homosexuality is not justification for changing the foundational unit of any society: a man and a woman. actually, that's not the foundational unit of every society. many societies are based on polygymy: one man and one woman and one more woman and yet another woman. at least one society is based on polyandry: one woman and one man and another man, and a few more men. some societies are truly socialist: children are raised communally and there is no personal property. don't project our normatives onto everyone, yonicsquared.