“Tell that to the kids who ask, “who should I send my Father’s Day card to?””

This is one seriously offensive statement. It’s like claiming that everyone should be Christian because otherwise their kids will miss out on sending letters to Santa. Come on! Apart from the offensive “conform with the majority or else” sentiment, do you really think that not having someone to send a Father’s Day card to is going to seriously traumatize a happy, well cared for child?

Ok, I’ll ask. How are men and women different, apart from the genitalia?

These women included both straight and lesbian women, couples and single mothers. The basic conclusion: “[The children's] adjustment was unrelated to structural variables such as parental sexual orientation or the number of parents in the household.” In other words, nope, the gender of the parents doesn’t matter.

Tell that to the kids who ask, “who should I send my Father’s Day card to?”

The number of parents isn’t as important as everyone seems to think either.

Well if that’s the case, if two moms are good, three would be better, or four. Or why have two parents at all? What makes the number two so special?

http://www.narth.com/docs/does.html

http://www.narth.com/docs/york.html

http://www.narth.com/docs/optimal.html

http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/sexdifferences/article9.html

http://www.enotalone.com/article/4316.html

There are others but I’m sure you can see that there are differences between the sexes other than their plumbing, and that such differences impact children.

That is, it’s the default position in law. The husband doesn’t have to be biologically related to the child to get legal fatherhood.

Theoretically (I recall no instance) a married woman could register her child and put another man’s name on the birth certificate, but that would not give the other man (not her husband) parental rights and responsibilities automatically, though I suppose it would make him, not her husband, the legal father. Seriously, if you know of an instance where this happened, I’d appreciate a cite: it’s not something I recall happening.

Your case falls over because it is based on a faulty assumption.

Marriage does not change a woman’s legal position in relation to a child born of her body; whether she is biologically-related to the child or the fetus is from donor eggs, she is the legal mother of the child.

Marriage does change the husband’s legal position: if he is married to a woman either at time of conception or at time of birth, he is presumed to be the legal father of the child, and this is so whether or not he is the biological father of the child. That’s the point you keep skipping over: legal fatherhood overrides biological fatherhood.

There is a clear and obvious parallel between the husband’s position if he is the legal father of a child who is not biologically related to him, and the wife or civil partner’s position when she becomes the legal m0ther of a child not biologically related to her. When a woman becomes pregnant via AID, her spouse (male or female) should become the child’s other legal parent. Anything else is discrimination.

Yes, I was addressing nik’s claim that a married woman who abandons her husband severs his claim to their children until he proves he is the biodad… a woman’s husband is the father of her children unless somebody, within the confines of the law, shows otherwise.

It’s not the abandoning her husband that severs his claim so much as making a legal declaration that he is not the father (which she’s obliged to do on registering the birth). The birth certificate is such a means that you talk about. I don’t think my case is really about presumption, so much as how marriage changes peoples legal position in relation to their biological children born in the marriage.

Generally speaking, a woman’s husband is the father of her children unless somebody, within the confines of the law, shows otherwise. (For example, many states do not allow a third party to raise a claim of paternity.)

Well, quite. That’s exactly what I pointed out in my comment.

Again, the laws on this vary by state, in the US, and it can also depend on factors such as whether he knew he was not the biological father, the age of the child, and so on.

I would be very surprised to learn that the UK has abolished the presumption of paternity within marriage. It’s a rebuttable presumption.

A man married to a woman is deemed to be the legal father of all children she bears. He can opt out of this if he can prove that he isn’t the biological father of her child, or if she got pregnant via AID at a fertility clinic without his consent (if with his consent, or if they were “treated together”, I do not believe he can opt out of legal fatherhood).

The husband cannot claim rights over a child by sole virtue of being married to its mother

Why yes, he can. If he and the mother are married at the time of either conception or birth, he can. It is of course possible for the mother to attempt to register the child with someone other than her husband, but if she was married at the time of conception or is married at the time of birth, her husband has a claim to be the legal father, regardless of genetic connection.

Parents status with relation to their biological children, depends on whether they’re married or not - there’s no parallel with SSM.

You keep repeating this and repeating this, even after you’ve been shown clear parallels, which you then ignore. It’s almost as if you’re determined not to see the parallels, because you want same-sex marriage to be perceived as intrinsically different from mixed-sex marriage.

[Marriage does give people rights over their spouse's siblings child]. If Wife has an affair with Husband’s Brother, the child is nonetheless legally presumed to be Husband’s biological offspring under the law”“and Husband’s Brother may not be able to do a damn thing about it.

I think it goes a bit beyond this. Certainly in the UK, the wife would have to name the husband on the birth certificate first (which is covered by the Perjury Act and, if she lies, she can be jailed for doing so). The husband cannot claim rights over a child by sole virtue of being married to its mother - if she named her lover as the father and then ran off with him - the husband would have no rights over the child. Only a right to try and prove his paternity. The rights are not by sole virtue of being married, they’re by virtue of being married and a (legal) claim being made about who’s the biological parent.

Parents status with relation to their biological children, depends on whether they’re married or not - there’s no parallel with SSM. This isn’t a fine distinction. There’s no analogy with SSM here - if a woman names her partner in a SSM as the parent on the birth certificate (outside of the ART and adoption exceptions), that’s by definition a crime. There’s a good reason why it’s a crime too: she’d be wrongly making a series of legal and economic claims against her partner, and she’d be making a false statement in order to deny the biological father of his claims.

Certainly, if the marriage laws required spouses to be of the same sex, that would be discrimination. Nobody is arguing for SS-only marriage.

Surely you’re not trying to make the silly argument that if two women marry, they are discriminating against males.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9222029&query_hl=4

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=7611338&query_hl=4

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15482501&query_hl=4

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11212073&query_hl=4

So what was important? “Parents who were experiencing higher levels of parenting stress, higher levels of interparental conflict, and lower levels of love for each other had children who exhibited more behavior problems.” People who love their partners and their children have happier and better behaved children, regardless of the parents’ gender, sexual orientation, or even numbers.

Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9586218&query_hl=2

Ok, I’ll ask. How are men and women different, apart from the genitalia?

“Call me crazy but the people who made the kid should be raising it.”

Do you also think that adoption, divorce and remarriage (between opposite gender partners), sperm and oocyte donation, and single parenting should be banned since all of the above lead to children being raised by people other than those who conceived them? Should women be forced to marry their rapists if they happen to get pregnant by rape so that the child thus concieved can be raised by “the people who made it”?

What exactly is a “requirement for marriage”?

And requiring a male and a female is discrimination.

And excluding a male or female is not discrimination?

Aww, that’s cute. Do I really need to explain where children come from?

Well if I remember Biology 101, the male member of the human species produces sperm, and the female produces the egg, and when both, sperm and egg, are joined conception takes place. Waitamint …is production of sperm, and an egg, one of those antiquated gender roles you mentioned?

The discussion is about SSM, which would imply two people, hence the “parents” when talking about couples with children.. Gender does not matter. Do children need two parents? No. Do they do better when raised in a two parent household? Sometimes, yes. What advantages are provided by having two parents of opposite sex that can’t be provided by two same sex parents?

Well for one thing the people that made the child, should be the one’s raising him/her, barring abuse of course. It also raises the question, are men and women different, other than whether or not they have an innie or an outie? Here’s a radical thought-YES! Thus the child get to interact with both opposite sex parents, and is able to learn from both sexes. Call me crazy but the people who made the kid should be raising it. But then again we’re not talking about that are we?

As to the last paragraph. If the overwhelming majority of children being raised by same sex parents are from one or both of the partners previous heterosexual marriage, then it not unreasonable to say that the opposite sex parent must have an impact on the raising of the child. Thus the child is not exclusively raised by same sex parents, but rather one straight parent, the opposite sex gay parent, and his or her partner., and perhaps the opposite sex striaght parent’s new wife/husband. Interaction by the opposite sex parent will have to have an effect on how the child is raised, so to say that such child is being raised by “same-sex parents” is misleading. Another factor is the family structure of gay parent headed families, as Jesurgislac pointed out, in an example of two SSCs one male and one female who created children together in such a way as each man was the father of a child by each woman. Clearly in that situation gender will play a role as the children have both their biological parents.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/june99/gays14.htm

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/monacharen/2004/05/21/11769.html

Marriage does not give people rights over their spouse’s siblings child

Indeed it does. If Wife has an affair with Husband’s Brother, the child is nonetheless legally presumed to be Husband’s biological offspring under the law–and Husband’s Brother may not be able to do a damn thing about it.

Mysterious hints about “changed circumstances” do not explain why we would allow a woman without a uterus, or post-menopause, to marry, or why we now frown on the idea that a man should ‘put aside’ a wife who turns out to be unable to bear cihldren.

When you start trying to bring in fine distinctions to explain all the bizarre contortions necessary to make current marriage policies manage to exclude SSM. whining that it’s “pedantic” to note your contradictions is, well, whiny.

So you’re suggesting that divorce is good for children? This is not the conclusion of most researchers to date. In fact, children of gay or lesbian couples who are the product of a previous marriage should be at a disadvantage compared to children being raised by biologically related opposite sex parents, who are presumably in an intact relationship. So your argument suggests that lesbian and gay couples may actually be better parents than opposite sex couples since children of gay and lesbian couples end up as healthy as their peers despite the relatively common presence of a divorce in their background. (Actually, it’s not at all clear to me that most children raised by same sex couples are the products of previous marriages. Do you have any data comparing the number of children from previous marriages versus those conceived via sperm donation or adopted?)

Sex, IVF, turkey basters, oocyte fusion, cloning…Ok, the last two aren’t commercially available options, but what if they were? A variant of oocyte fusion is being worked on in (I think) Britain as a way for women with mitochondrial illnesses to have healthy children. Suppose pure oocyte fusion (two oocytes or eggs are fused to form an embryo that is equally related to each of the two women donors) were an option for reproduction. Would your objection to lesbian couples at least disappear?