Except for the parents that are bypassed or excused from their customary roles. Mom doesn’t want dad, so he’s out. If later, Mom 1 doesn’t want Mom 2 anymore, she’s out. If she decides she doesn’t want you, you’re out. Am I wrong about this?

You seem to have an rather narrow, limited idea of how homosexuals form families. It’s really not as different from heteros as you may think. If Mom doesn’t want Dad, and he’s out, they get divorced and probably split custody with one having primary physical custody for where the child lives during the week. This “you’re out” rhetoric betrays a poor understanding of how children are treated in divorce in the 21st century United States.

If later, Mom doesn’t want Mom 2 OR Dad 2 (see, it doesn’t matter if Mom goes for boys or girls — gender is irrelevant), then if the stepparent hasn’t adopted the child, 2 has no custodial claim.

As you can see, there is no difference between heteros and homos in this. There’s is nothing peculiar to failed hetero marriages that makes them different from failed homo marriages. If you can point out something in law that distinguishes between men and women with regard to their duties as spouses or parents, I’d love to hear it. Your place as husband and father is legally indistinguishable from your spouse’s place as wife and mother — only the labels are different, and in many statutes, those gendered labels have been replaced with the gender-neutral “spouse” and “parent.”

I’m still bewildered by the idea that an egg donor represents the “unchanging bloodline that is the basis of the family” for the Edwards’ youngest child. That child’s parents are John and Elizabeth Edwards, the parents who love him, have raised him and have custody of him. Families aren’t a matter of genetics — I hate to break it to you, but long before there were baby-daddy DNA tests, men raised children who weren’t genetically their own.

What matters in family are the commitments made among the members. Two unrelated adults who make a lifelong commitment to one another are spouses; if they then make a commitment to support a child to the age of 18, they are parents. If a woman sells/ donates her eggs or a man his sperm, they’re not committing to any children that may result; they’re simply enabling a couple (hetero or homo) who wants to go through pregnancy and have a baby to do so. Never having made a commitment by word or deed, the donors are not somehow escaping a responsibility that ought to be theirs.

This idea that same-sex marriage interrupts some kind of unchanging verities of life is absurd, because childrearing never has been irrevocably wed to genetic parenthood. The advances in assisted reproduction pioneered by opposite-sex couples have made the separation of genetics and childrearing publicly acknowledged instead of hidden. But now that same-sex parents wish to enjoy the same ability to form a family and have their commitments recognized by the state that opposite-couples have had, suddenly any family that isn’t made up of a man, a woman and the children composed of their sperm and ova and baked by the woman has somehow fallen short of the proper meaning of family.

I have a feeling that everyone from the Edwardses to Dan Savage, his partner Terry and the boy they have raised in an open adoption, would say that someone with such a narrow, constricted idea of what can be a family is the one who doesn’t understand what the word means.

Myca: Excellent. I’m not sure why you think it’s an issue, then. Same sex marriage and adoption doesn’t bypass or excuse any parent from their customary role.

Except for the parents that are bypassed or excused from their customary roles. Mom doesn’t want dad, so he’s out. If later, Mom 1 doesn’t want Mom 2 anymore, she’s out. If she decides she doesn’t want you, you’re out. Am I wrong about this?

Myca: If the position, though, is that all 4 of those are permissible for a straight couple, but none of the 4 are permissible for a gay or lesbian couple … well, then, that’s just hateful homophobia. Like I said, a convenient beard for anti-gay prejudice.

Or it is an affirmation that the unchanging bloodline is the basis of the family, not our tastes and desires, which change all the time. The OS model was never a gambit to deny homosexuals anything. The model mimics the natural genetic links that connect every one of us to thousands of people across centuries of history. It’s not hetero it’s genetic

Genetically, we can’t bedenied a family Myca. I can be a man or a woman, I can be old or young, I can be gay or straight, I can be a trans, I can be a gay trans. At this very moment if I transformed into another gender or changed sexual orientation or lost my memory, I am still what I am: brother, son, husband and father.

Yet, if I thought this was denying homosexuals meaningful relationships, I might relent. It doesn’t. My place as husband and father is my security of a family, but if my wife has a need to explore a homosexual relationship during our marriage, she can. She just cannot replace me with her. If you want an easy analogy, think of the difference between us adopting a child, and replacing one of our children with an adopted child.

Did you mean ‘board’ as in ’springboard’? Or did you actually mean beard?

Try again.

“(2) To the maximum extent possible, the instruction in health is structured to provide comprehensive education in health that includes all the subjects in paragraph (1).”

That’s right, items mentions in paragraph (1) are to be taught to the “maximum extent possible.” So what’s in paragraph 1? It includes:

“(D) Family health and child development, including the legal and financial aspects and responsibilities of marriage and parenthood.”

If they are used to save a someone from a desperate situation or overcome a medical barrier preventing conception, these are reinforcements of our right to a safe and stable family,

Ah, okay, so same sex marriage and adoption would be okay, then, in the same sense that opposite sex marriage and adoption are okay.

but if they are used to bypass or excuse parent’s from their customary roles they represent a denial of our right to a family.

Excellent. I’m not sure why you think it’s an issue, then. Same sex marriage and adoption doesn’t bypass or excuse any parent from their customary role.

If the position, though, is that all 4 of those are permissible for a straight couple, but none of the 4 are permissible for a gay or lesbian couple … well, then, that’s just hateful homophobia. Like I said, a convenient beard for anti-gay prejudice.

—Myca

She gave up an egg to give a woman who cannot conceive a child. That’s not the same as giving up a child.

Huh. And they make egg donation sound like such a good thing to do.

Indeed it is.

I don’t have any questions about it. John and Elizabeth are doing exactly what they would be doing if the child were entirely theirs, no one had to deny a child to do it. The medical sleight of hand is irrelevent.

Myca: So, then, Maco, would you say that these people believe that:

I ask because I’m unaware of any significant political opposition to any of these issues.

If they are used to save a someone from a desperate situation or overcome a medical barrier preventing conception, these are reinforcements of our right to a safe and stable family, but if they are used to bypass or excuse parent’s from their customary roles they represent a denial of our right to a family.

Huh. And they make egg donation sound like such a good thing to do.

Incidentally, Palin came out in favor of an amendment to the federal constitution that would ban any state’s recognizing same-sex relationships. Even if the majority of voters in the state wanted to permit SSM — heck, even if they amended their state constitution to permit SSM — Palin wants to block their ability to do that.

Just in case you thought that her alleged lesbian friend had some influence over her…

Then the Edwards have expanded their responsibility to include a child that is not entirely theirs, in the genetic sense. They have not denied responsibility for any child that is theirs.

Sure, but it does raise the question of who the child’s ‘natural parents’ are. Are they John Edwards and an egg donor he’s never met?

Those that say we can not do this, that we are morally obligated to accept personal responsibility for our children, require the natural parents to be mother and father to that child, and any philosophy that has the effect of undermining that responsibility, regardless of intent, is automatically immoral.

So, then, Maco, would you say that these people believe that:

1) Parents shouldn’t be able to give kids up for adoption?
2) Surrogacy should be illegal?
3) Artificial insemination should be illegal?
4) Egg donation should be illegal?

I ask because I’m unaware of any significant political opposition to any of these issues. I think it’s more likely that the people who make these arguments about ‘natural parents’ do so because it’s a convenient beard for their anti-gay prejudice.

—Myca

WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY EVER TALK ABOUT GAY KIDS’ RIGHTS TO HAVE HEALTHY ROMANTIC BEHAVIOUR MODELED IN FRONT OF THEM???Isn’ that hard to do when homosexuals have NO relationship rights and are actively discouraged by the government and society from treating eachother with love, dignity, and respect???

It is automatically assumed that the child’s “health and welfare” includes a heterosexual state. Anybody else see anything wrong with that?

Absolutely, Klandestine. My favorite quote from the story about the student field trip to the same-sex wedding in SF:

“She’s a really nice teacher. She’s the best,” said 6-year-old Chava Novogrodsky-Godt, wearing a “No on 8″ button on her shirt. “I want her to have a good wedding.”

Chava’s mothers said they are getting married in two weeks.

Ah-ha! In other words, here’s a kid who’s being taught that her family is normal! She’s 6, so I doubt her sexual preference is really solidified yet, but if it were 10 years later, she might be getting taught that she is normal!

When people say that they oppose the ‘mainstreaming’ of Same Sex Marriage, what they really mean is that Chava should have been taught to be ashamed of her mothers.

—Myca

For the purposes of this conversation I was using the term “natural parent” to distinguish birth parents from other kinds of parents. By that definition Ms. Edwards is not the natural parent.

It is automatically assumed that the child’s “health and welfare” includes a heterosexual state. Anybody else see anything wrong with that?

Dear Jeff:
The major problem with the studies to which you allude is that they are based on a very narrow model, much like Freud developing all his theories from case studies on: himself (a closeted bisexual misogynist addict); rich white women; and those already presumed to have some psychopathology. They start out with an inescapably self-proving assumption by virtue of the subjects chosen. In the case of these studies, what proof do you have that the sampling is NOT overwhelmingly white -this is important because minority mothers never had the luxuryto develop a tradition of not working outside their home as affirming of their “femininity”- heterosexual, married couples in which both parents support the concept of male dominance?
Of course a girl raised in that environment would come out “healthier” after having prolonged contact with and positive attention from the dominant member of her such a unit; ANYONE WOULD. In a hierarchy, affirmation from the source of power produces a positive emotional state in anyone who buys into the hierarchy, as children must and usually do. She is conditioned to respond to his power and position and how it relates to how the larger world responds to male power and position, not his maleness in and of itself.

In fact, there is no way to quantify any supposedly health-inducing qualities in any of them, because of the tainted sampling. Did any of these “studies” include a sampling of adoptive families OR same sex parent families? How many non-White or non-Christian families? Were there any families AT ALL that were not in fact surrounded by the culture of the mainstream White Patriarchal society of Western “civilization”? Were any of these children raised gender-neutral? OF COURSE NOT. These studies are already tainted with the pre-supposition of what is “normal,” in WHO and HOW they choose to study, and are thereby corrupted by the unconscious expectations of the authors of the “research.” Studies like that render themselves invalid by failing to account for environment, something easily controlled in rats and monkeys (that’s what that attachment theory you referenced started with), but not in humans.

Nevermind that the legal system has never asserted that the purpose of marriage is to have children, or else they would mandate childbearing and annul marriage privileges of those who fail to reproduce. That is to say that even in the ancient world, marriage was never solely about reproduction, but legal responsibilities and commitments. Even of you want to talk religious law, that whole argument falls apart and pretty quickly.

I think we disagree on what “mothers and fathers are both responsible” means then.

That’s probably likely. I don’t believe that ’source of sperm’ is the same thing as ‘father’, for example, and I find conservative attempts to define it thusly to be degrading to the institution of fatherhood.

—Myca

I think we disagree on what “mothers and fathers are both responsible” means then.

I fail to see how support for a legal situation that, in fact, codifies and documents the acceptance of certain responsibilities could reasonably be seen as an abdication of them.

For any alternative to the natural parents to be explored, the natural parents must abdicate those responsibilities, or you have to admit we don’t have to accept them in the first place.

I doubt I can add anything else before Monday. Good weekend Myca.

I fail to see how support for a legal situation that, in fact, codifies and documents the acceptance of certain responsibilities could reasonably be seen as an abdication of them.

—Myca