The anti-gay marriage movement IS homophobic

Some support for my point of view:

Dad's Empty Chair
By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 7, 2005
My sister, Sandy, and I were surrounded by family-oriented men when we were growing up in suburban New Jersey. There was my father, Chester, an extremely hard-working upholsterer and slipcover cutter; my Uncle Breeze, who taught me how to box ("Quit jumping around like a grasshopper"); my Uncle William, who raised five kids (four boys and a girl) in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, and later in East Orange, N.J.; and my Uncle Robert, who was an Essex County probation officer.

There were grandfathers who took us to baseball games, and older cousins, and a crew of boisterous characters with names like Moe, Bubby and Earl Love, who worked for my father in his upholstery shops and were as close to my sister and me as blood relatives.

Many of those men are gone now, and the rest are old. Collectively they had a profound influence on how my sister and I viewed the world, and how we've led our lives.

These thoughts came to mind as I was checking out yet another killing of a black child, this time the stabbing death in Brooklyn of a 15-year-old named Christopher Rose. He was walking toward a subway station on Saturday with a group of three friends, one of whom had an iPod. The desire for someone else's iPod (or cellphone or sneakers), in the twisted thinking of the "Lord of the Flies" street culture, is reason enough to murder somebody.

On Saturday it was Christopher Rose's turn to be sacrificed on this altar of madness. As many as a dozen teenagers closed in on Christopher and his friends, beating them and stealing the iPod and other valuables. One of the teens stabbed Christopher twice in the chest.

The attack occurred in the late afternoon on a busy street. When the attackers fled, like a school of sharks receding after a kill, they left behind only grief where a promising youngster once had been.

It was a nightmare that Christopher's father, Errol Rose, had tried for years to ward off. Mr. Rose, who is 53, had always feared that "this current of evil" - the street violence that has taken so many black youngsters - would someday claim his son.

Crime has eased in the past several years, but the toll on the young in many black communities is still horrific. And I can't think of this continuing slaughter of black youngsters without also thinking about the mass flight of black men from their family responsibilities, especially the obligation to look after their children.

Most black people are not poor, and most are law-abiding. But the vacuum left by this exodus of black men from the family scene has nevertheless been devastating, and its destructive effects are felt by entire communities.

Mr. Rose was so concerned about Christopher's safety that he had moved to a small town in Pennsylvania. But he would bring the boy back to Brooklyn to visit relatives on most weekends.

"I was trying to hide him away from all this violence," Mr. Rose said yesterday. "I knew that someday, somehow, somebody was going to approach him and try to hurt him."

There are plenty of youngsters who grow up fine without a father in the home. But that's not a good argument in favor of fatherlessness. Most of the youngsters getting into trouble and preying on others come from fatherless homes, as Mr. Rose pointed out. "There's no one out there," he said, "to tell them: 'Hello! Wake up. You guys have to stop doing what you're doing.' "

Kids who grow up without a father never experience that special sense of security and the enhanced feeling of belonging that come from having a father in the home. So they seek it elsewhere. They don't get that sweet feeling of triumph that comes from a father's approval, or the warmth of the old man's hug, or the wisdom to be drawn from his discipline.

I don't have the statistics to prove it, but black kids would be tremendously better off if the cultural winds changed and more fathers felt the need to come home.

For me, it's an easy call: Moms are crucial. Dads, too.

Mr. Rose said he hoped his son's death would help focus attention on the problems associated with children who grow up without fathers. "There's a crisis as far as the men are concerned," he said. "They've tended to neglect a lot of things. So we've been failing these kids, and I'd like to help turn that around."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opinion/07herbert.html?

Actually, I take that as support for my point of view.
If one dad is better than no dads, then two dads must be better than one dad.



Thanks for the laugh.

~~~~~

My real point of view: One or more loving parents is best. No other qualifiers. Loving.

You must have missed the part about where Moms are essential too.

I didn't say no moms.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Loving.

No other qualifiers.

Hmm. Well then, what you seem to be proposing would defnitely be an alternate lifestyle then, no? But hey I don't knock anybody's fantasies. We probably all have them now and then.

If it's a fantasy to hope that all children have loving parents, then that is my fantasy.

Actually, let's just call them loving families. That's what I want for all children.

Loving families.

How those families are composed doesn't matter to me, or to the kids I know in a number of differently structured families. I guess the kids I know are lucky that their families are accepted and supported by our neighbourhood and community.

No gated minds need apply.

But sadly, Beth, oh so sadly, there are all too many gated minds in positions of power. Many of them have the temerity to call themselves christian.

Seriously, that article was more about fatherlessness than motherlessness.

Sure, it did say that mothers were essential, but neither was there proof, the section devoted to mothers was minute and was not what the article was about.

There is no proof that families without a father or a mother are dysfunctional.

My point all along has been that children benefit from having a mother AND a father in the home; otherwise they do not benefit from day in and day out parenting from each gender and the genders do, most often, parent differently providing a different kind of emotional undergirding to the developing child. Like the author of the above piece, I don't have time to hunt up a lot of statistics to support this though I have done so elsewhere in other places.

There are some interesting statistics here:
http://www.urban.org/urlprint.cfm?ID=310544
that includes just about all the pertinent variables.

And this one explains why a Mom and a Dad are important to a childn's emotional development:
http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/marriage/ssuap/a0027554.cfm

Asserting that a mother and a father are important to a child's emotional development and citing Focus on the Family as your source is a bit like asserting that cannibalism is a fun way to spend the weekend and citing Jeffrey Dahmer as your source.

You're certainly welcome to dispute their findings Joe. I don't support many of the activites of this particular group and in fact have actively opposed them on a couple of issues, but they do some good research and that should not be dismissed because you don't like their politics or their emphasis.

If you can find anywhere in that piece where they are all wet, put it out there. Otherwise, I will stand on my belief that they stated it pretty much as it is.

It's true that even a blind pig will occasionally find a truffle, so I have no doubt that Focus on Family will sometimes be right, if only by accident. I do not, therefore, dismiss their findings, I merely point out the potential bias.


Point out where they're all wet? The entire piece is soaked.

Most of the "evidence" is purely anecdotal. For instance:

Girls and boys who grow up with a father are more familiar and secure with the curious world of men. Girls with involved, married fathers are more likely to have healthier relationships with boys in adolescence and men in adulthood because they learn from their fathers how proper men act toward women. They also know which behaviors are inappropriate. They also have a healthy familiarity with the world of men. They don't wonder how a man's facial stubble feels or what it's like to be hugged or held by strong arms. This knowledge builds emotional security, and safety from the exploitation of predatory males. They also learn from mom how to live in a woman's world. This is especially important as they approach adolescence and all the changes that life-stage brings.

None of this is supported by any sort of research; it's merely a string of ipse dixits.

When the piece does cite "facts," it uses them in to reach impermissible conclusions. For instance:

FACT: A married father is substantially less likely to abuse his wife or children than men in any other category.11 This means that boys and girls with fathers learn, by observation, how men should treat women.

No, it doesn't necessarily mean that at all. It could just as easily be argued that married fathers don't abuse their wives and children because men who want to be married and have kids are less likely in the first place to abuse family members. Such leaps of logic simply aren't supported by the evidence that the piece cites.

Furthermore, the only research cited by the piece concerns the role of fathers in heterosexual marriages. Extrapolating findings from this kind of research and using it in an argument against homosexual marriage is, to say the least, disingenuous.

From experience in statements stated as 'fact' that can be proved or disproved, Focus can generally 'prove' their case with available studies, stats, etc. I can't say with certainty that they can do so re their statements in this article, but I can say that I think they probably can just based on past experience and based on studies and statistics that I have seen.

I think they have been very negative re homosexuality in the past and have expressed opinions I don't share. This particular article, however, doesn't seem to bash gays, but rather takes the view that a loving mother and father in the home is the best scenario for rearing of children. For reasons already posted in this thread, I agree with that view. Again that in no way suggests that gay parents or single parents or anybody else is incapable of competently parenting children and that the children won't thrive in such alternate families. I'm just one that wants the best for chldren while acknowledging that is not always possible or realistic in present times.

But you would have those parents of these children that you want the best for treated as second class citizens, FF.

If you can't hear me applauding your sense of decency, it's because I'm only using one hand.

Translation: I will continue to believe whatever I want to believe, and contrary evidence be damned.

Be careful about that going blind thing JTT.

Acknowledging that one group is better than another at a particular thing in no way relegates anybody to second class status. Very tall, fast, athletic people are better at pro basketball than short or slower ones. Does that mean people who can't play basketball as well as Michael Jordan are second class citizens? Or does it mean that one group is better suited than another? (Careful how you answer for almost the entire Japanese race cannot qualify for the NBA and I don't think many consider themselves second class citizens.)

Some people thrive in a tightly supervised, work environment; others do much better with more flexibility. Neither are second class citizens. Some children thrive in a closely regimented classroom. Others need a more open ended structure. If one teacher is best suited for one scenario and another is best wuited for the other, are either second class citizens?

That a loving mother and father in the home can provide the best possible situation to the child in no way designates second class citizenship to anybody else. And in fact the anybody else might do a much better job than would an unloving mom and dad in the home.

Joe writes


I invited you to provide your own argument that would dispute the post, Joe. You declined to do so. Therefore I will continue to believe what I DO believe, as I am sure you do, until I am presented information compelling enough to cause me to know I believe wrongly.

Testament to your stolid ignorance, FF. And on such flimsy evidence, your own personal little biases. That's how slavery and segregation maintained its firm grip for so long; ignorance.

I invite you to focus on your own convictions in this matter JTT and why you hold them and whether you can support them. I find people who do that are not inclined to resort to personal attacks in lieu of civil debate.

I have no personal interest in this, nor do I have any personal gain to be made from it.

I hold these convictions because it is fundamentally unfair to treat people in a discriminatory fashion. It is contradictory, IMO, to speak of concern for children but then seek to put their parents in the position of being second class citizens, unable to marry because someone holds personal views of "white weddings".

Don't view this as a personal attack, FF. That makes it much too easy for you to help yourself off the hook. The plain and simple fact is; people who discriminate against any group or urge others to do the same based on their personal prejudices are ignorant.

A number of countries have found it extremely easy to allow same sex marriages. Why would they go against hundreds of years of tradition? Because it is simply NOT right to treat people in such a substantially different and highly discriminatory legal manner.