1) There is actually not as much scientific evidence for the advantages of heterosexual parenting as you claim there to be. The author of the original article you posted concedes this; he points to one article that supports his viewpoint, but then admits that there is on the whole no reliable scientific evidence in his defense because conducting that experiment would obviously be ethically dubious.
As I said, decades of published research in psychology, social science, and medicine demonstrate that children do best when raised by a mother and father (especially the biological parents) in a long-term marriage. That’s because a mother and a father each provide a unique and important contribution to their role as parents. Children who are raised – for example – in fatherless families suffer, on average, in every measure of well-being. They have higher levels of physical and mental illness, educational difficulties, poverty, substance abuse, criminal behavior, loneliness, and physical and sexual abuse. This is supported by multiple studies including Mary Parke, “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?,” Kristin Anderson Moore et al., “Marriage From a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do about It?," and David Popenoe,
Life Without Father, including countless other sources which all indicate that a child is best raised by a committed mother and a father. Denying the presence of a biological female mother or a biological male father to a child has been determined again and again to negatively affect a child's well-being.
Let us also examine Kolasinksi's passage carefully:
One may argue that lesbians are capable of procreating via artificial insemination, so the state does have an interest in recognizing lesbian marriages, but a lesbian's sexual relationship, committed or not, has no bearing on her ability to reproduce. Perhaps it may serve a state interest to recognize gay marriages to make it easier for gay couples to adopt. However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe's Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child's development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a social policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials? Gays are not necessarily bad parents, nor will they necessarily make their children gay, but they cannot provide a set of parents that includes both a male and a female.
Kolasinksi pulls no punches:
However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child's development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a social policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials? Gays are not necessarily bad parents, nor will they necessarily make their children gay, but they cannot provide a set of parents that includes both a male and a female.
And
However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe's Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development.
I suspect that what Kolasinksi means to convey when he writes: "Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting" is merely to note that studies that have attempted to draw conclusions regarding a homosexuals couple's ability to raise children cannot be necessarily trusted due to the fact that the selection of which homosexual couples to study or examine could be always be called into question. (For example, what criteria is being used to select homosexual couples to examine or study? Perhaps those selecting the samples are deliberately selecting high-income, stable homosexual couples and perhaps selecting random or low-income, unstable heterosexual couples. How one can determine that the conclusions reached from such a study are correspondent with reality is perhaps too difficult a task.)
Whether homosexual couples are able to raise a child effectively is not of much concern, though, when one considers not only that countless studies in psychology, social science, and medicine have consistently determined that children raised in heterosexual couples in which both the father and mother were present were being raised in the most ideal of conditions and that depriving a child of a mother or a father in turn resulted in negative consequences, be them psychological, social, or medicinal, but also that homosexual adoption, by its very design, will deliberately deny a child either a mother or father every time. By legalizing same-sex parenting, society declares by law that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. That means a mother or a father offers no unique contribution to a child. A man could provide all the benefits of a woman; a woman could provide all the benefits of a man. If such is true, then, conceivably, we should also allow single men or single women to adopt as well, considering that the role a man or a woman has been determined to be interchangeable. But surely it would be not only counterintuitive but also morally callous to deliberately design a family in which a child is deprived of a mother or a father, would it not?
2) It is no longer true that same-sex adoptive couples are an exception to the greater rule. A quick Google search pointed me to this article, which shows that in 2009, 21,740 gay couples had adopted a child, up from about 6,500 9 years beforehand. That's 32,751 children living with gay couples in 2009. This article says this trend is occurring because A) we have a lot of children waiting for adoption (about 115,000), and B) because gays are seeing greater acceptance from government and adoption agencies as well as society as a whole.
Keep in mind that these figures are from 2009, which means they're probably significantly higher now should the trend have continued (a safe assumption), and that these figures are vastly lower than what they could be if there weren't legislation in place to prohibit or otherwise restrict gay adoption (which is the case for about half the states in the Union).
It doesn't seem to me to be of much importance how many children are being adopted by homosexual couples when one takes into account the fact that by doing so, one is deliberately denying a child of their mother or their father and is thus committing an injustice. If anything, this simply serves to show that this particular injustice is simply occurring more frequently than we'd like to think. Again, the real question is whether a child who needs to be adopted is best served by a heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple --
all things being equal. The question focuses on the needs of the child, not the wants of homosexuals who are politically motivated to normalize same-sex marriage and parenting. That being said, and again to repeat myself, decades of published research in psychology, social science, and medicine demonstrate that children do best when raised by a mother and father (especially the biological parents) in a long-term marriage.
3) I feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but I should point out that loving relationships between homosexuals are not analogous to loving relationships between fathers and daughters or siblings. Loving relationships between homosexuals are true romantic-sexual relationships such as you would find between heterosexuals. Loving relationships between fathers and daughters and siblings are in all but a few cases simple family ties. There are numerous psycho-biological processes in place to prevent that sort of relationship from progressing to the sexual stage; for instance, there's a documented psychological effect that prevents you from being sexually attracted to someone should you spend a lot of time with them or grow up with them (I forget its name, could someone help me out?).
Why not? What is so different between the love shared by an unrelated man and another unrelated man and the love between a man and his sister or a man and his brother? Is it because there is no sexual activity between the man and his sister or a man and his brother? Why does that matter? Why do we have to use our sex organs with one another to qualify for marriage? Isn’t it enough that we love each other and are committed? Making sexual activity a requirement for marriage is principally arbitrary. Thus the defender of same-sex marriage must commit himself to the supposition that only love is a requirement for marriage. But if that is so, then there can be no basis for one to deny 3 women and 2 men who all love each other to marry, or a father to marry his daughter, or a brother to marry his sister, or a mother to marry her 2 sons and daughter. Kolasinksi hits the nail on the head here when he writes:
The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis cant it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction that love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.
4) You bring up that the sexually activities of homosexuals do not naturally lead to children. You are right, of course, but this does not make useless their marriage. In fact, this trait is actually a boon to society. Homosexual parenting is actually valuable because homosexual parents have to try very, very hard to get children. Let's face it: a lot of children of heterosexual parents are "accidents", and it's safe to say that many of these "accidents" are being raised in subpar conditions because the parents were either emotionally or financially unprepared to parent. You've said before that you're young, Omega (I've assumed you're either high school or college), so you shouldn't have much trouble thinking of a few children who would be orders of magnitude better off had their parents waited a few years to conceive. The problem is arguably worse in urban areas; most of the parents in the projects, for instance, would probably have put off their pregnancies by a very long while if they had been able. I could tell you horror stories about the heterosexual household I grew up in, of course, but I'm sure that's not necessary (let's just say you're talking to one of the very "accidents" I'm talking about).
On the flipside, we have homosexual couples. They won't make babies no matter how vigorously they have sex, and this is a good thing, because they are, by definition, not raising children when they're not ready. Meanwhile, the adoption application process is extremely rigorous and is meant only to give away children to families that are able to raise them adeptly. Further, homosexual couples have to try particularly hard to adopt because there are so many roadblocks in place to try to stop them. The effect of this is that homosexual adoptive couples tried really, really hard for a baby and waited a very long time for one; in other words, homosexual couples with children, generally speaking, have to be ready to raise children. Because heterosexual couples are not held to that same requirement before they have children, one could very easily make the argument that homosexual parents are, all other things being equal, superior.
Again, the real question is whether a child who needs to be adopted or raised is best served by a heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple --
all things being equal. The question focuses on the needs of the child, not the wants of homosexuals who are politically motivated to normalize same-sex marriage and parenting. I've responded lengthily to this issue on the first point, so I'll just redirect you there. Also, again, I cannot help but concur with Kolansinksi:
In the 20th century, Western societies have downplayed the procreative aspect of marriage, much to our detriment. As a result, the happiness of the parties to the marriage, rather than the good of the children or the social order, has become its primary end, with disastrous consequences. When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation.
I think Kolasinksi's words ring true; once marriage is re-conceptualized to meet and tend to the happiness of the couples getting married rather than to meet the needs of their children and to tend for the next generation of civilization, then the mystery as to why marriage in contemporary Western society now leads to a worryingly high number of divorces, why children suffer from pathologies related to bad parenting, etc, no longer remains a mystery. And homosexuals the ability to marry, even in defiance of the absurdity of such an action, would not solve any of those problems that trouble society today and which are largely born out of a misunderstanding of marriage, but merely intensify the problem further.
5) As I've said before, a few times, it's very common to claim that marriage exists to support procreation, but there is no evidence that this is the case, and you should provide some of that evidence for us if you're going to make an argument with such concrete social consequences.
I'm frankly perturbed that many people are still peddling this troubling pseudo-argument against the understanding of marriage. It's really a courtesy that I'm willing to even acknowledge it. Marriage, so understood, is grounded in a reasoned inquiry as to determine its purpose and is supplanted by centuries of tradition. To insist that "it has never existed that way" or to demand "evidence" for the most reasoned understanding of marriage seems to me to signal either deliberate obfuscation or otherwise genuine muddleheadedness.
6) The last point you made was particularly weak, Omega, and I'm a little surprised you're supporting it with so much veracity. I don't know why it's such a big deal that we need to teach our boys how to be "real men" in the first place, or what the two words even mean, or why a woman couldn't explain the concept to a boy if it's such a big deal. Menstruation and bra-purchasing are not difficult concepts, and two men would easily be able to handle explaining them to the girls (and if they were truly lost for some reason, they could consult the internet or their female friends, two powerful resources).
I seem to be talking about gender roles, these most poisonous and inhibiting of social constructs, a lot on this forum lately. Anyway, we don't need our politicians making legislation to support gender roles, or to otherwise endorse the idea that a person is necessarily the same as everybody else of the same gender. Men can do things women can do, and women can do things men can do, and I'm sick and tired of people claiming that men can't do X, Y, and Z because those are things that would be better handled by girls, as if they possessed some intrinsic knowledge we didn't. Half of the world is men, and half is women; in each group, there are people who would make good parents, and people who would make bad parents.
Actually, that's where we should make the divide. Instead of labeling all couples as "homosexual" and "heterosexual", we should label all couples as being "people who would make good parents" and "people who would make bad parents", and we should make marriage illegal for the second group.
Again, by legalizing same-sex parenting, society declares by law that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. That means a mother or a father offers no unique contribution to a child. A man could provide all the benefits of a woman; a woman could provide all the benefits of a man. If such is true, then, conceivably, we should also allow single men or single women to adopt as well, considering that the role a man or a woman has been determined to be interchangeable. But surely it would be not only counterintuitive but also morally callous to deliberately design a family in which a child is deprived of a mother or a father, would it not? Besides this point, this last point ignores at least two key points. One is that, again (in the name of
ad nauseum), decades of published research in psychology, social science, and medicine demonstrate that children do best when raised by a mother and father (especially the biological parents) in a long-term marriage. Second is that men and women, as has been recognized from the dawn of mankind and as admitted by the of a more genuine character, have undeniable and immutable differences, however minute or large they may be, that distinguish them, and no amount of acting, feigning or yelling "sexist" (which is no sexist claim at all) will ever change that. Our intuitions clearly tell us this is so. Men are, by the very nature of their being men, different in some aspects than women, just as women, by virtue of being women, are different in some aspects to men. And notice that this doesn't entail that one sex is "superior" than the other; all it means is that there are intrinsic, undeniable differences between men and women and that one sex is not interchangeable with the other.