I think, through the discussion on previous posts, I understand On Lawn’s position a bit better, though I still don’t agree with it. My guess is he’d say the same of my position. In the meantime, we’ve staked out a middlegound of sorts, where we can both agree on some things. B

But ultimately, we’re coming from different places with different beliefs we’re both unilkely to part with. And I think that’s the point at which continued dialogue becomes pretty much a waste of oxygen (or in this case, bandwitch), because now we’re bumping up against beliefs and positions from which neither of us are likely to budge.

Continuing to argue them, at least to me, takes energy and focus away from shoring up existing support and reaching out to people who are likely to be supportive if persuaded. At that point, it no longer serves it’s purpose, and I think then the smart thing to do is end the discussion, walk away with the knowledge you’ve gained of the opposing view, and use it to strengthen your own argument and progress towards you goal.

At least that’s how I’m seeing it now that the discussion has reached this point. It kind of feels like a terminal point to me. Because, well, we could do this all day… but don’t we have better things to do?

More importantly how is this not so. You two are caring for a child, where did it come from?

Perhaps you take a simply gay-union as its own family? If so, fair enough. But that statement of mine refers only with ones that have children.

You clearly imply that I need to be married to a woman or you have NO idea how my family is intact.

Rather than responding with confusion and bewilderment, you could have simply asked.

An intact family means one without broken familial bonds. That means parent to parent and parent to child.

I can come up with the actual truth and you won’t believe me.

You are very sure of your brand of truth, that is for sure. But that shows more of bigotry and selfishness.

In the call to bring this to a more grand democratic dialogue, if you were more sure of your facts you would be more sure about making the case. Instead you have making a fool of yourself pretending invectives and ephithets can substitute for arguments.

So you have discredited me simply because I support gay marriage.

I’ve responded to the arguments you’ve presented, and the lack of argument. Such reductionism on your part has the footprints of your ignorance. You support gay marriage, and are welcome to make a case for it. I can’t see any value in the one you’ve made so far.

The mother of my child was married to a man and she still is (as far as I know). It was a surrogacy,

Surrogate and egg donor, that is important for Terrance’s bounce off your point.

And yes, that qualifies as irresponsible procreation. Treating children as something that can be commissioned and used to adorn a relationship, like property.

Onlawn, read this and then shut up.

Opine opened up a dialog with Badgett at one point over the data. This should also be of interest to you.

By the way, even if I shut up your ignorance still predicts your failure to connect with the every-day rational human beings that make up a large majority in the democratic discourse. You realize that, don’t you?

it is more important that a household have a penis and a vagina rather than love

This is another strange manifestation of your imagination. That assesment doesn’t jive with what I’ve written:

Gay families are not a problem, and as I’m most here realizes but you — I’m not against gay families. I’m for helping them present a legitimate case for the benefits they need in order to help themselves and reciprically benefit society.

I devote my efforts to first helping people understand a real ideal of marriage before they get married. Second, to helping people stay married and develop love, honor, and mutual respect between them. After that I try to help families do the best they can after divorce. Even those that divorce and re-form in homosexual headed households.

I assume this means you are still reacting irrationally to my posts rather than reading them and understanding them.

I worked for 5 years to bring her into this world.

Relationship accomplishments such as those in a marriage rarely manifest themselves as “I”, but rather we. What you ignore continues to say volumes about your outlook, and consequenty the outlook that the same-sex marriage argument creates and flourishes in.

Shows how little you know. There are species that change sex. There are species that do not need another to procreate.

True, some produce asexually. What is important to note is that the more evolutionarily advanced the species, the more that rule is enforced.

Also, you really should check your comments before writing them. Spontaneous sex changes in some frogs is not homsexual reproduction. Neither is asexual reproduction. And both are unavailable to humans.

Terrance came in to try to shore up your point by making a case that homosexuality does happen in animals. Bully for him, but that has nothing to do with marriage. In fact, since marriage evolved out of our species understanding of mating, the fact that nothing evolved socially for homosexuality except promiscuity says a lot about it. That doesn’t mean something couldn’t evolve, and I hope it does.

Call me an imbecile, stupid, whatever names make you feel righteous, I don’t care.

It shows much of your problematic reasoning that you have to assume a psychological disorder to explain how little impact your arguments have. That puts you in a dream world, not me.

even if the birthparents enter into the adoption process voluntarily

More accurate to say it is orthoganal to the point. Purchasing slaves could be a voluntary act, and that doesn’t make it right. The princples that demark humanitarian goals and selfish human bartering are presented above.

But he seems to have a sticking point when it comes to gay couples raising children.

This is not accurate. I would not care about RB’s at all if it weren’t for their capacity to help children. I really don’t accept the romantic enforcement ideal (forwarded by Jon Rauch, Sullivan and Dale Carpenter) which says monogamy is something the government should become involved in as a goal in and of itselft. But that is probably my libertarian leanings speaking.

I believe everyone concerned can agree that the best thing for a child is to be raised by their mother and father in a marriage. The statistics bear this out time and time again. Even step-parent and adoptive families (though they might be the best some children can hope for) do not seem to have the capacity to help children.

My experiene with On Lawn is that he’s probably entirely aganist surrogacy (something about paying parents to have nothing to do wit their children, etc.) and leans against gay adoptions (something about adoption, even open adoption, basically taking children away from intact families, even if the birthparents enter into the adoption process voluntarily, make all the choices including who the adoptive parents will be, and maintain contact and thus the connection to the child’s biological heritage.

He may be in support of same-sex couples having some legal rights and protections, since he seems to be supporting of most of the list at the end of this post. But he seems to have a sticking point when it comes to gay couples raising children. And let’s not even start on birth certificates, though I’d be concerned that a gay parent whose name isn’t on the birth certificate might find his or her parental rights being challenged at some point.

But there’s one point that bears further discussion, if only to debunk.

OnLawn:
Why every species on earth restricts procreation to those who show the capacity to love, honor, and cherish people of the other sex is a mystery. But it is also a scientific fact.

Shows how little you know. There are species that change sex. There are species that do not need another to procreate. What a dumb statement you made. Show me the scientific proof you have that EVERY species is male/female.

Actually, Steve’s right. Just last night I was watching a Logo special about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. There are also at least a couple of books on the subject: Evolution’s Rainbow and Biological Exuberance. I’ve read both, and at the very least the show that (a) there are many animal species in which there is some degree of same-sex activity (usually a minority of individuals, but sometimes most of the population engages in some amount of same-sex activity, and (b) there are some species in which a minority of same-sex pairs raise offspring.

In the latter case, parenting stems either from same-sex pairs adopting the abandoned eggs or offspring of others, or one or both member(s) of the pair (in female pairs) mates with a male and then returns to a female partner to raise their young together. Some studies go back several generations in the animal groups studied, 100 years or more, suggesting that the behavior isn’t a recent development due to, say, environmental pollution, etc.

Basically, it suggests that the behavior is at the very least non-detrimental to the species and that it might even be beneficial in ways we don’t entirely understand yet, because otherwise it would have died out the species.

(And yes, there are species that have more than one gender, and species in which individuals change gender in order to play a role in mating, rearing offspring, etc.)

That’s all.

This statement here, OnLawn:
I assume then you are still married to the mother. Or how else do you assume your family is intact?

You clearly imply that I need to be married to a woman or you have NO idea how my family is intact.

OnLawn says:
Getting you to talk and blatantly appeal to ignorance in statements such as the above, does more to discredit you than anything I say.

OnLawn, you don’t understand. I can come up with the actual truth and you won’t believe me. So you have discredited me simply because I support gay marriage. So it doesn’t matter if I’m civil or if I’m a name-calling pissed off mofo, in either case, your opinion of me and of my opinions is the same.

OnLawn says most absurdly:
Is that what you do? Create some stupid homo v heterosexual warfare? Is marriage nothing more to you than a way to get the heterosexuals? I’m not sure you are, but your constant seperation of the social universe into those two camps makes me feel like you really have some issues.

No OnLawn, the division is the makings of YOUR side. YOU ARE THE ONE INSISTING ON A SEPARATION AND A DISTINCTION.

Preserving marriage between a man and a woman does NOT lower your divorce rate.

OnLawn says:
Gays are not prevented from marriage, but in order to call a sex-segregationist combination a marriage we have to alter our understanding of marriage away from responsible procreation and principles of basic human rights.

alter your understanding away from basic human rights? You are babbling nonsense. So to you, it is more important that a household have a penis and a vagina rather than love. Now that I know that you recommend for us to raise children in loveless marriages, I know you are truly full of it.

OnLawn says:
This happened in Massachusetts, Spain, and all the other nations that currently have neutered marriage. The statistics you want for proof are right there, the correlation is a perfect 1.

Onlawn, read this and then shut up.
http://www.slate.com/id/2100884/

OnLawn says:
How about your family? Every homosexual family is built on the broken back of a failed heterosexual union.

The mother of my child was married to a man and she still is (as far as I know). It was a surrogacy, it was my sperm and I am the biological father. They are still married and still helping gay families be created as far as I know. Before you say that legally he is the father, I AND my partner are both on the birth certificate. Legally and in a court of law, they are not recognized as the family and their family was not broken up.

OnLawn says:
Same-sex marriage is built on failed heterosexual unions, such as the one that you had before forming your current family.

No, I’ve been with my partner for 20 years and my child is 4. You assume and you are wrong.

OnLawn says:
Children have a right to be raised by the parents who brought them into this world wherever possible.

AMEN! I worked for 5 years to bring her into this world.

OnLawn:
Why every species on earth restricts procreation to those who show the capacity to love, honor, and cherish people of the other sex is a mystery. But it is also a scientific fact.

Shows how little you know. There are species that change sex. There are species that do not need another to procreate. What a dumb statement you made. Show me the scientific proof you have that EVERY species is male/female.

OnLawn says:
At your current clip, you’ll have to admit you are not contributing to the conversation and leave sooner than later. At some point you’ll realize that ignorance and slanderous accusations will not overcome the deficiencies in your arguments.

I have no interest in changing your mind because that cannot be done. I have thanked Terrance several times for letting me vent because that (venting my anger at the harm you put upon children of gay families) is the most that can be gained here.

Call me an imbecile, stupid, whatever names make you feel righteous, I don’t care.

Every homosexual family is built on the broken back of a failed heterosexual union. In that respect it is a zero sum game. Same-sex marriage is built on failed heterosexual unions, such as the one that you had before forming your current family.

Waith a minute. See, it's statements like this that make me wonder if I'm talking to a reasonable person or not.

Every gay family is build on a broken heterosexual union? How is this so? Neither I nor my partner have been previously married to women. In fact, neither of us ever even dated women, because we were both aware of our orientations an an early age. (So, the logic went, why go through the motions of faking it?)

In fact, I think probably the biggest favor I ever did for heterosxual unions was to not inflict myself as a husband on a woman who would be better off married a heterosexual male than to me.

So, if there aren't any failed heterosexual marriages or relationships in our pasts, how is what my partner and I have build on failed heterosexual unions?

The only heterosexual unions in our pasts are those of our parents, which have been pretty successful in terms of producing offspring and avoiding divorce. (His parents are still together after 50 years, mine were as well until my father's passing earlier this year.)

So, how is what my partner and I have built on the back of failed heterosexual unions? Particularly, how is that true for gay couples who fit the description above and who don't have children? If we're talking about people who've never been married to or in relationships with the opposite sex, how are their same-sex unions built on the backs of failed heterosexual unions?

At your current clip, you’ll have to admit you are not contributing to the conversation and leave sooner than later. At some point you’ll realize that ignorance and slanderous accusations will not overcome the deficiencies in your arguments.

My advice is to calm down, take a rational look at what is going on. Actually read and try to understand what others are saying, especially if you disagree with them.

I feel Terrance is doing this, and have heard positive feedback from others on this site who are. They don’t agree with me, and I’m not here to make them. But they are taking a more dispationate look at what is really going on, and I think (judging from Terrances comments at least) feel they are benefiting from it. I know that I always benefit when I put my own emotions aside and actually try to walk a mile in anothers shoes.

Having debated this for many years now, I can tell you for every thousand or so people like yourself, who feel some self-righteous sense of justice to make a complete imbecile of yourself, there is one or two who are able to be more dispationate and rational.