LDS II: The Mormons

[halleyscomet]

That's not quite right. The journal Review of the Economics of Households reports a study it conducted which found that "Children living with married, opposite-sex parents were more likely to graduate from high school than peers living with cohabiting, single, or same-sex parents.

Based on what we know of interracial marriages that's actually be expected at this stage. Children of families where the relationship of the parents is disapproved of by the surrounding society are less likely to graduate from high school. We've already seen that Legalizing gay marriage reduces the stigma of being gay. Program such as "it gets better" and assorted anti-bullying campaigns are going to contribute to this trend is well.

It really is astounding how well the gay rights movement and the arguments for it are mirroring the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Even the way that homophobia negatively impacts the children of homosexuals is shockingly similar to the way racism impacts the children of minorities and mixed-race families.

The more you tell me, the stronger my support becomes for marriage equality. You're elucidating of wealth of ways that marriage equality benefits society as a whole and the children of gay families in particular.

 

[Recovering Agnostic]

I raise the point, which is relevant, because in 2001 (yes, it's old data) 80% of heterosexual couples remained married after five years; 66% after 10 years; and 57% after 15 years. For male homosexuals in relationships, less than 1% remained together after just a year; after 1-3 years, 31% were still together; and after 4-7 years, 29%.
http://www.frc.org/get.cfi=IS04C02

Loss Leader has already fisked your stats and demonstrated that they don't say anything like what you claim they do. This is becoming a pattern.

Yes, the homosexual couples did not have the benefit of marriage, which may, indeed, explain the differences. I'm simply asking if there is reason to believe that marriage will cause gay couples to stay together for periods that approximate the figures for married heterosexual couples.

With no plausible basis for considering that it wouldn't, and no justification for considering such a question relevant to the question of whether they should be permitted a basic civil recognition of their relationship. Did you have a point, or were you just JAQing off?

I sincerely hope that it will be a "stabilising" influence, but only time will tell.

Yet you don't seem to want to find out, as you persistently use this perceived hypothetical risk as a reason for denying same-sex couples the right to marry. I'm appalled, but not surprised.

I haven't thrown out anything, wildly or otherwise.

I beg to differ. Every reason you have given for opposing same-sex marriage is a poorly-considered, inconsistent post hoc rationalisation of a position you decided on for other reasons. The studies and statistics you quote are overwhelmingly from heavily biased, ideologically motivated sources, and you typically misunderstand or misrepresent them in your haste to find some sort of foundation for your position. Not only that, but even if they were impeccable sources, meticulously reported, they still wouldn't offer a reason for denying same-sex couples the opportunity to marry.

Your arguments are so weak and incoherent that Loss Leader has taken the time to construct an argument on your behalf, just to move the discussion along. When your opponents can effortlessly make your case better than you can, doesn't that give you food for thought?

 

[skyrider44]

Please post from the article directly and provide a link to the article. Christine Kim is unreliable as a source, as she intentionally distorts the claims from reports, as I and others have already shown.
It doesn't help your argument to continually rely on sources who are dishonest.

I wanted to post the article proper, but there's a $39 fee.

Re. Ms. Kim: I know she has written extensively on same-sex marriage. It may not be fair--nor accurate--to claim that she "intentionally distorts the claims from reports."

 

[skyrider44]

. . .One man's experience doesn't amount to scientific evidence, it only amounts to anecdote.

Having said that, you then say this:

How did my brother-in-law, raised by a single mother, manage to become a loving father to three children without a male role model?

 

[skyrider44]

Skyridder sicwon't answer the question.

The bottom line is that children do best when raised by a father and a mother, neither of whom is gay. Decades of parenting experience proves that to be true.

When children do best, all of society benefits.

Those who are pushing the gay agenda are free, of course, to continue doing so, including calling me a bigot. As for myself, however, I will have nothing more to say on the subject.

 

[joobz]

I understand. Any study/source/article that opposes same-sex marriage is biased--even articles by the famed Mayo Clinic.[/qutoe]
Actually, you don't understand.
I am referring to the fact that your sources are biased and intentionally misrepresent data to further a clear anti-gay agenda. Not only that, but you are also intentionally misrepresenting articles to further your own anti-gay agenda. Just like you are misrepresenting my statement to mean something I do not mean.

 

[halleyscomet]

Skyridder won't answer the question. Can anyone else offer an answer? So, what if we were to grant his premise for argument sake? What possible difference does it make? What ramifications would that have on poor people whose children are measurably disadvantaged? What about single parents? What are we to do about this sub-prime situations?

We are missing a part of the equation. There's a great big gap. Is there anyone that can fill that in without special pleading?

I don't think the people using the argument are really thinking it through to that extent. There seems to be a fantasy that denying gay marriage will magically keep kids from being born to gay couples. While it would prevent adoption, the kids will still be born and will end up growing up in households where their parents aren't married. Denying gay marriage exacerbates the problem, it doesn't make it better.

If, however, we get to the point where being "disadvantaged" is enough reason to remove a child from the household, you start marching towards things like Australia's "Stolen Generation" or Canada's forced sterilization program. Those are not theoretical, but very real historical precedents. Mormons should be wary of letting this line of thinking continue, as being a religious minority in most the country, they'd fare no better in terms of keeping their kids than Muslims. The Dominion and Evangelical believers likely to move forward with a "Lost Generation" scenario see Mormons as delusional Pagans at best. Mormons wouldn't be in the first round to lose their kids or face forced sterilization, but having grown up among the people who would be leading the charge in an American Theocracy, I can tell you Mormons would be targeted eventually.

 

[Olowkow]

The motives for the marginalizing of gays and opposition to gay marriage are well understood by most of us, and it is not productive to attempt to couch these religious and immature reasons in terms of concern for children or states' rights. We know what is going on.

Hawaii has just passed their same sex marriage law, and Illinois will soon follow. It doesn't matter what Utah does or what some LDS members think; most religions eventually either just follow those who do the right thing after seeing that it was in retrospect the right thing, or else they themselves become marginal fringe cults. I suspect when membership begins to wither because of the bigoted views required by the church, some prophet will suddenly get the message from god that gay marriages were always meant to be.

The video of Rep. Ing's speech captures why this thread's exposure of the paucity of arguments against the gay "lifestyle" is so clear.

Rep. Kaniela Ing (D - South Maui) not only delivered an inspiring nine-minute speech in favor of marriage equality in the Aloha State, but he took listeners on a journey through his own self-discovery and realization of why rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals are so important.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Having said that, you then say this:

It is a direct response to your question, "How does a girl, for example, learn to be a wife and mother if she is raised by two male gays?". It shows why your presentation of Robert Lopez's testimony doesn't amount to evidence. He blames the lack of a male role model for his being a "social outcast", having "girlish mannerisms", and not getting laid in high school, then he happens to mention that he was gay then, and now considers himself bisexual. Many people grow up without a father in the family, and they don't complain of such things. People don't encounter effeminate men and automatically assume he didn't grow up with a male role model in the home. When a claim is based on a single account, then another single counter-example is sufficient to establish the invalidity of applying that account to a general population. If someone says he won't hire Irishmen because they are drunks, and he supports this claim by pointing out that his Irish neighbor is an alcoholic, I don't need to counter with a sociological study to prove the fallaciousness of his generalization. Simply pointing to another Irish neighbor who doesn't care for alcohol is enough.

As to your question, I have a couple of counter questions: How does a girl learn to be a wife and mother if she is raised by a single father? How does a boy learn to be a father if he is raised by a single mother? You are implying that same-sex parents will and do result in opposite gender children having no idea how to "behave like a man" or "behave like a woman". If this was true we would see experiences like Robert Lopez's described in vast numbers by children who grew up without a gender role model in otherwise stable and supportive homes. The answer to your question is, "It depends on the individual, but a great many girls make fine mothers despite having grown up without a mother in the family.



And what are "unspoken gender cues" anyway?

 

[Shalamar]

Skyridder sicwon't answer the question.

The bottom line is that children do best when raised by a father and a mother, neither of whom is gay. Decades of parenting experience proves that to be true.

When children do best, all of society benefits.

Those who are pushing the gay agenda are free, of course, to continue doing so, including calling me a bigot. As for myself, however, I will have nothing more to say on the subject.

Perhaps it is true. But there are plenty of children that do well with only one parent, or with parents of the same gender. There seems to be no reason to discriminate because 'FOR THE CHILDREN!'

Of course, to be consistent, you want to deny equal rights to gays for the children. Shall we also take away children who have single parent households, and give them to households with a married couple of man and wife? That is the logical conclusion.

If you do not, then there is absolutely no reason to deny marriage rights to a gay household because 'children need a mother and a father'.

 

[halleyscomet]

False. I posted the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), conducted by U. of Texas-Austin sociologist Dr. Mark Regnerus, which clearly showed that young adults whose parents had been in same-sex relationships fared poorly compared to parents who had not been in such relationships.

About that "study"...

FLORIDA: Judge Orders UCF To Release Documents In Debunked Regnerus Study

Judge Orders Disclosure of Documents Detailing Publication of Regnerus’ Junk Science

Almost from the moment it was released, the 2012 New Family Structures Study raised red flags among family scholars for its results that suggest that children are less likely to thrive when raised by gay and lesbian parents than if raised by straight parents. The study is a clear outlier among 30 years’ worth of social science that suggest that children thrive equally well in two parent households, regardless of the genders of their parents. It was soon revealed that Regnerus’s study utterly failed to control for error. The study’s so-called “straight” households featured heterosexual parents in committed, long-term relationships, whereas the so-called “gay” households failed to feature same-sex couples in comparable relationships. In today’s opinion, Orange County Circuit Judge Donald Grincewicz ruled that emails and documents possessed by University of Central Florida (UCF) related to the flawed study’s peer-review process must be turned over to John Becker, who sought the documents under Florida’s Public Records Act. UCF houses the journal Social Science Research, which published the Regnerus study, and the editor of the journal, UCF Professor James Wright, led the peer-review process for the research. Becker is represented by the Law Office of Andrea Flynn Mogensen, P.A., and Barrett, Chapman & Ruta, P.A; and

Allow me to emphasize a critical point:

The study’s so-called “straight” households featured heterosexual parents in committed, long-term relationships, whereas the so-called “gay” households failed to feature same-sex couples in comparable relationships.

 

[Foster Zygote]

The bottom line is that children do best when raised by a father and a mother, neither of whom is gay. Decades of parenting experience proves that to be true.

Decades of who's parenting experience? Plenty of people grow up with single parents and turn out just fine. And there are people who grow up in traditional households who make train wrecks of their lives. Children do best when they are raised in a loving, supportive home. Non-traditional families are perfectly capable of proving love and encouragement, and traditional families are no guarantee that children will receive such support.

You know well enough by now that children do best when they are raised in families of higher socio-economic status. We don't need decades of parenting experience to know that, we have hard scientific evidence. Yet you are only calling for the prohibition of marriage between same-sex couples, not poor couples. This is an appalling double standard and it exposes the truth behind your opposition to equal marriage rights for all adults.

When children do best, all of society benefits.

Yes. But why is it that your concern only seems to extend as far as children of same-sex couples? Why are you willing to call for drastic steps, such as limiting the right to marry, only when it involves gay couples?

Those who are pushing the gay agenda are free, of course, to continue doing so, including calling me a bigot. As for myself, however, I will have nothing more to say on the subject.

The "gay agenda" is very similar to the "black agenda" and the "women's agenda" that came before. Its goal is to end unfair legislation that relegates to second class citizenship a portion of the population with discriminatory laws that are only applied to those being marginalized. The fact that you are supporting such unequal legislation is, quite simply, bigotry. I'm sorry that you don't like that, but it doesn't make it any less true. (Just like your reluctance to admit to the evidence against the Book Of Abraham doesn't make Joseph Smith any less a liar.) You may as well leave this discussion, as I can't see you offering anything more than what you have already presented: misrepresentation and obfuscation by bigots, along with some actual scientific sources that you misinterpret as supporting your position because you didn't examine them in detail. You've presented your argument and it has been shown to be fallacious.

 

[joobz]

I wanted to post the article proper, but there's a $39 fee.

So you are not sure what the actual report says. this is an important point.

Re. Ms. Kim: I know she has written extensively on same-sex marriage. It may not be fair--nor accurate--to claim that she "intentionally distorts the claims from reports."

I know she misrepresents the data, because I have read her work and I have read the sources she cites.

 

[joobz]

The bottom line is that children do best when raised by a father and a mother, neither of whom is gay. Decades of parenting experience proves that to be true.

It isn't good enough to simply say this. You must also cite first source research. You are unable to, and this is why fail.

When children do best, all of society benefits.

Then why not advocate for preventing poor people from having children?

 

[halleyscomet]

The bottom line is that children do best when raised by a father and a mother, neither of whom is gay.

You have yet to provide actual evidence to support this assertion. Debunked and misrepresented studies are not evidence.

Decades of parenting experience proves that to be true.

Please, elaborate on this aspect of your claim. Whose experience? How many families were involved? Where were the results published?

 

[Myriad]

The confounding of the language and racial characteristics did not happen by chance. The Lord God has His reasons for initiating such segregation.

If you're referring to the story of Babel, the Lord God's reason for confounding the language is quite clearly told: aversion to brick cities, tall towers, and/or human aspiration in general.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So, what's the official LDS policy on the building of cities, the use of bricks in construction, and the permissible height of towers guaranteed not to make the Lord God fearful that heaven might be invaded?

The Washington DC LDS Temple is 288 feet tall. The LDS Office Building in Salt Lake City is 420 feet. That's definitely getting up near the theoretical maximum height that could possibly have been built of brick in ancient times. But of course we now use steel for tall buildings and so can build them much taller than that. Is that not a cause for concern? What about aircraft and spacecraft, that go much higher? How seriously does the LDS take that Genesis passage anyhow?

What about language translation software? Are you not afraid that if we work around the problems of communications too effectively, God will try some new affliction to (literally) keep us down? What if next time He decides to just blind us all?

I wonder whether you've thought this through.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[RandFan]

The bottom line is that children do best when raised by a father and a mother, neither of whom is gay. Decades of parenting experience proves that to be true.

You STILL have not answered the question.

• Children do best when they are not raised in poverty. So what?
• The ability to marry has nothing to do with whether or not gays and lesbians will have children.
• It's a finding of legal fact that you are wrong. The scientific consensus does not show what you think it shows. I've provided the links. The legal finding of fact was based on expert testimony.

When children do best, all of society benefits.

True but denying gays and lesbians the right to marry the person they love will not A.) reduce the number of children raised by gays and lesbians. B.) Increase the number of children raised by a two parent family. C.) Solve real pernicious problems like poverty.

Those who are pushing the gay agenda are free, of course, to continue doing so, including calling me a bigot. As for myself, however, I will have nothing more to say on the subject.

I wish you would just answer the questions posed to you. Why is it so hard to address them?

 

[halleyscomet]

Keep in mind, this is a non-trivial slice of the population we're talking about.

Study: Public polls underestimate same-sex attraction, especially among Christians

A team of researchers at Ohio State University found that when respondents were assured of anonymity, their admission to same sex attraction and activity rose sharply. In a normal survey, an average of 17 percent of those surveyed (12 percent of men, 24 percent of women) said they have had a sexual experience with someone of their own sex. For the anonymous, or “veiled” survey, the number rose to 27 percent (17 percent of men and 43 percent of women), an increase of 58 percent.

In the standard survey, 11 percent or respondents said they did not consider themselves to be heterosexual. In the veiled result, the percentage leapt to 19 percent, a 65 percent increase.

From a parenting perspective, I would think an out gay man who is happy with who he is and who is married to the man he loves would make a much better father than a repressed, self-loathing closeted homosexual in a loveless opposite-sex marriage of religious necessity. Who would you rather have as a father, a pre-scandal Ted Haggard or Nathan Lane?

OK, bad example, because Haggard is, according to him, bisexual. The odds are good he's actually attracted to his wife. He has no reason to lie about this, as the Evangelical movement celebrates alleged "ex-gay" salvation narratives.

 

[RandFan]

I don't think the people using the argument are really thinking it through to that extent. There seems to be a fantasy that denying gay marriage will magically keep kids from being born to gay couples. While it would prevent adoption, the kids will still be born and will end up growing up in households where their parents aren't married. Denying gay marriage exacerbates the problem, it doesn't make it better.

If, however, we get to the point where being "disadvantaged" is enough reason to remove a child from the household, you start marching towards things like Australia's "Stolen Generation" or Canada's forced sterilization program. Those are not theoretical, but very real historical precedents. Mormons should be wary of letting this line of thinking continue, as being a religious minority in most the country, they'd fare no better in terms of keeping their kids than Muslims. The Dominion and Evangelical believers likely to move forward with a "Lost Generation" scenario see Mormons as delusional Pagans at best. Mormons wouldn't be in the first round to lose their kids or face forced sterilization, but having grown up among the people who would be leading the charge in an American Theocracy, I can tell you Mormons would be targeted eventually.

Thank you. It's special pleading to suggest that we should only consider the affects of allowing gays and lesbians to marry when it comes to the well-being of children. Never mind that when asked for evidence of harm at the Prop 8 trial none was provided. While there was plenty of evidence that being raised by two parents regardless of gender was what was most important.

 

[bruto]

The bottom line is that children do best when raised by a father and a mother, neither of whom is gay. Decades of parenting experience proves that to be true.

When children do best, all of society benefits.

Those who are pushing the gay agenda are free, of course, to continue doing so, including calling me a bigot. As for myself, however, I will have nothing more to say on the subject.

Well, I'm glad you're comfortable with what others might call you. If you think that standing for rationality and equality of rights and normalization of families in the actual world that actually exists at this very moment is "pushing the gay agenda" then we can all draw our own conclusions.

You're may well be right in a certain way that generally the children of happily married heterosexual parents do best, but we also cannot dismiss the unfortunate fact that this occurs in a world tainted by hatred and prejudice against anything else. If you're happy in that world, good for you. I, on the other hand, want a few things for everyone that we Vermonters enjoy today. I want the children of people who live otherwise than myself to have the legal protection of a family. I want people who love each other to be able to enjoy being married, because I think marriage is wonderful. And I want to change the hateful and disgusting world in which those two previous ideas can be dismissed as "pushing the gay agenda" as if that were reason enough to dismiss the lives and loves and families of the real people among whom we live.