World’s largest study on same-sex parents finds kids are healthier and happier than peers

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A cross-sectional study of children raised by gay couples, the largest of its kind, found that the kids are all right — and are, by some measures, doing even better than their peers.

Conducted by University of Melbourne researchers, the survey followed 315 same-sex couples, mostly lesbians, and their 500 children, using a variety of standardized measures to compare their health and well-being to the general Australian population.

“We found that children from same-sex families scored, on average, 6 percent better on two key measures, general health and family cohesion, even when controlling for a number sociodemographic factors such as parent education and household income,” wrote lead researcher Simon Crouch. “But on most health measures, including emotional behaviour and physical functioning, there was no difference when compared with children from the general population.”

The finding same-sex couples make perfectly fine parents echoes plenty of other research to that effect. That their children appear in some ways to be at an advantage, the authors suggest, could have something to do with the way their parents don’t default to gender stereotypes, creating a “more harmonious family unit and therefore feeding on to better health and well being.” Those benefits were somewhat undercut, however, by the continued experience of stigma, which negatively impacted their mental and emotional well-being.

But the real take-away from the study, according to its authors, isn’t that one type of family is necessarily better than another. ”Quite often, people talk about marriage equality in the context of family and that marriage is necessary to raise children in the right environment, and that you need a mother and a father to be able to do that, and therefore marriage should be restricted to male and female couples,” Crouch told ABC News.

“I think what the study suggests in that context is that actually children can be brought up in many different family contexts, and it shouldn’t be a barrier to marriage equality.”

167 thoughts on “World’s largest study on same-sex parents finds kids are healthier and happier than peers”

  1. I guess it stands to reason. Heterosexual marriage teaches us a lot about getting on with a partner who may be very different from ourself, teaches about compromise. The kids can learn from this too, but perhaps instead of learning how to deal with conflict, they are sometimes learning conflict.

    Traditionally the father was away a lot, and children were raised by mothers, sisters, aunties, etc. Of course there would be conflict there too, but perhaps less differences in understanding?

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  2. Actually I was just recently reading testimonials of adults who were raised by same sex parents and they seem to be saying quite the opposite.

    Saturday, April 19, 2014
    La Joie de Vivre 3:1 — Voices of the children of same-sex couples, a roll call
    The following list is a partial bibliography of both adults and children who were raised by gay and lesbian parents and offer counternarratives to the consensus on same-sex parenting in theory or practice. This list has been compiled by several volunteers who wish not to be named, out of fear of retaliation by gay organizations. The list was designed to be posted without commentary so the children of same-sex couples can speak in their own voices. [–ROL]

    More additions to this roll call are forthcoming, as we are able to finalize more testimonials currently in process.

    ADULTS

    *1) Jean-Dominique Bunel (raised by lesbians): “It was not the taboo of homosexuality that made me suffer, but same-sex parenting. Homosexuals should naturally be greeted with brotherhood. they enrich humanity and if necessary, of course, give them as much as possible the same rights as heterosexuals but this equality obviously can not apply to a “right to the child “which exists nowhere and is not found in any text. ‘ This is indeed what cannot be: gay parenting.

    I oppose this bill because in the name of a fight against inequalities and discrimination, we would refuse a child one of its most sacred rights, upon which a universal, millenia-old tradition rests, that of being raised by a father and a mother. You see, two rights collide: the right to a child for gays, and the right of a child to a mother and father. The international convention on the rights of the child stipulates in effect that “the highest interest of the child should be a primary consideration” (article 3, section 1). Here this ‘higher interest’ leaves no doubt.” But it is the wounded man who concludes: “If two women who raised me had been married prior to the adoption of such a bill, I would have jumped into the fray and would have brought a complaint before the French state and before the European Court of the rights of man, for the violation of my right to a mom and a dad.”

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    • According to the Melbourne study, about two-thirds of children with same-sex parents experienced some form of stigma because of their parents’ sexual orientation. Despite these kids’ higher marks in physical health and social well-being, the stigma associated with their family structure was linked to lower scores on a number of scales. Crouch said stigmas ranged from subtle issues such as sending letters home from school addressed to a “Mr.” and “Mrs.” to more harmful problems such as bullying at school. The greater the stigma a same-sex family faces, the greater the impact on a child’s social and emotional well-being, Crouch said.

      However, according to a report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics last year that analyzed three decades of data, children raised by gay and lesbian parents showed resilience “with regard to social, psychological and sexual health despite economic and legal disparities and social stigma.”

      “Many studies have demonstrated that children’s well-being is affected much more by their relationships with their parents, their parents’ sense of competence and security, and the presence of social and economic support for the family than by the gender or the sexual orientation of their parents,” said Siegel, co-author of the American Academy of Pediatrics report.

      Amid the last year’s Supreme Court arguments over same-sex marriage, researchers found that the quality of parenting and families’ economic well-being was more important than sexual orientation.

      “I can tell you we’re never going to get the perfect science, but what you have right now is good-enough science,” Siegel said. “The data we have right now are good enough to know what’s good for kids.”

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      • Johnny Cash made the same point:- “(children raised by gay and lesbian parents) showed resilience “with regard to social, psychological and sexual health.

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      • “Haven’t you been, endlessly, insisting atheism was a ‘belief’ arrived at via a cool rational inquiry into, and rejection of, theism?
        No…”
        😆

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    • What do you expect from a website like that. No pretense of any sort of open mind: nothing but hatred projected towards anything LGBT.

      Testimonials are not worth the paper they are written on. They can be solicited, selected, forged, and in this case clearly put together to produce a negative reaction.

      Religious people will always have a hard time being fair to anyone their imaginary mishmash of a “holy book” disapproves of.
      Maybe you ought to read Bible Fictions and see just how the bible came about, how it was written using the Old Testament as a source of material so that New Testament writings could be given “legitimacy” by being able to be tied into existing accepted scriptures.
      There is practically nothing that Jesus supposedly does or says that has not been taken from something in the Old Testament, from Daniel, or Jonah or Elijah etc.

      The whole Jewish bible,even Psalms was scoured through to find things that could be used to apply to the accounts of Jesus, and what he “would” have said or done as a “heavenly ” god who was now to be cast as having had a life on earth. Consequently we see how he “would” have been conceived etc. Even his birthplace caused quite a few obfuscations and machinations in order to appear to relate to a prophecy or two. Then comes what he “would’ have done if he were an omnipotent god, the healings, the impossible things etc.

      All of Jesus’ miracles were pinched from the Old Testament, just made out to be even more miraculous in some way in the re-telling.The whole structure of stories gets pinched, just names and places, circumstances or details changed, but never-the-less the main ideas, and often words, clearly plagiarized.

      And it is VERY telling. It has always amazed me that believers like to do bible study but they never do any study into exactly HOW it all came about; how Paul’s Jesus (a vision of the heavenly Christ) shows that the author had no knowledge of the fantastic stories that were to come out in the much later Gospels, as the legend grew and took off. If Paul had known of them at the time, he would have quoted them to “clinch” arguments that he was trying to make, yet didn’t. You can actually follow the exaggerations as they grow with time and try to depict the earthly life that he “would” have had, as a saviour god who came down and went back again, like a number of others had done.

      Now THAT is study. And it explains a great deal. The bible is clearly a work of fiction, nothing more.

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  3. Remember Westborough Baptist Church. We can produce a study based on the population of that church, then project it onto the rest of the population and conclude that all Baptists hate fags.
    Or worse, do a study of Catholic Priest paedophiles and conclude that all catholic priests are kiddy fiddlers.
    Or even worse, do a study of the guy from “Hey Dad”, Charlie Chaplin and the guy who wrote “Tie my kangaroo down sport” and conclude that all male entertainers are child molesters.

    One should not conclude that the views of a small minority reflect the views of the large majority.

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    • But a study last year by researchers at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Pretoria in South Africa took a deeper dive into the effect of stigma on gay families, finding that:
      The children were not upset that their parents are gay. In fact, most of them embraced it. The negativity that children with gay parents experience is rarely the result of having gay parents. Instead, it’s the cultural stigma that causes all the problems. Any concerns they had were the result of how they would be treated in the public sphere. Research constantly shows that children with gay parents are normal, healthy, well-adjusted people. It’s the social scrutiny and stigmatization that children have to negotiate and contend with.

      As that quote suggests, the study only confirmed what previous research had borne out: Gay parents don’t disadvantage their children—but smear campaigns against gay parents do. .

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      • Even without ‘smear-campaigns’ there’s a natural (sorry for the obscenity!) aversion to homosexuality that cannot fail to show through any PC curtain to some degree. The question then becomes whether it’s fair and reasonable (or even possible) to expect others in the community to modify THEIR rights to accommodate the homosexual lobby?

        But all those kinds of assertions must surely depend on what sort of ‘society’ the kid grows up in. Throughout human history ~ until the last three minutes ~ a boy who grew up without male influences and mentorship would stand next to no chance. Even things like developing and applying that most basic of motivators, the ‘territorial instinct’, is something a female daddy isn’t capable of. (Let alone throwing a spear!) There’s a whole different world-connexion between the psyches and physical attributes of males and females.

        One suspects that ~ given human frailties and hangups and shortcomings generally ~ the most ‘well-adjusted’ child these days would be raised by robots. Or even BE a robot.

        Even Jesus had to invent an imaginary Daddy to make sense of his own existence.

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      • Dabbles I agree with this ” There’s a whole different world-connexion between the psyches and physical attributes of males and females.”

        Women and men are different. My two mothers are similar in many ways to their actions and reactions towards me as opposed to the way my father reared me.

        If there were no difference between the sexes whatsoever then what makes a person attracted to either sex? If they can choose their partner via their gender, why can children not want parents of each gender?

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    • The only qualifications one requires to be a biological parent are working sexual organs and unprotected sex. Being a good supportive parent as part of a cohesive family unit is a lot more complicated, and tends to hinge on multitudinous factors that rank a fair bit higher than genetics or what one does with consenting adults in the privacy of one’s own bedroom

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      • ‘Supportive’ parents (and social engineering generally) are the bane of kids in this modern world. That ‘centrelink’ philosophy is preventing kids from experiencing, experimenting, innovating and learning to be actual ‘people’.

        More and more in recent times it’s being RE-discovered that kids NEED to be allowed ~ even encouraged ~ to get out and play in the dirt, fall out of trees and make themselves sick from eating too many worms or peaches off the tree in the backyard. (What’s a ‘backyard’, you ask? ~ as well you might.)

        Kids need to be able to actually LEARN, rather than be just overstuffed blobs which absorb whatever bit of PC is flavour of the month.

        Without all of that, including exhilarating successes and bitter disappointments,
        kids are being robbed of their childhood and ~ down the track ~ their very existences.
        We’re ‘Born Free’ ~ and, ideally, should live that way. It’s why god evicted Adam and Eve from the (Centrelink) Garden. (After successful ‘Work-Experience’ at fruitpicking and dealing with Public Serpents.)

        Despite the godsquads’ howls of objection human animals are not very different from any other species, and mental/emotional/psychological chains are probably even more detrimental than than steel ones.
        (And the accepted-without-question ‘nuclear family’, even if it does include a father and a mother, is another modern example of how to destroy a species.)

        While it only takes only ‘working sexual organs’ (of two DIFFERENT genders) to build a living organism, it’s truly said that ‘It takes a village to raise a child’.

        Anything less amounts to child-abuse.

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    • The Williams Institute, a research center on sexual orientation law and public policy at UCLA School of Law ,issued a report from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) published in Pediatrics.

      The U.S. NLLFS -the longest-running study ever conducted on American lesbian families-found that the 17-year-old adolescent daughters and sons of lesbian mothers, all conceived through donor insemination, were rated higher than their peers in social, academic, and overall competence, and lower in aggressive behavior, rule-breaking, and social problems, on standardized assessments of psychological adjustment.

      The NLLFS has been studying the same group of lesbian families since 1986; it is the only study to have followed the daughters and sons of lesbians from conception to adulthood. The results are based on data gathered when the adolescents were 17 years old. The report also found no differences in the psychological adjustment of NLLFS adolescents who had been conceived by known and unknown donors, nor between those who reported homophobic stigmatization and those who did not.

      Although there are over 40 studies on young children with same-sex parents, data on adolescents reared by same-sex parents are very limited. The current NLLFS report shows that despite homophobic stigmatization, the adolescent daughters and sons of lesbians demonstrate more competencies and fewer behavioral problems than age-matched peers. These findings support the position statements of all major professional associations concerning the well-being of children growing up in lesbian and gay families.

      The NLLFS is spearheaded by principal investigator Nanette Gartrell, M.D., a 2010 Williams Distinguished Scholar and also Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.

      “Our data show that adolescents reared in lesbian parent households are psychologically healthy and high-functioning,” said Nanette Gartrell, MD. “The mothers provided healthy, loving and safe environments where their daughters and sons could grow and thrive. We have followed these families since the mothers were inseminating or pregnant, and at each interview, we have been impressed with how well the kids are doing. At 17, we find that the kids are well-adjusted and well-equipped for college and beyond.”

      For 24 years, this study has been gathering information for specialists in healthcare, family services, sociology, feminist studies, education, ethics, gay marriage, and public policy on matters pertaining to LGBT families. Dr. Gartrell’s research documents prospective lesbian mothers’ strong desire to bear children; the thoughtful and innovative parenting styles of lesbian mothers; the effects of homophobia on planned lesbian families; the children’s growth and development; the impact of childrearing on lesbian mothers’ relationships, careers, and community activism; and today, the psychological adjustment of their 17-year-old adolescents.

      – See more at: http://10thousandcouples.com/issue/june-2014/article/largest-study-on-lesbian-families-finds-17-year-old-adolescents-healthy-and-happy#sthash.iJukv5bj.dpuf

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  4. There are many personal stories on the site and it gives different perspectives. I wouldn’t want to paste them here but here is just a small one.

    *17) Bronagh Cassidy (raised by lesbian mothers): “But Cassidy knows better: She is one of the first generation of “gayby boom” babies, raised by two moms. Adult children of same-sex parents are rare. I recently came across Cassidy’s story by accident, after she e-mailed a friend of mine who is a family scholar. Back in 1976, Cassidy’s mom had a religious ceremony with a woman named Pat. To make Cassidy, they did artificial insemination at home, mixing the sperm of two gay friends “to make sure nobody would ever know who the father was,” says Cassidy. (That was in the days before widespread DNA testing.) The two women stayed together for 16 years, until Pat died. Three years later, Cassidy’s mother married a man.

    What was it like for Cassidy being raised by two women she called “Mom” and “My Pat”?
    “When growing up, I always had the feeling of being something unnatural,” Cassidy says. “I came out of an unnatural relationship; it was something like I shouldn’t be there. On a daily basis, it was something I was conflicted with. I used to wish, honestly that Pat wasn’t there.”

    Why does she oppose same-sex marriage? “It’s not something that a seal of approval should be stamped on: We shouldn’t say it is a great and wonderful thing and then you have all these kids who later in life will turn around and realize they’ve been cheated. The adults choose to have that lifestyle and then have a kid. They are fulfilling their emotional needs — they want to have a child — and they are not taking into account how that’s going to feel to the child; there’s a clear difference between having same-sex parents and a mom and a dad.”

    …Some people will say if Cassidy’s mom and “my Pat” had been legally married, everything would have been fine. Cassidy doesn’t think so. “Even if society were open to it, there’s just the whole issue of your self-identity. I always had the feeling I was in a lab experiment.” She feels driven to do something, say something to protect other children like her. “Whenever I see it on TV, something inside of me says NO. I don’t think it’s fair that the kids are being put in this situation. They don’t have a choice about it.” Do any other adult children with same-sex parents feel the same way? Will we allow any space in this intense debate between adult combatants for something as simple as one child’s feelings?” http://www.njfpc.org/adult-children-speak-out-about-same-sex-parents

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    • Do you know any gay couples with children Kathleen?

      The gay couples with kids that I know rank among the most devoted, conscientious, and thoughtful of parents.

      Anyone who gave this a moment of thought would know it already. Unlike straight couples, gay couples almost never accidentally have kids. So their outcomes, like those of straight parents who wait to have kids until they affirmatively decide to do so, tend to be better than the average (which includes 15 year old parents, etc.).

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      • Yes I do actually. I have no issue with them as people but I don’t know how their daughter feels about the setup at the moment. We’ll have to wait and see and hear what she thinks.

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      • Exemplary of the PC bullshit is referring to children as ‘outcomes’.
        Another example (and a personal pet hate) is the unthinking acceptance of the perversion of the language. (eg ‘two moms’)
        ‘Gay’ does NOT mean ‘homosexual’.
        Homosexuals ~ of either gender ~ are homosexuals. (and quite a lot of them aren’t gay at all.)
        How can anyone expect to be taken seriously (or, currently, be ‘respected’)
        if they refuse to take responsibility, personally, for who they are and what they do?
        I don’t care who does what to whom (in a mutually-consenting way); the perversions lay beyond that.

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  5. I think if people are going to the study above, then we should also listen to people who speak out in the negative about their personal experiences. Why would you not?

    The point that keeps being raised seems to be that the only reason kids would have ‘issues’ is because of the stigma. Well, that’s not the case with many of the stories in the link I’ve supplied. Many of them are saying that they felt cheated out of having a father or a mother. That they wanted that.

    This particular story has been left anonymous because it is a child. It gives them courage to speak how they really feel.

    *19) Anonymousus Girl (raised by lesbians): “I have gay parents. I spend most of my time at my best friends house. I hang out with her Dad cuz I never had one and he is this awesome guy. My friends Dad is a lot like Charlie from Twilight! I cried when I read about Bellas father in the books and in all his scenes in the movies. Mostly at my friend’s house it feels like I can just be myself. Someone has to say it cuz I dont hear it but gay parents are selfish in a way. They dont think what it’s going to be like for me to live in their world.

    Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I a bad daughter because I wish I had a Dad? Is there anyone else who has 2 Moms or 2 Dads who wonders what it would be like if they were born into a normal family? Is ther anyone else who wants to be able to use the word normal without gettin a lecture on what is normal???

    I dont know my real father and never will. Its weird but I miss him. I miss this man I will never know. Is it wrong for me to long for a father like my friends have? She has two brothers I play basketball with all the time. It feels so amazing to be included in their family. When I am there I think this is what its like to be in a family that has a Mom and a Dad. Then I have have to go home to my own world. I just dont fit in it anymore.” http://anonymousus.org/stories/story.php?sid=1554#.UpmL7FCUQ4y

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    • You can just as easily find anonymous stories from children of gay parents who claim a positive experience Kathleen.
      When it comes down to it, these kids get it — love is love, and family is family.
      http://www.upworthy.com/some-kids-of-gay-parents-tell-us-their-secrets-and-theyre-adorable
      The fact is that scientific research has been generally consistent in showing that gay and lesbian parents are as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents. Major associations of mental health professionals in the U.S., Canada, and Australia have not identified credible empirical research that suggests otherwise

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      • You say that love is love and it doesn’t matter. There are others who disagree with you and will say that it is more than that, that they have certain emotional needs. Many people actually. I believe we should listen to their stories and not ignore them and throw countless studies at them as though their own personal stories don’t count.

        I also read that many studies were unfair because the children who were questioned were still within that family setup and would not have felt free to speak how they really feel. They would not have wanted to hurt the people they were with.

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      • hehehehehehe……I presume ~ all evidence to the contrary ~ that this:- “…gay and lesbian parents are as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents.”
        ….is meant as some sort of accolade.
        Open your eyes and took around you Terry!

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      • Well said Kate.
        And I think emotional needs aren’t the only ones not catered for.
        Bryan sometimes harps on about an ‘inborn’ need for the ‘spritual’, and I disagree.
        But there most certainly is an inbuilt need for other fulfilments, including our most primitive instincts, including all the many aspects of ‘survival’.

        To date we’ve suppressed, depressed or outlawed most of them, and the only good prospect on the horizon (in my view) is that homosaps (sic) are on the very edge of the rubbish-bin of extinction.

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      • Can you define:- (“You can just as easily find anonymous stories from children of gay parents who claim a positive experience Kathleen.”)

        “positive experience” ?? (and include the benchmark used by anyone who makes such claims.)

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    • It’s hard on kids deprived of what they see others have. An only child, I bet, always wants brothers and sisters, especially if not being part of a buddy group like Enid Blyton’s ‘Secret Seven’ or ‘Famous Five.’ It’s hard to be brought up by a single parent.

      We imagine all the advantages of a different family life. We need to actually experience it to realise it can actually be traumatic.

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    • Hey Kathleen, If this topic was about vaccination would you prefer to be informed by :
      a) the worlds largest study of it’s kind as run by the Melbourne University
      or
      b) anecdotal evidence of some disgruntled parent ?

      In just about any field if you ignore the science and cherry pick the anecdotes you can get any kind of result you want.

      Why should this be any different ?

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      • —> ” Why should we ignore the study and accept the anecdote ?”

        Perhaps because anecdotes invite a conclusion relevant to the teller and the listener, and ‘studies’ tell you what your conclusions must be?
        We’re reminded that people are all different; that means you can’t tip a hundred or a thousand or a million of them into a test-tube, shake it and come up with any valid conclusions any of the individuals.
        Despite evidence to the contrary, people aren’t peanuts.

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      • Hey Dabbles,

        I’d sorta agree – you can’t point to any single smoker and categorically state what his long term health outcomes would be.

        Yet I still don’t smoke because I believe in those studies which show that cigarettes are damaging to your health.

        Anecdotes get chosen or rejected based on the biases of the person using them. If you truly believe in the variety of the individual then the anecdote would have much less value that the study.

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  6. Is biology important or will any two people suffice?

    “One of the most fascinating interviews in the documentary is that of Barry Stevens, writer and director of the film Bio-Dad, a documentary that also examines the phenomenon of conception through sperm donation. Imagine, he asks us, that a doctor arrives in the maternity ward to speak to a new mother who wants her baby from the nursery. Don’t worry, he assures her, I’ll bring you a healthy baby. But, the mother insists, I want my baby. Nonsense, the doctor replies, any healthy, happy baby will do, and it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s your biological child.

    Is it so hard to understand, Barry Stevens asks, that if biology matters in this situation, it also matters to donor conceived persons who just want to know the basic facts surrounding their origin? “Saying kinship doesn’t matter leads to a lot of pain,” he points out.

    And so it does. Interviewee after interviewee describes an inexplicable sense of loss, and recount whole childhoods spent creating memories and imaginary fathers. “I look in the mirror,” one said, “and I don’t know who I look like.”” http://www.lifenews.com/2013/10/03/my-daddys-name-is-donor-a-glaring-problem-with-the-fertility-industry/

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  7. Adoptions on the whole, I think are largely successful – but they are born of sad circumstances. The poor mother who can’t afford to bring them up and feels it would be better for the child to have two parents who can bring them up in safety. The underage mother. The widow or widower. The mother/father who accidentally fell pregnant and just didn’t want children. Drug addicted or abuse parents who lose their children.

    More often than not I would guess that if those same children grew up in a loving environment that they would be quite happy and well adjusted, but lets not pretend that there isn’t a scar. Why do many children seek to look up their biological parents? The main reason seems to be because they want to know why they were given up. They also want to know what it feels like to completely fit in, to have the same mannerisms, likes etc. that many biological families do.

    Has anyone ever watched that show of people who search out their families? Very emotional. Not only do many of them feel an invisible link and connection to these people who have been strangers to them their whole lives, but they hang on to them and have a strong need to stick together. Why?

    There have also been studies done on adopted children who can have difficulties with relationships etc.

    Adoptions aren’t bad, but like I said, they are not purposely created situations as an IVF or baby created for the purpose of people who want a family, they come from unfortunate situations that quite often can’t be helped.

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  8. Many gay couples tend to choose anonymous donors as they don’t want the biological parent to have any connection to the child. The problem is that there are people born of anonymous donors who are objecting.

    Anonymous donors
    Further information: Donor conceived person

    Some children conceived by IVF using anonymous donors report being troubled over not knowing about their donor parent as well any genetic relatives they may have and their family history.[90][91]

    Alana Stewart, who was conceived using donor sperm, began an online forum for donor children called AnonymousUS in 2010. The forum welcomes the viewpoints of anyone involved in the IVF process.[92] Olivia Pratten, a donor-conceived Canadian, sued the province of British Columbia for access to records on her donor father’s identity in 2008.[93] “I’m not a treatment, I’m a person, and those records belong to me,” Pratten said.[90] In May 2012, a court ruled in Pratten’s favor, agreeing that the laws at the time discrimiated against donor children and making anonymous sperm and egg donation in British Columbia illegal.[93]

    In the U.K., Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and some Australian states, donors are not paid and cannot be anonymous.

    In 2000, a web site called Donor Sibling Registry was created to help biological children with a common donor connect with each other.[91][94]

    In 2012, a documentary called Anonymous Father’s Day was released that focuses on donor-conceived children.[95]

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      • Me too Kathleen,

        But you know, she has a very good chance of coming to terms with her lot one of these days and finding peace, just like most of us do after years of struggling to come to that place of acceptance. I am a firm believer in the healing power of love. Maybe I am naive, but I believe that true love stands the test of time and has the ability to conquer all, and she is very loved.

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      • I agree Monica. She’ll get through this. They all will as a family. I think though, she does have a point.

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    • Kathleen, In my experience and knowledge, most gay couples do not choose anonymous sperm donors…I know of three gay women couples who had children via a male friend . In all cases the father is deeply involved in the child’s life.

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      • McNair and colleagues (2002) found that known sperm donors were preferred by Australian
        lesbian mothers for a range of reasons, including limited legal access to clinical donor
        insemination, wanting children to have access to knowledge about their biogenetic paternity, the desire
        to give a male friend the chance to have children in their lives, or belief in the importance of male role
        models for children

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      • But none of that addresses a kid’s innate need for ‘legitimacy’ (and not in the legal sense).
        ,,,,even if it does pander to the selfish ‘needs’ of the adults involved, and the requirements of the State.
        I have personal experience of that: a daughter who went to a great deal of trouble and expense over years to track me down, and finally arrived on my doorstep with my grandkids in tow.

        By some strange quirk of the universe I’d been feeling a huge empty hole in my life over the preceding 12 months of so (and NEVER before then), becoming aware of that when I first confronted my own looming mortality. I even considered marriage for the sole reason of having kids ~ for which I’d never been ready, and knew it.

        And, relevantly, we have nothing in common except very obviously the same genes (from my father’s family tree), so we don’t have much to do with each other. But all of us feel much more satisfied for knowing the others exist than would otherwise be the case.

        Five-minute-old PC, psychology, surveys, social-engineering nor any other mumbo-jumbo can compensate for the billion-year-old ‘Real Thing’.

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      • Yep….”including limited legal access to clinical donor” which makes it harder to get the cash.
        Moreover, I doubt “importance of male role models for children” is something that can be achieved on an ad hoc basis.
        There’s a vast difference between navigating by twice-daily sextant-shots of star positions and keeping an eye on a lighthouse.
        I don’t think it’s what you teach your kids that matters; it’s what they learn from you.

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      • But I WAS responsible! One look at the girl and Blind Freddy would’ve see she as straight out of my father’s family tree. Much more so than either my brother or sister. 🙂

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      • Bryan, so the children move between houses? Kind of like children of divorced parents in a way. So the child has 3 or 4 parents.

        Not all arrangements work out so well though. Some couples who start off with a friendly arrangement, then decide that the male or the female is a third wheel. They can fight over who has the most ‘influence’ over the child’s rearing.

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      • I don’t believe it’s the same Bryan. The divorce of a mother and father is unfortunate and not originally planned therefore the children are living in two households with essentially two separate sets of parents.

        The gay couple have planned this arrangement.

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  9. Pope Francis: (CNSNews.com) – Although Pope Francis was praised for his “who am I to judge?” comment about gay individuals and was named Person of the Year by the homosexual magazine The Advocate in 2013, the Pope has rejected the idea of same-sex marriage as an “anthropological regression” and stressed that when it comes to adoption, “every person needs a male father and a female mother.” http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/pope-francis-against-gay-adoption-every-person-needs-male-father-and

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  10. Accidental Incest: (Children of IVF are needing to keep their Donor ID Number with them for when they start dating other IVF children).

    Cynthia Daily and her partner used a sperm donor to conceive a baby seven years ago, and they hoped that one day their son would get to know some of his half siblings — an extended family of sorts for modern times.
    Well

    In America, one sperm donor can have 150 or more offspring. Other nations would not allow this. Should the U.S. emulate their stricter laws?

    DATA KEEPER Wendy Kramer, who had her son through a donor, started a registry to help families learn about a child’s half siblings.

    So Ms. Daily searched a Web-based registry for other children fathered by the same donor and helped to create an online group to track them. Over the years, she watched the number of children in her son’s group grow.

    And grow.

    Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way. “It’s wild when we see them all together — they all look alike,” said Ms. Daily, 48, a social worker in the Washington area who sometimes vacations with other families in her son’s group.

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    • Read ‘Brave New World’.
      In passing:- ‘incest’ has gained something of a bad reputation not necessarily warranted.
      Certainly it can bring out the worst genetic traits, but it can also (and equally) bring out the best of the genetic traits. Statistically, half the offspring show no extraordinary traits at all.

      aka ‘Inbreeding’ and ‘Linebreeding’ is used in practically every agricultural pursuit (animal AND vegetable) and is probably as responsible as anything else for the advancement of ‘civilisation’. (which is also called by other names sometimes! 😉 ) None of that may mean very much to you…unless you’d sat on a thoroughbred at speed!
      The downside is that the failures are destroyed….which makes all sorts of sense ~ and would for our species too. Nature used to take care of that end of things via Natural Selection.

      ….then god turned up and completely stuffed everything.

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  11. So Bryan,
    How does the seventh commandment (against adultery) fit in with your tolerance about Gay marriage? As a Christian yourself, don’t you see the problem here? Why are you talking about lesbians having children out of sex with a friend? Since when did Christianity make allowances for lesbians? Can you give me the Biblical support for your view?

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    • I’m afraid that doesn’t make any sense davinci. Adultery is defined as voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not their spouse. All the cases I know of lesbians having children with a male friend involves the use of a “turkey baster”. Not sexual intercourse. Don’t let your obvious prejudice or guilt color your thinking mate.

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      • So you don’t have biblical support for your position. Instead you have reduced the reproductive act to the same act we do to animals (artificial insemination).

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      • No I am not saying that IVF is sinful in the marriage context between a male husband and female wife.
        But the Bible does not recognise the term “couples” to males+males or females+females. So how can you postulate what is permissible to “couples” when your definition of “couples” is outside the standard that defines what is or what is not Christian?

        Back to the study in question. Once again I have to ask you – has God made a mistake? In ancient societies homosexuality was readily accepted. You would have found similar studies as the one cited above had you lived in Sparta; with the exception that it would have been to endorse pederasty. The God of the Bible never ever withheld anything from mankind that was good for them. How is it that He’s held this sort of study and conclusions from Judaism and then Christianity and done so for thousands of years?

        Had you been an atheist, I would not have asked you these questions. But you claim to be a Christian. So how is it that you push ideas that are in direct contradiction to the standard that defines genuine from fake Christianity?

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      • But you claim to be a Christian. So how is it that you push ideas that are in direct contradiction to the standard that defines genuine from fake Christianity?

        I could ask you the same sort of question davinci/Hassan.

        Jesus emphasised that tax collectors and harlots would enter the Kingdom of God before those who were often perceived as being righteous in His day. Typically, those looked on as righteous were in reality self-righteous. On the other hand, those of low standing are more likely to see their inadequacy and their need to repent of their sins. Generally speaking, they also will be more inclined to appreciate the forgiveness made possible through Jesus’ sacrifice

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      • Quite right Bryan!
        Matt.5:28:- “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

        …Jesus didn’t even mention turkey basters, lustful one or otherwise..

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      • You are contradicting yourself bryan.

        “Jesus emphasised that tax collectors and harlots would enter the Kingdom of God before those who were often perceived as being righteous in His day”

        Yes, but look up your Bible and see how many times the phrase “Go and sin no more” occurs. Especially look at the story of the woman caught in adultery and what He said to her. Then look at Zaccheus (the tax collector) and tell me what Jesus said after this guy promised to make amends to those he had wronged.

        “On the other hand, those of low standing are more likely to see their inadequacy and their need to repent of their sins. Generally speaking, they also will be more inclined to appreciate the forgiveness made possible through Jesus’ sacrifice.”

        Agreed with the statement above. So where are your articles and posts encouraging the homosexuals to repent of their homosexual inclinations? You have continuously posted articles promoting this sort of inclinations. If kids from LGBT parents are so happy, and the inclinations are so good, what need is there of repenting from homosexuality? Can you see how illogical your posts have become in the light that you consider yourself a Christian?

        David said in one of his psalms “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayer”. How is it you believe that the LGBT crew can have their prayers for forgiveness heard, when they don’t wish to hear that God defined their lifestyles and inclinations a particular type of abomination?

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      • I’m with you Davinci,

        There are many Christians who insist that we can still have relationship with God whilst continuing in sin. I don’t know about that. In my experience I know that God still loves me, but that my sin stops me from perceiving His presence, to the point that there is no longer any relationship.

        I think a lot of Christians kid themselves into believing that anything they do is acceptable to God and that they can still be in relationship, when the truth of the matter is that we have become content to live a lie.

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      • Yes Bryan! We have all sinned and have come short of the glory of God, but the Bible also says “To him that overcomes, Christ gives the right to eat of the tree of life” (Revelation 2:7).

        The promise is not for those who tolerate and excuse their sins, but those who overcome them.

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      • Bryan,
        The issue is not between sinless people and sinners, but between sinners who want to change, to repent and be converted and sinners who seek legitimacy by the church for continuing in their sins.

        Again, what did you hope to achieve in bringing this study to our notice? Legitimacy for homosexual sins?

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      • Glad you realise you’re as much a sinner as the rest of us davinci..Why did I post the item? Because it’s worthy of debate. Why would you stick your head in the sand over such issues?

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  13. Dabbles I knew there was more to your story. You have a daughter and you actually felt something missing from your life just prior to her contacting you. It’s ashame that you don’t see her more often and your grandchildren. Not all the stories turn out like the one on that show Looking for Family (or whatever it’s called).

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    • Yeah.. if one were that way inclined one might say the sequence of events was ‘heaven-sent’. (And must say I have many such moments in life.)

      Years previously I’d decided I’d never make a husband and father, so closed that door and gave it no further thought.

      Living in the stillness of forest out of Marysville, for no apparent reason, I woke up in the middle of the night, looking at the stars (part of my roof was glass), and the space between them suddenly registered as a vast emptiness. And from nowhere came the thought that I was looking at my life and death : Finally got it all together and had nowhere to put it.
      Not just the cash-value, but everything that ‘I’ was after a lifetime in the building.

      Hindsight strongly suggests it was a demand from a gene demanding survival of its unique pedigree; but at the time ~ and immediately ~ the urge to have and (importantly) raise some kids swamped me. Weirdly, some sort of deep-seated background ‘noise’ demanded at least one ‘spare’ in case another failed to survive. (The Selfish Gene thing at work; I, personally didn’t matter except as a tool for something way beyond me.)

      Strong though the urge was I wasn’t immediately convinced; all sorts of hurdles had to be considered; not about my position, but the prospective kid’s.
      So I gave it a lot of thought and talked to a few people whose opinions I trusted. (Strangely, though I’d always had a strong ~ and trusted ~ connection to the innermost parts of females, it was the males I talked to that noticeably related more to my ‘feelings’.

      After a year, though the urge was still strong I’d about given the idea away for all sorts of valid reasons.

      …and one night I got a phone-call from my brother, who’d been tracked down (despite his official security ranking) from some woman who was inquiring about me. I wasn’t using my father’s name, and didn’t have a computer or mailing address; even the government agencies hadn’t unearthed me! Shows the effort this girl had made to get in touch…..and as it turns out her motivation for doing so were the same as mine: just ‘something’ that needed doing.

      She was 30 ~ a member of the New Age and had been brought up in a world alien to me, so we really don’t have much in common on a day-to-day basis, and to avoid unnecessary and pointless stress we only just stay in touch.

      But the mysterious ‘need’ has gone from both of us ~ the space between the stars is no longer empty.

      There are more things, Horatio…….

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      • No. —> “You decided you wouldn’t be a good husband or father. And yet you did father a child. Isn’t that just irresponsible?”

        Firstly, I decided I didn’t have ‘what it took’ to be a husband and father ~ the long-term commitment. And as it happened that was the case. VERY responsible.

        But I did have lots of girlfriends and a libido you couldn’t fit into a wheelbarrow. ….and keep in mind it was the era of ‘free sex’, ‘make love not war’ and all that. Predatory females were out to ‘get theirs’…..in droves; and everybody knew the score:- Deep and Meaningful One Night Stands. (and a few during the day just for practice.)
        It was also the era of THE PILL! Anybody who wasn’t dead (between the ears or between the legs) thought they’d gone to heaven!

        So I met this gorgeous creature on the train at 3pm; she was on her way to work, and I picked her up there at 11pm, drove her home. During the trip we ‘got to know’ all about each other and fell into her bed immediately we arrived.
        …..in the bedroom next to her mother’s and just up from the rooms of her two older brothers. It bothered me a bit, but I had to conform to the conventional mores of the times, didn’t I? The responsible thing to do.

        That went on for a few months, and then she told me she was pregnant. Her mother, a very nice and rather religious woman wasn’t pleased: she knew her 16yo daughter, and was concerned that I was still in my teens too.
        My (peasant) father WAS pleased; dead keen for his oldest son to produce grandchildren. His main concern was that, according to his culture, at 16 Joy was getting a bit long in the tooth. But still, ….he even offered to finance the house next door which had just become available.
        So despite the shock you’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt; it’s the responsible thing to do, right?.
        We were both novices, but began making some tentative plans and worked out a timetable for the events to come. She started stuffing her ‘glory-box’ and making invitation lists, looking at wedding-dresses and all that stuff.
        I quit making an income on the wrong side of the law and got TWO full-time jobs, bought a suit (picked out by my mother!) and even got a haircut and a driver’s licence…all the sissy stuff. Responsible?

        And then Joy, who’d fallen in with a bunch of bucket-mouthed bra-burning broads at work decided she was getting an abortion, in the best PC fashion espoused by all liberated, independent women everywhere.
        …and in the name of the Cause, of course.

        I objected, and we had a series of loud rows over a couple of weeks. In the end she told me she’d do as she liked with HER body, that there was nothing I could do about it, and that I should leave and never come back.

        So…what’s the ‘responsible’ thing to do?

        I dropped a new motor into my car (cost me $84, delivered to my house!), loaded up anything I might need from fishing rods and a rifle to my flash suit and went North.. My mother chased me down the drive-way with a paper-bag full of sandwiches in case I got hungry on the way………

        By the time I got back her mum was retired and living alone ~ we stayed close until she died : one of those genuinely ‘nice’ people ~ but she never would tell me about Joy, her brothers or anything to do with the more recent past.

        At a loose end, my life got seriously serious, and after a longish stint in the nick ~ and at the suggestion of a government shrink (there’s a hilarious story there!) ~ moved into the forest and dropped off the radar.
        I did well over time…and was wondering what it was all worth, when a late-night call from my brother interrupted.

        And over the years everybody from the news-media and the Chief Commissioner of police down to assorted husbands and fathers reckoned I WAS responsible for all sorts of things.

        ……until along comes Bryan and reckons I wasn’t.
        Any wonder I get confused? 😦

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      • I think Dabbles thinks the greatest love of all is to love himself
        Can anyone with that view really comprehend “unconditional” love? It seems the love that parents have for their children is as close to unconditional love as we can get without the help of God’s love in our lives. We continue to love our children through good times and bad, and we don’t stop loving them if they don’t meet the expectations we may have for them. We make a choice to love our children even when we consider them unlovable; our love doesn’t stop when we don’t “feel” love for them.

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      • So am I reading this right Dabs, were you not sure your daughter had actually been aborted and only realised she was alive once she contacted you?

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      • Yep. (“So am I reading this right Dabs, “)
        But it wasn’t even a matter of ‘being sure’; from everything that happened I just assumed she HAD been aborted.

        As it turned out, Joy had done a remarkably good job of raising her (virtually no social-security back then), and had the help of her mum ~ and to some degree her brothers, both married; so she had the benefit of the extended-family type of thing, which many kids don’t.
        But hers WAS a very different kind of world in every respect, including values and attitudes to others, etc. And the distance we keep wasn’t a matter of blame: the differences just created stresses she didn’t need and I didn’t know how to deal with. She was married to an absolute racist thug, and the three-cornered tug of loyalties almost resulted in me shooting the bastard ~ after he’d threatened to shoot her for other reasons.
        I really did try to make it work, but there are limits that can’t be breached.

        Still, in some inexplicable way, that ‘need for connection’ was met for both of us.

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      • It’s good to see we have an expert on ‘love’ aboard.
        If you’d joined the blog earlier you might’ve been aware that I’ve always said I don’t know what ‘love’ is ~ or even if such a thing exists; since everybody has a different view of it it’s probably one of those things people make up to suit themselves as they go along.

        ….and if the assorted gods are any indication of what love is then I really don’t want any, thanks all the same.

        But I DO like myself, because I’ve always stayed the course and never stinted.
        There’s not much in my life about which I’m ashamed ~ and I reckon that’s as good a benchmark as any.
        And certainly more measurable than ‘love’.

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      • Dabs that must have been such a shock. Now I understand why you were so passionately against abortion on a previous conversation. It would have been hard, especially as father’s have no say.

        You see Dabs, your paternal instinct came out when you felt the need to protect your daughter from her beau. You never know what the future will hold.

        God is watching over you, you’re a good man. Maybe not PC, but good 🙂 xo

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  14. Do children have the same rights to gender when it comes to parents, as gay or hetero people do when it comes to a partner?

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      • People are saying that kids won’t/don’t need a mother and a father (they speak on behalf of the children). They say any two loving people will do. So those children who are saying I would have loved to have had a father figure or mother to emulate and love. The child’s desire for a particular gender is ignored whereas a hetero or a gay person who looks for a partner should have a ‘right’ to a particular gender?

        Gender is important in partnerships but not in parents?

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      • Hye Kathleen,

        And? There are also children who are being raised by single parents who’d probably like two parents of any kind.

        There are probably children being raised in units who would love a big backyard to play in, there are probably children who don’t have grandparents that would like to have grandparents, there are probably children who would really like a dog that don’t have one.

        AS exercise, pets and time spent with grandparents are beneficial to a child’s development these kids may be missing out.

        How far do you take a child’s wishes? My five year old wants nothing by chips for dinner each and every night – am I disrespecting her ‘right’ to a particular meal by insisting on variety and fresh veggies ?

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      • Hey Kathleen,

        What the health and well being of children isn’t important ? What they eat, how they play, who cares for them that’s not important?

        I think your notions of importance need to be upgraded.

        What’s best for the child is important. Your prejudices are not.

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      • Of course you are!
        My five year old wants nothing by chips for dinner each and every night – am I disrespecting her ‘right’ to a particular meal by insisting on variety and fresh veggies ?
        How’d you like being treated like that by your wife?

        Let her eat as much of anything that she wants to: she’ll get sick of it soon enough. Restriction ALWAYS creates demand.

        (I’ve got a canine thief here, and a while ago she got into my lolly stash and gutsed a couple of kilos of ‘party-mix’ chewies. An hour later she shat and spewed all over the backyard, sick as a ……er, dog. Y’couldn’t force-feed her a lolly these days if you nailed her to a door.)

        And less-educated creatures ~ like kids and goats ~ generally know what they need more than any socially-conditioned trendy.

        Wasn’t it only a week ago that ‘breakthrough’ scientific studies decided the decades-long taboo against animal fats was a nonsense, and that said fat (even ‘saturated’ fat) was more beneficial and less harmful than too many carbs. (I took notice because I don’t like animal fats but do pig out on all sorts of carbohydrates.)
        Something to do with animal fats shutting down the hunger-processes more quickly, so you eat a lot less. The (not all that significant) threat of excess cholesterol was far outweighed by the massive risks produced by huge doses of carbs.
        …..and you might also take note of the recently publicised multiple benefits of cannabis in fighting several cancers and heart conditions.(Diabetes?) Something of a wonder-drug in fact.
        So feed your kid all the greasy chips she wants, and sit back sipping a glass of ganja extract and enjoy a long healthy life, the pair of you.

        In fact, you and the kid could share the chips and have a side-plate of shredded heads instead of other veggies.

        None of us get out of here alive; but the saddest thing of all is having spent your time here being miserable. 😉

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      • Hey Dabs,

        What if my wife cared for my health and well being enough to insist that I look after my self. How terrible, it would almost be like she cares for me and is planning a long future together for both of us.

        Funny for somebody who trumpets that people aren’t peanuts and you don’t know what any individual will do you sure are comfortable with giving me advice about a 5 year old you’ve never met.

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      • Sorry…..”advice about a 5 year old you’ve never met.”
        Since you ASKED for opinion I assumed you WANTED opinion.
        (and, incidentally, / used to be a five-year-old, so it’s not as though I’m without experience. 🙂 )

        As for the query about your wife:- her motives were never in issue, nor even whether she’d act on them.
        The question was:- how would YOU like to be dictated to about what to eat ~by your wife or anyone else ~ because they thought they knew what was best for you.

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      • Hey Dabs

        Have another read – I can’t see where I asked for the advice.

        As to the wife maybe she does know what’s better for me.

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      • Hey Dabbles,

        Yep very good question marks do indeed denote questions – there is hope for you yet.

        But I’ll let you into the secret you seem to have missed. The words immediately before the question make denote what the question actually is. That’s the real trick, just because you see a question mark doesn’t mean you can answer any question that pops into your little head, you really should be focusing on the question that was actually asked.

        And I didn’t see anything before that ol question mark along the lines of “I’d really like some advice on how I deal with my chip eating five year old” Which is a pity because that’s the question you seem to have answered.

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  15. I genuinely don’t know the answer to this question so I’m asking.

    When you have a divorced mother and father who then re-marry, the children are still considered to be of the biological mother and father – the 2nd husband/wife do not have any rights to the children.

    In the case of a lesbian couple who both want to be parents and decide to have a child with a male friend who may be gay or straight and who may also have a partner who wants to be a parent. Do all four people have equal rights to the children in the case that any of them split up?

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    • A lot of gay “families” work out the legal and emotional logistics before they embark on parenthood. The answer to your question is that under the law, the “parents” who are not biological do not have the same rights. But there are changes in the law being considered..

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      • If there are changes in the law being considered then it seems that all four people may well have equal parenting rights to the children in case they split up. This complicates things even more as if those couple re-couple with new partners, then the children may have to move between four households and have 8 adults that they are answerable to.

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      • oh come ON! ……” emotional logistics” ??????

        …..and, as Mr Bumble pointed out:- the law is an ass.
        You CAN’T legislate, adjudicate or enforce what a child’s needs are, might be at different times and in different circumstances AND might not be.
        Just above you insist ‘no two people are the same’.

        This whole concept makes the Brave New World approach look like a model of perfection.
        Read it; and note that at the end the only ‘natural’ man left in the world kills himself because he’s so lonely.

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      • Under the family law act the best interests of the child would be the paramount consideration – the 4 households 8 adults notion seems a little farfetched. although known sperm donors have been granted contact rights with their children.

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      • Dabbles, I don’t get your answer.

        There have been gay people who had children together and then split up and the non biological partner had visitation rights. So if all 4 people in the setup that Bryan mentioned split up (i.e. two couples splitting) and they move onto a new relationship, it would mean that all 4 people would have rights to the children.

        How could the law allow one non bio parent to have visitation rights and not another? Is there a number limit?

        These are the issues that come up when the family arrangement has been changed.

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      • Hey Kathleen,

        Assume my wife and I split up and re-marry. The we’d have three kids that can have custodial arrangements split between her and I. There are two people that have rights to the children, their parents. Our new partners have no custody or visitation rights to the kids.

        IF I split up again, and remarry for a 3rd, 4th or 5th time then it’s still just my wife and I that have custodial rights to the kids.

        My second ex-wife can’t seek access to the children.

        IF I was infertile and rather than IVF my first wife and I used a known sperm donor to conceive then that donor would have some contact rights to the children.

        But it’s still just two people with rights as parents (custody, guardianship etc) and 1 person with contact rights.

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      • I presume,Kate, that it’s Bubba’s answer you don’t get ?:-

        “Dabbles, I don’t get your answer. ”
        I didn’t consider the numbers game at all, since I firmly believe leaving anything like ‘the best interests of a child’ to a court is absolute nonsense and unworkable in any real sense.
        It’s why I picked up Bryan (finally) over the ’emotional logistics’ mention/concept. It’s a frame of mind that only a bureaucrat (or a computer) could even ‘envisage’.
        Grotesque.

        As with dogs, I think possession of a child should be made MUCH harder to get permission for and be MUCH more stringently regulated. It’s one area where I’d forego my advocacy of anarchy.
        As I’ve often said, I maintain that the manipulation and conditioning of children should rank among the topmost levels of child-abuse.

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      • Certainly:- “so is neglect”. And I’ve put a lot of time and money and stress ~ and no small amount of personal risk ~ into fighting neglect of all sorts of animals, including human ones.
        WHEN was the last time you put it all on the line?
        And if, as I presume, you’re having another shot at my ‘neglect’ of my daughter I’d remind you that it was the very kind of PC and legalities you support and advocate which made that not only possible but inevitable. New-Age/Feminist crap has damaged lots of lives: including those of many women.

        And as to the efficacy of such perverted social-engineering in the ‘adjustment’ of kids, I suggest you take a look around you ~ with your eyes open for a change. Y’could start by ‘surveying’ a random bunch of primary/secondary school teachers, or go for a stroll through Melbourne’s nightclub district at 3am. …..Just for a start…….
        And in the interests of PC-inspired and enforced racial equality, down here we have THREE separate gangs of hooligans who defend their own ‘turf’ as viciously as anything you might see in the US.

        Perhaps it’s just as well: the world (politics/economies/social-structures/institutional-governance/etc./etc.) doesn’t leave them with much else to hope for.

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      • Of course it does.:-
        “As for “emotional logistics”…I have no idea why you find the rational discussion and decision making about a child’s welfare so offensive..Perhaps it just strikes a nerve.”

        The Absurd Nerve, among others.

        Kids aren’t commodities to be “rationally” categorised, packaged, labeled, warehoused, manipulated and dispersed and disposed of (ie dealt with ‘logistically’) at someone else’s whim.
        That’s the basis of slavery.
        And then to throw definitively IRrational and ILlogical ’emotions’ into the mix is the basis for building a Hitler Youth..
        …or a paedophile ring. Don’t loving paedophiles, who also have a child’s welfare at heart (survey them!), have the same ‘rights’ to genetically-designed and suitably-groomed kids as heterosexuals and homosexuals? If not why not?

        It’s the nature of children to be influenced by the people around them, and ’embed’ what signals and attitudes they pick up into their own makeup. And it’s in the nature of people to, deliberately or not, influence the children they’re in contact with. And while you my be ok with a kid growing up believing homosexuality, paedophilia or religion ~ or ANY kind of dysfunctionality is ‘normal’ (even ‘natural’), let alone ‘desirable’, it’s nonetheless depriving that kid of the ‘right’ to make up its own, unbiased, mind when its old enough to do so.
        .

        And all that’s before you rationalise the assumption that ANYBODY is able to validly assess someone’s emotions and emotional needs at all, particularly those of some kid who’s still in a total state of flux.
        Phalanxes of philosophers and phychiatrists have yet to work out the emotional state/needs of a single 13-year-old girl at any given moment; and if they ever did achieve that it wouldn’t apply to any other 13-y.o. girl.

        quote: “No two people are the same” ..unquote.

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      • As Kahlil Gibran said in The Prophet: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. “You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies, but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.”

        That’s true, and thank God, but a parent is also the architect who designs rooms of the temple in which the child will live for the rest of his or her life.

        The essence of every religion is to answer: “Why do I live?” Surely it is a duty of parents to give children opportunities to understand the divine spirit within them. We should at least teach our children the fundamental idea of human equality.

        What is the point of letting the kids watch morally suspect drivel on TV while keeping them ignorant of spirituality, one of the great life forces?

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      • Yeah. ““Your children are not your children. ”
        The advent of DNA testing has often made that quite clear!
        (Sorry. Couldn’t resist!)

        You’ve quoted The Prophet before, and by-and-large I’ve been impressed by his vision.

        Unfortunately the message is undermined when you apply your own prejudices.
        eg:- Where do you get the idea a parent is (‘architecturally’ or any other way) qualified to “design rooms of the temple in which the child will live for the rest of his or her life.”? Is your life such a huge success that you’d want to push it onto someone else? And even if it were, the kid isn’t ‘you’, and its needs might not be yours; it’s “longing for itself.” may need to discover worlds and ideas you can’t even imagine.

        My father taught me to drive his old 30cwt Commer Ute when I was about ten or eleven, and did so quite successfully: had me counting revs and double-clutching to change gears, juggling the sloppy steering erratically to make the front wheels point where they were needed, and so on. I’d defy anyone under 50 to be able to drive the old tank ~ or probably even get it started. But my Old Man had driven everything from motor-bikes to 3-tank low-loader transporters and ‘knew’ the Commer.
        Later that year he was driving his boss home from a beery christmas-party and crashed the boss’s car: a new Dodge Pheonix with push-button gearshift, an unhearably quiet engine, power-steering, power brakes and blinkers …as he learnt after vainly trying to get his hand out of the winder-less window to give hand-signals, (Do YOU remember hand-signals?….other than the middle-finger one.)
        ’twasn’t just the mechanicals though; he just couldn’t get the ‘feel’ of the Dodge.

        So let it be with would-be ‘architects’ of today. We’re not even qualified to build a backyard dunny or a front fence (as the local Council reminded us last week). No more can you give a kid the ‘feel’ of your world, let alone your heaven.

        You won’t be here: they’ll have to find their way alone in a world you wouldn’t even recognise……and maybe a heaven too.
        All you can do is keep them fed and relatively safe until they’re grown enough to fight ~ then hand them your achievements, whatever they might be worth (or not), and let them get on with it.

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      • What IS it with your green pen?? Does PC outlaw ALL reference to sexual/social/cultural/ethnic/etc/etc differences.

        The WHOLE point of :- “And in the interests of PC-inspired and enforced racial equality, down here we have THREE separate gangs of hooligans who defend their own ‘turf’ as viciously as anything you might see in the US.”

        …..was that the three separate gangs bash and rob each other on the basis of their sexual/social/cultural/ethnic/etc/etc differences.
        Not only don’t THEY make no secret of it; it’s the bragged-about entire basis of the exercise. Like a Bikie’s ‘colours’.

        Next thing you’ll be insisting on the AFL going generic and demanding all the teams wear the same beige-coloured jumpers (does PC allow me to specify ‘beige’ in preference to all other colours??) and non-inciteful pale pink shorts. Problem is they might be mistaken for cigarette packets!

        Get grip, kiddo!

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      • As I’ve explained many times before, if you smear a race or group of people it doesn’t get a run here. And what’s with the green pen rubbish? All old sub editors I know who subbed by hand used a red pen.

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  16. To sacrifice the ability to have a child for the stability of that child is also love.

    A Mother’s love

    In olden times there ruled a great and powerful king, whose name was Solomon. All the land of Israel was under his sway, and there was no one so rich or so honoured on the face of the earth.
    Upon succeeding to the throne, Solomon had been filled with awe at the mightiness of the task before him, and in the humility of his heart, prayed for the wisdom to govern justly.
    “For,” he said, “I am but a little child, and how should I discern between right and wrong?
    His wish was granted and, above and beyond his wealth and honour, Solomon was famed for his wisdom.

    One day two women came before the King. They carried with them a little baby, which was set down on the floor, at the foot of Solomon’s throne
    “O my lord,” said one of the women, “five days ago I gave birth to a child. This woman and I live in the same house, and three days later she also gave birth, but that same night her child died, and at midnight she arose and, while I was sleeping, took my son away from me, and laid her dead child in its place. When I awoke in the morning I thought at first that my son was dead, until I realised that it was not my child.”
    “No,” interrupted the second woman, “she lies, my lord, she lies! The living child is mine and the dead is hers!”
    “No,” cried the first woman, wildly. “No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine.”
    King Solomon raised his hand for silence.
    “One of you says ‘my child lives and yours is dead ’, and the other says ‘your child is dead and my child lives’: there is a simple way to resolve the matter. Bring me a sword.”
    A sword was brought, and the assembly waited to see how the King would proceed.
    “Very well,” he said, “ cut the child in two, and give half to one mother, and half to the other.”
    The first woman turned pale.
    “O my lord,” she said in a faltering voice. “Pray, give her the child. I beg you, do not kill it.”
    But the other woman’s face remained hard.
    “Let it be neither mine nor yours,” she said, “divide it as the King has ordained.”
    Then Solomon arose, and pointed to the first woman.
    “The child belongs to her, ” he said. “Give her the child, and do not kill it. She is its mother.”
    Word of this judgement spread throughout Israel, and people marvelled at the wisdom of the King.

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  17. Why is it in today’s modern world where most women work, that structure of most women staying home for a while to take care of children still stand? I don’t know of many men, who after their wife gives birth and while the children are toddlers, are the ones to stay home and be the main carer. There may be some who do that, but I don’t think it’s the norm and it’s not like you wouldn’t be able to do it that way today – but most people’s ‘instincts’ are pre-set.

    So in other words, there is a difference between the role of mother and father. It’s not being judgemental, it’s nature. If that is the case, then doesn’t it also stand to reason that the child may actually also need it to be that way instinctively?

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    • Why would God make two genders, if there were not to be any differences? I’m sure he could have made one sex that could reproduce with anybody.

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      • And that’s not all:- (“Why would God make two genders, if there were not to be any differences? I’m sure he could have made one sex that could reproduce with anybody.”)

        Apart from removing the basis for a huge percentage of sin (starting with Eve!), it would’ve cut the cost of Ark-building by 50% !

        So much for ‘Intelligent Design’……… 😉

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      • yeah…… “Well according to genesis woman was made to be a helper to man.”

        And look how THAT turned out! 😆

        As stated:- so much for intelligent design!

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  19. This survey would seem to be flawed, methodologically. It compares apples and oranges by measuring a self-selected group against off-the-shelf statistics for the general population. See this article for an in-depth discussion of the problem:

    http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/07/13451/

    As the article says, “To compare the results from such an unusual sample with that of a population-based sample of everyone else is just suspect science”. I have noticed that this is a common failing in surveys on this issue, and that surveys that avoid this problem produce a quite different result.

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      • He does not answer the principal point raised by Mark Regnerus – “But until social scientists decide to do the difficult, expensive work of locating same-sex attracted parents (however defined) through random, population-based sampling strategies—preferably ones that do not “give away” the primary research question(s) up front, as ACHESS did—we simply cannot know whether claims like “no differences” or “happier and healthier than” are true, valid, and on target. Why? Because this non-random sample reflects those who actively pursued participating in the study, personal and political motivations included”.
        Rather he just says “there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case”, and therefore we should pretend there is no problem, though common sense would suggest there is one.
        Sneers about “the usual group of critics” or “right-wing pressure groups”, are just ad-hominem abuse, saying, in effect, anyone who disagrees with the result can be ignored – because they disagree!

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      • Regnerus was the leader of a debunked study that screened thousands of people, ages 18 to 39, and found roughly 250 who said they grew up in a house where a mom or dad eventually had a same-sex relationship.

        He found they were more likely to have problems — welfare dependence, less education, marijuana use — than young adults from stable families led by heterosexuals. But he later acknowledged that his study didn’t include children raised by same-sex couples in a stable relationship.

        The results ignited a blast of criticism when they were published in an academic journal in 2012.

        In April this year, Mark Regnerus slid yet further into ignominy after defenders of Utah’s doomed gay marriage ban expunged all references to his debunked study in their brief. The state, which is currently defending the invalidated ban before the Tenth Circuit, had cited Regnerus in two footnotes in a previously filed brief, and structured much of its argument around the conclusions of Regnerus’ work, which asserts that gay couples make inferior parents. Now the state is asking the Tenth Circuit to pretend those footnotes don’t exist, a last-minute revision made “in response to recent press reports and analysis of the study by Mark Regnerus.”

        Utah dropped the Regnerus study in direct response to a Michigan federal judge’s complete and total dismissal of Regnerus’ work, after he denounced it as “entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration.”

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      • The University of Texas at Austin – has issued a statement distancing themselves from Regnerus and his faulty, anti-gay research. In a statement from the Department of Sociology, UT says:

        Like all faculty, Dr. Regnerus has the right to pursue his areas of research and express his point of view. However, Dr. Regnerus’ opinions are his own. They do not reflect the views of the Sociology Department of The University of Texas at Austin. Nor do they reflect the views of the American Sociological Association, which takes the position that the conclusions he draws from his study of gay parenting are fundamentally flawed on conceptual and methodological grounds and that findings from Regnerus’ work have been cited inappropriately in efforts to diminish the civil rights and legitimacy of LBGTQ partners and their families.

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    • It seems that the Surveyor is a gay father of two boys. He may be fearful of asking tough questions of adults who have grown in a same sex parenting environment. He may frame questions in a way that won’t truly get at the core. I can understand that.

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      • Simon Crouch has addressed this Kathleen…

        The research team for this study is based within the Jack Brockhoff Child Health and Wellbeing Program at the University of Melbourne. This Program is led by Professor Elizabeth Waters, an internationally renowned child health researcher who leads work on many aspects of child health including obesity, oral health, disability and disaster recovery, to name a few. She is also a heterosexual parent and second author on the paper. The rest of the research team bring a range of research experiences and family backgrounds. But is there any relevance to their personal situations? All published papers go through a rigorous peer review process that is blind to such things, assessing work on its methodological merits alone. To suggest that my family situation is of relevance implies that no heterosexual researcher can produce unbiased work on heterosexual families. Or that any non-Caucasian researcher would be able to objectively conduct research on racial discrimination and child health..

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    • I read your link and am I getting this right, they surveyed the gay parents of the children to ask them if the kids are happy?

      “Another reason for healthy skepticism is that the ACHESS participants—parents reporting about their children’s lives—are all well aware of the political import of the study topic, and an unknown number of them certainly signed up for that very reason. As a result, it seems unwise to trust their self-reports, given the high risk of “social desirability bias,” or the tendency to portray oneself (or here, one’s children) as better than they actually are. Again, it is impossible to know exactly how much of a problem such bias presents in this situation. But I think the temptation to report positive assessments could be elevated in this self-selected sample and on this sensitive topic.”

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      • “Research on same-sex families always draws critics. There is a small but vocal minority who do not accept family forms that fall outside the traditional mother-father construct. It is interesting to note that at the same time as criticising methodologies such as ours these same groups would baulk at including questions around sexual orientation on national surveys such as the Census. It is up to the scientific community to consider the merits of our work and place it in its appropriate context in terms of future health interventions and policy work”.—From the report

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      • Do tell! ….. “same groups would baulk at including questions around sexual orientation on national surveys such as the Census.”
        I’d contend that any group with any brains at all would baulk at ANY questions on national surveys such as the Census.

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      • “There is a small but vocal minority who do not accept family forms that fall outside the traditional mother-father construct.”

        How do they come to this conclusion? How many people were surveyed?

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      • A majority of Australians support gay marriage, according to data from the ABC’s Vote Compass policy tool last year.

        Fifty-two per cent of respondents do not believe marriage should only be between a man and a woman, compared to 36 per cent who do. Twelve per cent selected ‘neutral’.

        Women and single voters are more likely to support gay marriage than men and people who are married

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      • Galaxy Research polling (2009-2012) shows:
        •64% of Australians support marriage equality,
        •A majority of Christians (53%) support marriage equality,
        •76% of Coalition voters want Abbott to allow a conscience vote,
        •75% believe the reform is inevitable, and
        •81% of young people (18-24 years) support marriage equality.

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    • Kathleen, From February–April 2012 the House of Representatives conducted an online survey to provide a simple means for the public to voice their views on same-sex marriage and the two bills in the parliament which sought to legalise it, the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2012 and the Marriage Amendment Bill 2012.[ The survey closed on 20 April, having received approximately 276,000 responses, including about 213,500 comments. Of these responses, 64.3% supported same-sex marriage, or approximately 177,600 of the respondents

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      • What percentage of ‘the respondents’ were homosexual ~ or directly related to homosexuals?

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  20. The attacks on Mark Regnerus have no relevance to the University of Melbourne study. The question remains – was the study methodologically flawed by failing to compare like with like?

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    • Paul, As Simon Crouch points out: One issue that has been raised is that of bias. There are many types of bias that can have an impact on research and this is one key area that academics like myself make every effort to account for. In clinical sciences the randomised control trial is the gold standard for eliminating bias, but in many population studies this is not always an achievable methodology. You can’t take a group of children, for example, and randomly allocate them to being raised by same-sex attracted parents or heterosexual parents. When bias cannot be completely omitted it is important to acknowledge its potential influence and this is something authors will highlight when considering the limitations of their work.

      When researching child health in same-sex families the first problem is identifying, and then recruiting, such families. In Australia there is only one way that this can be achieved: through convenience sampling. Overseas, attempts have been made to draw representative samples from population surveys. While perhaps removing the volunteer nature of the sample these studies do suffer from small sample sizes, as the same-sex parent population within any population sample will be very small. This strategy is not an option in Australia where there are no population datasets that capture parent sexual orientation. Thus the volunteer sample is the only option. This is where the first criticisms of our study have been leveled.

      It is argued that only parents with a vested interest in promoting positive health outcomes will volunteer. While this cannot be discounted as a possibility there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. The underlying aim of the study was to characterise health and wellbeing and to understand the influence of stigma on child health in this context. As any parent will tell you what is paramount is ensuring that your children have the best health opportunities available. To intentionally corrupt research so that it cannot identify where problems may lie is doing yourself, and your children, a disservice. Only by providing an accurate picture of your child’s health will you know what can be done if there are issues. And in a context where stigma might be having a negative impact this is important to identify.

      Further to this is the fact that significantly positive outcomes were only identified on a handful of scales. Overall 29 different measures of health and wellbeing were included in our study. Almost all showed no difference to the general population. Only 3 measures showed a significant difference, albeit a positive one for same-sex families. If same-sex attracted parents were systematically working to ensure an outcome that shows their children in the best light would there not be a more consistent skewing across all the scales? What is more likely is that there truly is something within same-sex families that shows a benefit on those three measures

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    • While the study is not a huge refutation of what opponents of same-sex parenting believe due to its small sample size and volunteer selection process, it was carried out much more honestly than the Regnerus study which was proven to have a clear bias. Opponents of gay rights want this study to be seen in the same light as that discredited study and are grasping at straws to try and match the derision.

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  21. The lessons drawn from the London Riot goes unheeded. Only time will tell what the consequences of messing with the family unit will be.

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    • You really do have a knack for throwing nonsense into the conversation. Is it just a ploy to get folk reacting ?

      Which riots are you talking about and which family unit ? Would they be the riots in 1221 and the Polynesian fluid adoption family unit ?

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      • Hey Dom,

        Well thanks for clarifying it was the most recent riots – so what do you reckon the cause of the 1221 riots was then? And the dozens of riots since then – all down the family unit I suppose ?

        And you still haven’t mentioned which family unit we shouldn’t be messing with? Hey maybe the Cronulla riots were down to us messing with the traditional indigenous family unit and polygamy and arranged marriages should make a bit of a comeback.

        But I’ll try Google “what caused the London riots” and see if I get the most recent riots.

        The first hit on that tells me that the moste recent London riots were caused by:
        1. Social and economic inequality
        2. A weak police response
        3. High rates of youth unemployment
        4. Rank opportunism
        5. Racial profiling

        Nope nothing about the family unit there.

        Wikkipedia put it down to “racism, classism, and economic decline, as well as cultural factors like criminality, hooliganism, breakdown of social morality, and gang culture”

        There’s actually a heck of a lot out there on the ol interwebs that don’t have anything to do with the family unit.

        But let me guess I should keep looking until I find the article that says it’s all down to family breakdown and the lack of fathers or summat and then treat that article like it’s gospel.

        Meh no thanks.

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      • Yes you are right. There has been a lot of riots. The rates of riots have been increasing in recent times. If you look through the history of major riots, they used to occur every 100 years or so, to in recent times occurring every 10 years or so.

        Poor police response etc is in the riot is the reason why it escalated to what it become. What was the core reason for the riot. I’ll give you a hand.

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9169274/Poor-parenting-to-blame-for-London-riots-report-says.html

        http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-feral-rioters-all-have-one-thing-in-common-a-lack-of-father-figures-26760066.html

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      • Hey Dom,

        According to good ol wikipedia the first riots in London were on
        1189, 1196, 1221.

        So that’s a gap of 7 then 25 years before the first recorded riots. From 1710 – 1780 there were 6 riots. From 1809 – 1887 another 6. So I dunno where you are getting this idea that they used to occur every century or so. Quality of data doesn’t really seem to be your number one concern and is maybe an area you should be addressing.

        You still haven’t answered which is the family unit we shouldn’t be messing with.

        And wow a couple of opinion articles gee that sure is some top quality research right there.

        You know if you google around you can find that, according to some, there have been riots caused due to Muslim immigration. So maybe the family unit is fine and Muslim immigration is the problem ? (even one of the articles you’ve linked indicates that immigration was part of the problem)

        That’s the beauty of the opinion piece you can find just about any point of view you want.

        Oddly enough if you ignore the newspaper articles and actually go to to something like the “The final report of the Riots Communities and Victims Panel” you won’t find the family unit mentioned once.

        If you ever find something concrete let me know, so far these random little brain snaps you keep tossing out aren’t all that impressive.

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      • Sorry Bubba (Alex) let me be more precise.

        Over 785 years there were 26 riots. Over the last 30 years when you expect people to be more civilised there were 19 riots.

        Findings of the final report;

        The report, by the Riots Communities and Victims Panel, concludes that the riots were fuelled by a range of factors including a lack of opportunities for young people, poor parenting , a failure of the justice system to rehabilitate offenders, materialism and suspicion of the police.

        Poor parenting. A lack of father figure to provide disciple.

        I am sure you have some emotional stake in all this but try not to be uncivil and show some patience.

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      • Couples are actually now a minority in the UK

        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2183462/Single-parent-families-common-todays-Britain-couples-minority.html

        So now you have a breakdown of the family unit in the UK with disastrous consequences. The father and mother have different roles to play and both are needed. Now we want to look at having two fathers or two mothers. Lets see what this meddling with bring in future.

        There are finding that constantly pop up concerning the importance of a father and mother figure in the family.

        Low esteem daughters

        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/13/daddyless-daughters-standards-mistake-define_n_3587142.html

        Boys without father figure grow up to be more aggressive .Fatherless children was determined as one of the major factors to the London riots.

        http://www.fatherhood.org/media/consequences-of-father-absence-statistics

        Without Mother figure

        Lost self esteem. Inability to relate to others, feeling insecure and unable to trust others.

        We should not be messy around with the family unit.

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      • Hey Dom (William)

        Right so all those centuries of riots had the same root cause ? Kind ironic isn’t it considering the date. I didn’t realise until now but when the French stormed the Bastille it must have been because somebody was messing with the French family unit? Right ? Or because they were less civilised back then. Is that it ?

        Maybe folk didn’t riot as much centuries ago because of the brutal repression of such riots. Something like the Peterloo Massacre and it’s aftermath would have been a pretty good disincentive to riot don’t you think ?

        Tiananmen Square in 1989 seems to have been a bit of a one-off in China and I’ll bet there’s a lack of riots or any public disobedience in North Korea. By your “logic” they must be really top notch places full of civilised people in the proper “family unit” (whatever that is)

        Precise – how on earth are you now being precise? Speculation is not precise; misrepresenting a report is not precise.

        The report lists parenting as an issue, indeed but it notes that there is a very low correlation between those families in the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) and those families who participated in the riots. There being about an estimated 5% overlap between those families in the TFP and those who contributed to the riots.

        Your conjecture that it’s “ Poor parenting. A lack of father figure to provide disciple.” isn’t one that’s supported by the report. The closes the report gets is to note that “Some children grow up without a single positive adult figure in their lives”. The report also notes the “forgotten families” who “bump along the bottom” of society.

        But there is absolutely nothing in the report as simplistic as a “lack of fathers is the problem”.

        Do you really think that poor parenting doesn’t happen in the “family unit” that does have fathers there? What if the father in question is an abusive alcoholic how exactly would his presence improve the outcomes for that family?

        Dom (Jonathan) there is nothing in the report that makes the claims that you are making on it’s behalf.

        Here’s what you haven’t done.

        1. Established what family unit you are talking about
        2. Established that the family unit has been messed with
        3. Established any causation between the messed with family unit and the London riots. Heck one of the opinion pieces you’ve thrown at us tells us that daughters from fatherless families suffer lower self esteem. How on earth would that make a riot more likely?

        Even if we accept your unfounded hypothesis that there is a link between societal unrest and a less than ideal family structure then there’s still the issue of causation. Did you ever think that the pressures on those “forgotten families” bumping along at the bottom of society is the reason that the family breakup occurs in the first place? That your chain of causation might be completely and utterly the wrong way around? That societal pressures contribute to both crime and family breakup?

        This topic was kicked off by discussion on a study that tells us that children of same sex couples are “are healthier and happier than peers”.

        Is that the family unit we shouldn’t be messing with the same-sex parental family unit. Surely if you’re after better outcomes for children then that’s the unit you’d be all in favour of?

        “I am sure you have some emotional stake in all this”

        Yep but you’d be wrong on that one as well. Another completely unfounded statement you’ve just plucked out of the air because it suits you.

        You start putting some thought into what you’re saying, I start treating what you’re saying with a little respect. Throwing out balderdash just because it suits your world-view and expecting me to treat it like stone tablets down from the mountain ain’t ever going to happen.

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      • Your analogied are all screwed Bubba. Are the English oppressed like the Chinese and French peasants ?

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      • Hey Dom,

        Yeah in 1189 England was a peaceful democracy with a flourishing and proud record of human rights.

        Oh hang on a sec, no it wasn’t it was an absolute monarchy with practices today we’d consider barbaric.

        And what about the Peterloo Massacre – a cavalry charge into an unarmed civilian population that’s not oppressive to you ?

        And the French they just stormed the Bastille to get to the delicious croissants that the patisserie there was famous for – not because it was a symbol of oppression.

        You do have some weird little notions.

        But as you seem to have completely missed the point I’ll spell it out to you as best I can.

        You can’t use something like a riot as a single measure of a society. IF you did then North Korea and China are looking pretty darned good. And oddly enough that’s what you seem to have been doing, judging the health of a society solely on the frequency of rioting that occurs there. As well as making ridiculous grandiose statements about the “family unit”

        Could you do use both a favour and some thought into it BEFORE you start hitting the keyboard

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      • Hey again Dom

        As a PS here’s a link to that report

        http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121003195935/http:/riotspanel.independent.gov.uk/

        I’ve had a look and you know what I can’t find the bit that says “the riots were fuelled by a range of factors including a lack of opportunities for young people, poor parenting , a failure of the justice system to rehabilitate offenders, materialism and suspicion of the police.”

        Could you give me the page number for that ?

        You will find the perception of poor parenting gets a mention, as well as that low correlation between TFP families and rioters as well as comments like

        “There are no data available to enable us to assess whether there is any link between the quality of parenting and the likelihood of an individual being involved in the riots”

        So the report explicitly sates that it doesn’t have the data to make the conclusions you’ve been saying that it makes.

        You could even read Jane’s story and see how she turned out being raised in what I’m assuming you consider to be the “family unit” (as you haven’t been able to define what a family unit is I’m having a bit of a guess on that one)

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  23. bah! All these comments so far are based on what is popular belief! Which is Ok if you’re not a Christian. But why try to project what is outside the church on what should be in the church?

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  24. ” immorality ……….. impedes one’s ability to recognize that theism is true.”
    and
    ” faith…………………impedes one’s ability to recognize that theism is false.”

    It is in fact my strong sense of morality that does not allow me to accept Christian theology as worthy of respect. The high-flown, poetic nonsense that is sprouted in favour of it is not borne out by the evidence, either of its content or of the shambolic and deceitful ways by which it has all been cobbled together. These ways, I might add, though known by most theologians, are never promulgated to the faithful who, by and large, don’t want their dreams spoiled by hearing such things.

    And the faithful must have their dreams.That’s what it’s all about.

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      • Old man yourself. Sure, I can dream with the best of them, but I know when reality begins and ends and with religion I’m right on the money.

        Quite big on the ad hominem stuff, aren’t you, Bryan, when you can’t address the facts? Nothing Christian about you except the label it seems.
        I wonder how much literature you have actually read which investigates and analyses the development of Christianity and of the Bible?

        Don’t you want to know if what you believe is really the truth? I’d say not. However, if you do, then constantly reading only stuff from believers which tells you things against the evidence, just as the Bible does, is not the way to find out.

        Truth should not fear inquiry, even thorough, incisive inquiry. It seems that Christianity is not up to that because it actively discourages it. Bible study is based on looking for ways and excuses to make the Bible appear true or acceptable, never for the most likely explanations for the accounts.

        You should read the other side of the story from those who have studied it with no vested interest in the supernatural, but with a detective zeal to discover the truth. Treat the Bible claims as you would if they were made by anyone else.

        If you investigate pre-Christian religious contributions and the way in which plagiarizing not only the Old Testament but religious writings from many other religions to supply nearly all of the supposed activities and speeches of Jesus and make them sound a chord with the adherents of those other religions, then you have to wonder if there is anything at all in the Jesus story which actually happened.

        It has been said that believers who actually studied the Bible development properly and in depth, with a view to finding the truth that lies behind it, would soon no longer be believers. And there are many hundreds of former pastors in that category

        It has also been said that the only difference between a cult and a religion is that the guy who started the religion is dead. It may even be that Jesus was never alive. In fact that seems to be the most likely explanation for the total lack of truly independent information about him outside of the Bible. Obvious interpolations and simple references to the existence of believers don’t count.

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  25. Bryan,
    I want to apologize for suggesting you are not a true Christian. It was uncalled for and even if I thought it I should not have said it. I just feel that trying to put someone down because of their perceived advanced age is also uncalled for, especially by anyone who bases their life on the apparent wisdom of some very ancient ancients who made no use of what today we would regard as even basic critical thinking.

    If you look for truth, the older you get the more you understand it, IF, and only IF, you use strict critical thinking, logic and reason.

    Anything else is just wishful and/or magical thinking.

    PS. When you get to my age, which won’t actually be very long, I hope you will be doing as well as I am.
    All the best.

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