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It not too out there to say that marriage civilizes men. It's more accurate to say that the presence of women civilizes men.
What offends me about this video the most is that science is once again being warped and co-opted to support bigotry. Welcome back Social Darwinism. It's a lab coat wrapped around a scarecrow.
"It not too out there to say that marriage civilizes men. It's more accurate to say that the presence of women civilizes men."
? Gay men are uncivilized?
Ms F - I think, with a little effort, you can rephrase your point to be much less offensive. Mulligan bestowed.
I wish that our side would run a "LIES!!" ad for every single one that NOM runs, and preferably in the same time slot as their lying filth ads. But no, we're trying to win by appealing to the electorates' fairness, kindness and rationality, which all goes out the window when the smallest "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!" mention is made. Grrrr.
I've got a bucket of Ativan waiting for me on Nov. 7th....... President Rmoney, Gov Jay Inslee and a defeated R74. Yay for 'Merica- the homos lose again!
[rant off]
ooops...
Let's fix that for you.....
"The statistics about what's the best environment for children are ceaselessly misused by these gay types. Studies show that children raised with a mother and a father tend to do much better than children raised by a single parent. From there homosexual bigots often extrapolate that same-sex couples offer the same parenting benefit as heterosexual couples, which is not supported by the evidence. The few studies that compare same-sex parenting to the other two categories (opposite-sex parents and single parent) are so small and poorly constructed that they reveal no statistically significant data."
You're welcome. Dumbass.
Also, I really hate when idiots try to use science.
oh no....
"LOVE !"
Please tell us ANY city, county or state that guarantees ANYONE the right to marry whom they LOVE.....
Or that asks a couple if they are in LOVE when they marry.
sad sappy irrelevant bullshit.
Their entire video is annoying, especially the voice over trying to sound as though she's from the future, when in fact she's from the last century. The "point" that really sticks in my craw is that "your tax dollars are being used to fund homosexual relationships" (or whatever the hell she said....my head already hurts from having to listen to it once, I don't have it in me to do it a second time). The lack of tax benefits that the LGBT community suffers costs us thousands of dollars every year.
I'm as big a pacifist (and maybe even a woosy) as you'll ever meet, but damn I want to punch these people right in the throat.
Is and has been overwhelming true.
The fact that "Sex creates children",
as the pissy little tightass in the video asserts
does not negate that fact;
nor does his brilliant revelation that
"you don't have to have created children to be a parent".
The fact is that homosexual pairings will NEVER produce children, no matter how much lipstick you smear on that pig by labeling those pairings "marriage".
Point NOM.
He must get his cue from Obama ducking questions about Libya....
In fact Marriage does provide great security to women and children (that is the point, after all....)
Two men "married" really doesn't civilize anyone
and two women "married" don't need to be protected from anyone, do they...
Points NOM
Point NOM (but tightass gets a wink for admitting he is wrong...)
tightass really gets indignant when NOM points out that homosexual "marriage" merely validates sex partners.
but when two people choose to engage in sexual behavior that will NEVER produce children society really doesn't care what they do and has no interest in financially subsidizing it.
shove your indignation up your tighass.......
Nothing trumps a British accent on the
"makes your message sound smart" scale....
The Truth is very persuasive.
OK, fine. I'm not going to look at the study, but let's say it's 100% correct. What, then, shall we do w/ orphans? Just give up on them because they won't grow up in ideal circumstances? What shall we do about children of divorced parents? What about children of a single-parent household?
None of these questions are "solved" by making same-sex marriage illegal. Bringing up this question leads one to ask, how does the religious right want to solve them? They don't. Unless you call shaming, dismissing, ignoring a solution. I don't.
The point is, Maggie & the rest of the NOM crowd, (and possibly you, Ken) doesn't give a flying fuck about kids, unless as easy brains to indoctrinate. This is just another tactic to install their 'nanny-state' morality on the rest of us, using children as shields. I've always been sickened by hypocritical hand-wringers like yourself, because your morality lasts only as long as people are watching you.
@16: Um...marriage doesn't create children. Just because it is commonly associated with children doesn't make you and NOM correct.
@18: Straight marriage lowers rates of crime, poverty, and welfare. So does gay marriage. NOM is lying by omission, not by fabrication, in that instance.
@19: So the purpose of marriage, according to you, is to encourage people to have the kind of sex that leads to reproduction? That's funny. I thought it was about affirming a deep personal connection between two people.
I see Alleged has continued his usual method of refuting arguments: say a bunch of condescending stuff and pretend it means anything.
The follow-up commercial that shouts "Lies! Lies!" after NOM's lies sounds amusing, but any argument that's limited to debunking the other sides' argument is allowing the other side to set the agenda. What would really help is a commercial talking about all the good things that gay marriage brings. It's been around in New York long enough for there to be some statistics to gather. A few more years and there will be school-aged adopted kids to study. (Though, hopefully, by then it'll be moot.)
...why would legalizing marriage be any form of financial subsidy? People pay slightly higher taxes when they're married, not slightly lower.
No.
Studies look at married heterosexual parents; then Al Franken and the rest of the junk science homoclown club come along and squeal that because there are two homosexual caregivers the results must apply to them as well.
Franken infamously misrepresented a Dec 2010 HHS study in a Senate hearing. That study compared families parented by heterosexual married couples to all other configurations.
Franken retroactively erroneously applied the positive results seen in heterosexual married families to homosexual pair caregivers. To the applause of the jackals in the gallery.
It reminds of the scene from the original Planet of the Apes where the Orangutang cites Ape Law to confound Charlston Heston's character....
The reality is EXACTLY the OPPOSITE of what you state in @5.
.
Please cite studies showing that homosexual marriage lowers rates of crime, poverty, and welfare.
.
No.
You evidently can't read.
According to us society finds no benefit from financially subsidizing homosexual pairings sexual activities.
What shall we do?
We acknowledge and foster and encourage the social structure that provides kids the best opportunity.
Through the popular culture and public policy.
We teach kids that marrying and staying married is the best lifestyle choice for them and for their children.
We support single parent households and orphans.
But we do not pretend that inferior competing social structures are Just As Good.
And we do not grant them the same status as Traditional Heterosexual Marriage.
How can you simultaneously support gay adoption and reject gay marriage? If you support gay adoption, wouldn't you want those adopted kids to be raised by adoptive parents that have a legally recognized marriage, rather than a sham second-class almost-marriage?
And holding up some sort of ideal to restrict my rights is ridiculous. All sorts of people who don't meet your ideal (1 man + 1 woman + bio kids) are allowed to get married. And divorced. And remarried. People who don't want kids at all are allowed to marry. Old people well past the age of childbearing are allowed to marry. Infertile people are allowed to marry. People who get married but fail to produce children are allowed to stay married. Bearing and raising children has never been a requirement for marriage in this county. Give me one logical reason your ideal should be used to restrict my rights, but not the rights of millions of hetero marriages that do not meet your ideal.
It is true that most studies only look at straight couples versus single parents. Such studies cannot be used to draw conclusions regarding the effectiveness of gay couples as parents. HOWEVER, the few studies that HAVE compared gay couples to straight couples have found little or no statistically significant differences in children's outcomes. To which you respond by complaining that the sample sizes were too small (sometimes true, sometimes false) and that we should go according to your view, despite the fact that it has NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER supporting it.
Please cite studies showing that heterosexual marriage lowers rates of crime, poverty, and welfare.
No, YOU evidently can't read. I said that marriage, as a civil institution, has nothing to do with sex.
@30: You said it.
@27 you said: "Straight marriage lowers rates of crime, poverty, and welfare."
you cite the studies.
How many homosexual married couples did the 2010 HHS study look at?
How many homosexual married couples did the 2010 HHS study look at?
Do you not see how offensively you're stating your point? On your system, gay men have to cram their lives extra full of women to catch up to straight men on the civilized scale (probably to the point that there isn't enough room for a gay life, which kinda sorta might be the point, but no more now on that now) due to the tremendous disadvantage in not having a female significant other. At the very least, the most logical inference is that gay men start out way behind straight men, and that offends me. If, like Anne Elliot and Captain, we can each acknowledge good will towards the other, we can agree to disagree in good faith. I don't take your statement as indicative of good will as you state it, but think it could be restated acceptably.
A while back, I annoyed a number of people when I speculated that a Matriarchy would eradicate male homosexuality. A number of women took this to mean that I was calling feminists anti-gay-male, but you have illustrated the sort of idea that was really in my mind. Develop a pill that will turn gay men straight, force them all to take it, and just think of how much more civilized men will become, and how much better it will be for society. You may not be advocating such a course, but the distance from A to B is but a step to my weary eyes.
Now let's see those studies about straight marriage providing those benefits.
Disagreement in good faith cannot take place unless you understand me properly, and you don't seem to: I am not saying that marriage civilizes men but rather that the presence of women civilizes men. A wife is a source of female influence but she is not the only one. Gay men don't have to cram their lives full of women to catch up to straight men. Society does it for them. They're exposed to female relatives, coworkers, employees, bosses, customers, friends and celebrities, like non-homosexual men are. In modern times, a man interacts with many women over the course of his day on a variety of levels. This was not always so.
As for where gay men start out, they start out as boys. Their most important female influences at that time are mothers, sisters, teachers and classmates, just like other boys. Wives don't come into it until later.
Google "non-sequiter".
If you don't know how many homosexual married couples were included in the study how can you possibly assert that the study demonstrates that homosexual married couples confer the same benefits that married heterosexual parents confer?
47
You are making that up.
Don't quit your day job.
This cuts both ways. You can't use the study to show that gay couples are as good as straight couples at parenting, but you can't show that they're NOT as good either. In the absence of evidence, we assume no effect and fail to reject the null hypothesis. The burden of proof is on YOUR SIDE to prove that there is an effect.
It saddens me how much you claim to champion scientific honesty, but how little you actually understand of scientific methodology or statistical principles. Do you understand how a null hypothesis works?
If you are absolutely committed to your idea, I only see three ways we can agree to disagree with good will. One is if, as I mentioned earlier, we acknowledge that we cannot come to terms on a working definition of "civilizing". That allows for a fair impasse. A second would be if you hold that men arrive at adulthood with their degree of civilization basically fixed and that it will not vary significantly past a certain point. The third, and it has just occurred to me, would be if you regard contact with women as if it were something like a vitamin with a Daily Minimum Requirement, and that most men meet the DMR regardless of whether they go home to a wife, a husband, multiple partners, none, or, just to cover all the bases, one or more partners of indeterminate gender.
Otherwise, I don't see how one avoids a lot of nasty conclusions. Accepting your premise, how could one avoid raising the bar a lot higher for single or coupled men to raise children. I shall not go on in this line, as I really do want to reach a point of agreeing to disagree with good will if at all possible.
Given considerable personal experience in the contrary direction, I doubt it would be possible for me to reach a point of agreement with your position. And from the way you keep popping it out as if it were as universally acknowledged a truth as the one that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, I can't see you ever coming to agree with me.
But, even if I remain offended, I thank you for providing the opportunity for a bit of Austensplaining.
The study includes "no" homosexual married couples.
Franken and you claim it includes them.
The study reveals things about the advantages of heterosexual married parents.
It reveals nothing about homosexual married parents.
The study doesn't say anything about gay couples or straight couples; it just makes a case that couples tend to be better parents than single mothers or fathers. And it's the anti-gay side that's been misrepresenting the evidence to push their own irrational agenda.
It compared MARRIED couples to other family structures.
Don't come back until you have read it.
It compared nuclear families to other arrangements. It defines a nuclear family as follows: "A nuclear family consists of one or more children living with two parents who are married to one another and are each biological or adoptive parents to all children in the family."
Married gay couples with children can fit that definition, as Senator Franken rightly pointed out. It doesn't say anything about gay versus straight one way or the other; it just makes a case for familial cohesion.
Stop trying to make the evidence say what you want it to, and just look at what's actually the case.
How many married homosexual couples were there in the United States when the study was conducted?
I do not believe that men arrive at adulthood with their degree of civilized-ness essentially fixed.
For your vitamin analogy, I'd say that most men in the modern U.S. get their daily recommended intake regardless of whether they go home to a wife or work with women or just generally interact with women during the day. No I do not believe that exposure to men, regardless of the nature of the relationship, has the same effect as exposure to women. I suppose that living with a woman has more of an effect than interacting with women elsewhere.
I didn't say anything about couples' ability to raise children. I'm talking about whether the presence of women civilizes men.
@61 I didn't say anything about the effect of men on women, but girls in single-sex classes tend to speak more and get higher grades, so it's arguable that the presence of boys makes girls dumb themselves down and attempt to be more pleasing. I guess you could reduce that to "whining, harping bitches," but it might be more accurate to say that girls become less assertive.
My purely anecdotal observations on this are that it seems to hold true when we are talking about the very young, (but I wonder how much this has to do with *parents* having a civilizing effect on the very young, and girls tending to stay closer to their parents when they first leave home) but not to the fully adult. I've had some exposure to nearly wholly male environments - work camps in the bush - and they tend to quickly set up a society, with rules that most follow, that seem to fit the definition of 'civilized'. They are different from mixed or all female societies, yes, but not more barbaric once you get to know them.
Your example seems weak. First, my concern is explicitly with gay men in this conversation, and you deliberately select a concrete example from a period when there was no generally understood concept of homosexuality as a benign sexual orientation. Apples and oranges. You also appear to be lumping all men together while selecting a subgroup of women, unless you meant that all women would be considered "respectable." And you can't really say that gay men behaved better in such situations anyway. I could see straight men interested in the new arrivals acting in what they thought to be a woman-attracting way, but there are too many variables to examine given the weather threat.
As the storm is here and I may lose power at any moment, I shall be content for now with the example of, say, home-schooling. Suppose a male couple with a male child living in a hostile community decided to home-school; wouldn't that set off your alarm? It would also seem, at first thought, that there would be tons of data that two female parents vastly outperform two male parents, unless there's a point of diminishing returns, but I am rushing due to occasional power flickers in order to get this off, and my thoughts will be incomplete. I do apologize; please blame the weather.
I'm thinking of a hypothetical but I really have to get off line now. Sorry again.
Disappointing, that.
But way too late to weasel out now.
Senator Chuckles insisted the study described homosexual marriages as well.
(You agreed)
He was actually a first rate asshole about it.
Asshole and Ignorant are a toxic brew.....
Let us help you out:
There were no homosexual marriages in the USA before 2004.
In mid 2004 Mass started, and about 6000 gay marriages were performed the rest of that year.
The years thereafter saw about a thousand a year; so about 7000 in 2005, 8000 in 2006 and 9000 by 2007.
The HHS study surveyed a quarter million families from 2001-2007.
There were about 55 million marriages in the nation those years.
(you may find a different figure but that is pretty close...)
So for the first 3 and a half years of the study there were ZERO married homosexual couples included and for the next four and a half years there were about 6-9,000 gay married couples in a pool of 55 MILLION heterosexual married couples.
Do you know what percentage 8,000 of 55,000,000 is?
We believe scientific geniuses like you call that 'statistically insignificant'.
So when Senator Bafoon insisted that the study included homosexual married couples he was blowing bullshit out his ass.
Perhaps you can explain it to him so he can apologize......
The study did not specifically include or exclude gays from any of its categories. NONE of its methodology or results had anything to do with sexual orientation. Like I've been saying, and like Senator Franken said, it doesn't say anything about gay couples versus straight couples. He never said, nor did I, that there were gay couples in the study sample, only that they would fall under the study's definition of "nuclear family".
I really don't understand why you can't seem to wrap your head around this. It's not difficult to comprehend. Perhaps you, like Tom Minnery, feel the need to put your words into the mouths of others rather than attempt to debate an issue on the facts of the matter.
The Troll is in favor of Traditional Heterosexual Marriage.
Which studies show to be the most favorable circumstance under which to raise children.
oh no ANOTHER epic reading comprehension fail.
Traditional Heterosexual Marriage is a Time Tested Proven Winner for Society.
Dilettantes who come along trying to change it to reflect their faddish whims have the burden of proof before they can expect Society to follow them over the ledge.
more name calling?
we are going to have to cancel your subscription to MSNBC, it seems.
Let's roll the tape.....
>>>"FRANKEN: Mr. Minnery, on page 8 of your written testimony, you write, quote, “children living in their own married biological or adoptive — with their own biological or adoptive mothers and fathers were generally healthier and happier, had better access to healthcare, less likely to suffer mild or severe emotional problems, did better in school, were protected from physical, emotional and sexual abuse and almost never live in poverty, compared with children in any other family form.”
You cite a Department of Health and Human Services study that I have right here, from December 2010, to support this conclusion. I checked the study out. And I would like to enter it into the record if I may."
How about what Minnery said, VenomWhore?
Could one conclude from the HHS study that " “children living in their own married biological or adoptive mothers and fathers were generally healthier ...."?
(remember how many heterosexual married couples were in the sample and how many homosexual married couples were in the sample before you answer....)
Are you familiar with the concept and phrase "Difference without a Distinction", VenomWhore?
Big Al is about to give us an example.....
>>>"FRANKEN: And it actually doesn’t say what you said it says. It says that nuclear families, not opposite sex married families, are associated with those positive outcomes."
(the record will note that the phrase "opposite sex married families" is actually Al's and not Mr Minnery's...)
OK, VenomWhore, help the Senator out.
In the HHS study as conducted is there any difference between the phrase 'nuclear family' and the description of those families as "“children living in their own married biological or adoptive mothers and fathers"?
Were any statistically significant number of the sample size NOT “children living in their own married biological or adoptive mothers and fathers"
OK.
Now Big Al indilges in some innane trivis.....
>>>"FRANKEN: Isn’t it true, Mr. Minnery, that a married same sex couple that has had or adopted kids would fall under the definition of a nuclear family in the study that you cite?"
What is the point of that?
"NO" married same sex couple actually WERE in the study so why does Al bring it up, VenomWhore?
>>>"MINNERY: I would think that the study, when it cites nuclear families, would mean a family headed by a husband and wife."
Was Minnery right, VenomWhore?
In the cited HHS study does "nuclear family" = “children living with their own married biological or adoptive mothers and fathers"?
You are a bright lad, VenomWhore.
Perhaps you can explain to Al that he was Wrong and as Asshole to boot.
Because here is Al's conclusion...
>>>"FRANKEN: It doesn’t... And I frankly, don’t really know how we can trust the rest of your testimony if you are reading studies these ways."
@75 "I would think that" does not mean "it is". It means "I'm guessing". He did not know the answer to the question. That entire passage you quoted reads to me as showing this study having as much to do with the issue of same sex households as one about, oh, how reading to your children improves school grades. The particular study wasn't studying same sex families, wasn't measuring same sex families, and tells us nothing about same sex families. It doesn't count as "one for your side" simply because it doesn't support the other side. It's irrelevant.
In point of fact, most state marriage licenses require very little in terms of specifics.
Now, as to the social, psychological, or spiritual reasons that people decide to marry, I'd be curious to see how many successful marriages in the last century (or six; eros became, at least in literature and art, the foundation of marriage sometime around the Renaissance) were not entered into for love . . . and of those who weren't, how many were successful precisely because of any infidelities (that is, if there's no eros in the marriage, mightn't one seek this very basic human interest--one might say "need"--elsewhere?).
Under our legal system, men and women are considered equal. Since marriage is a civil institution in this country, there is no legal difference between a marriage consisting of two men, two women, or a man and a woman. If you want to draw some distinction, you need to bring evidence; otherwise you're violating the Equal Protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment.
@75: Yes, the study didn't include gay families. THEREFORE, you can't draw any conclusions either way about the quality of gay parenting. Senator Franken said that Minnery was being misleading, which he was; Minnery implied that the study had found gay parenting inferior, which it had not.
It's not hard to understand, which leads me to believe that you simply don't want to understand it. Perhaps your small mind is not ready for the truth...
What part of Minnery's assertion, that “children living in their own married biological or adoptive — with their own biological or adoptive mothers and fathers were generally healthier and happier, had better access to healthcare, less likely to suffer mild or severe emotional problems, did better in school, were protected from physical, emotional and sexual abuse and almost never live in poverty, compared with children in any other family form.” is not supported by the HHS study he cites?
FWIW, the only harm I came to from my upbringing is all directly related to the fact that my parents could not marry.
So far you've managed to prove that one example of studies being misused/misinterpreted by anti-gay politicians is really just a case of the argument being misleading, not actually false. Well done.
In my experience, "Let's agree to disagree" means "I am tired of talking about this, so YOU must shut up." I don't think you should have to shut up at my whim. You don't need my permission to post or not post on any subject.
@76 I hold an advanced degree in history. This isn't anecdotal so much as a pattern that has repeated itself. Men move out by themselves and behave wildly. When women move in, the men's behavior changes.
The presence of women does have a civilizing effect on men, but I do not maintain it is the only civilizing influence on men. The presence of a goal or outside pressure that necessitates discipline is another.
You get to select *which* women have such a "civilizing" effect while still implying that it applies equally to All Men? Sorry, sunshine, that dog is a pacifist and refuses to hunt. It's a neat trick; by not specifying you get to conflate Men as a Whole (IF your point is true, and we still have not yet settled on a definition of "civilized" - on that score I refuse to accept any straight definition, so that we may come to an impassable barrier on that beginning point) with All Men, and almost my whole point is that the two are not conflatable.
And you are still just repeating your mantra as if it were a Truth Universally Acknowledged. Your conclusion of 82 appears to be a bit of backtracking, or at least bet-hedging, or possibly trying to have all cakes and eat them too. But, as the point of maintaining a disagreement WITH GOOD WILL (which you left out of your paragraph on agreeing to disagree), I am running out of things to say, as I am not going to resort to name calling.
Trying to find a point of civil discussion, it might advance the conversation for me to ask why you think gay and straight men won't get different results in this particular measurement. It's not as if we're exactly identical in all other situations and circumstances.
Ever seen a women's public restroom?
DRF you're an idiot.