A country that does the right thing, finally.

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Uhm sorry, I couldn't come up with a better title.
Here's a link, but I suggest you seek your own, cause this one is very simple.
http://et.tv.yahoo.com/music/13416/index.html

So, what do you think? Is it a step in the right direction? Is it inevitable?
The fact that this very important person (or just famous, if you want) is doing it in the first place is a good example and a good motivation for those who in the future will want to do so. No more hidding in the closet, so to speak.

 

I wouldn't be against gay couples adopting existing children, but if they were to conceive a kid with a host mother for that specific purpose, I'm not 100% sure. I'm leaning more towards "for", but not completely sure.

Gay marriages (as a legal issue) I'm all for. I can understand churches not accepting them, even though I don't like it. For a church wedding gays would need a different kind of a church, a new branch of christianity that probably wouldn't be accepted by christians.

 

Heh - this is going to be that Canadian gay marriage thread part 2, isn't it?

I'm very pro gay-marriage (not saying that churches should be forced to marry anyone as some people seem to fear), and am leaning for gay adoption (which is a total flip from the last thread...). If the child isn't old enough to understand, then maybe I'd be leaning against.

Well, there's always Quakers

 

Some Christian churches already do that but if you ever see a Catholic or Orthodox priest (or deacon) performing one, he's a heretic.

I'm against gay marriage, especially when it's called marriage. I don't believe the society has any obligation to support the illusion of normalcy. Plus, we don't have any obligation to subject children to dangerous experiments so that people would feel better and reinforce their illusion of normalcy by having children in what isn't marriage. If such a "marriage" isn't supposed to bring children about, it doesn't need all the support, civil, social or financial, that the normal marriage receives.

Besides, gay unions have been performed already for some time now and it's not like it's called marriage in the UK, so the UK isn't first.

 

I do not think that this is a step in either direction. As Tal pointed out this wedding has been planned for years, and was old news before it even happened (which is probably also the reason why the media hasn't made such a big a deal about it).

 

Well, in many states it's possible to adopt a child if you're single, and they don't take the kid away from you if at some future point you get married. In theory a gay couple could adopt a child (granted only ONE of the members of the couple would be the legal guardian) and then they could get married. Obviously, I don't have a problem with either issue.

On the other hand, some states will only let married couples adopt. Since gay marriages are currently illegal in 49 out of the 50 states, states that only allow married couples to adopt effective prevent gays from adopting children.

Personally, I don't see how you could separate the two. Either gay marriage is OK, or it's not. If it's OK, then they should get all the rights of married couples. I can see how someone could be for BOTH gay marriage and adoption, or against BOTH gay marriage and adoption, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be for one and against the other.

 

The topic was not Elton's wedding, it was gay civil union (aka marriage) legalization. I posted that link cause it was a nice trigger, nothing more.
There's also a project going on here in Argentina about gay unions (again, it's not marriage, it's "civil union"). This project plans to give rights and duties to homosexual couples. I'll mention some, to give you a better idea: pension if one of them dies, obligation to mantain kids (education, food, same as a hetero marriage); both must live in the same house unless specific circumstances; infidelity is no longer a cause of divorce while divorce may happen if one of the parts wants to do so; they're both included in social services; the right to adopt and some others I can't translate.
The leaders of this project made it clear they don't want to call it "marriage"; because they think it's kinda flawed and it's closely related to churchs and because they think the society in general doesn't want it either. Now this is reasonable.
Last, they claim children do not suffer if raised by homosexual couples. They said there're studies that prove this. The need to legalize comes from the actual situation were couples adopt kids as singles and they raise them as a couple, something that is allowed here in Argentina (there's this gap or hole in our laws, fancy that). Personally I'd like to see more of this studies. As a side note, there're plenty of cases in which children are raised terribly bad by heterosexual couples (because of misery or addiction problems or whatever) but that doesn't seem to be wrong either, cause no one mentions it.

 

Why?

 

I have to echo Barmy's question about why. the reason I ask is that I know gay couples that have brought children up when they have adopted them or one of the partners was in a 'straight' relationship before. On the whole I found their children had been brought to be more open-minded, responsible, well-balanced, respectful than most children of normal hetero couples. And they don't have gay tendencies just because their role models are, the same as straight people's children never become gay of course.

 

Oh man. We all know everyone's views on homosexuality and whether gay couples should adopt children. Do we really need to go over all that ground again?

If we do, then I will start chip in once again by saying that there are far worse things for someone to be than gay (like being a paedophile, or a murderer, or a terrorist, or a burglar, or a rapist) so let's worry about those things first.

 

I applaud you HB there are more dangerous and heinous things than being homo- or heterosexual and should be looked at first.

 

Sorry Harbs, but I honestly can't think of a reason why gay people shouldn't be able to raise children. Are people worried that that will 'breed' more gay people? I'd say that's rubbish, sexuality isn't something that's taught into someone.
I'd feel for the kid, he'd probably get mercilessly ripped to pieces by narrow-minded idiots, especially at school when young. But there's no reason why gay people can't be really good parents.
I've met plenty of straight people who were nowhere near fit to be raising children.

 

Barmy, did you even read my post? I agree with you already, you clown.

 

I was apologizing for dragging the topic up when you moaned about it, not for anything else. Clown back atcha, boyo!

 

Barmy, I understand where you're coming from but I disagree. Children do learn sexual roles from parents and they have a lot of trouble indentifying with their gender if such a figure is lacking. It's enough if, let's say, a boy is raised without a father (which I was and I know the trouble resulting from there). Now if the same boy is faced with one daddy that goes for guys and another daddy who plays a woman, where is he supposed to get the pattern to follow and identify with? Of course, he can still learn it from elsewhere (neighbours, more distant family) or discover on his own (it hurts, really, I know what I'm talking about), but it's unfair to place such a burden on children so that gay people could feel better about themselves and their so called marriage. Besides, it doesn't take much to notice that the whole fight is not about the welfare of the children but about making homosexualism look normal and helping gay people create a comfortable illusion of normalcy. If they are adult, they should live with it and learn to cope with it, without expecting the society to bear the burden of helping them out of their psychological predicament and pretending everything is normal so that they would feel better. I am against discrimination in fields where sexual preferences are not relevant, but I'm also against anti-homophobia brainwash and all the gay friendly imperatives. I can talk with a gay person like two civilised adults but I don't want to take part in any sandbox games, pretending it's all okay. I don't want to bend the truth and reality to accommodate someone's self-comfort. I don't think children should be a part of it, either.

 

I don't think gays would just seek to 'feel better about themselves' by wanting to raise a child. It's just a natural thing to want a child to raise which doesn't go away from a person just because they're gay.
I know what you mean about a man/woman relationship being a more stable place for a child to grow up. However, I don't think all kids need that around. He/she wouldn't necessarily look to have a mother and father figure in their gay 'parents', but rather just enjoy their love, protection and be raised properly with strong morals etc.
So long as they both love the child and treat him/her well that's good for a child to grow up properly.
Hope that makes sense, debating isn't my strong point!

 

I got morals, love and protection from mother, but I still had some problems with interacting with genders throughout all my life and had to discover many things on my own rather than take them as granted. It's all a part of what I am now, but I wouldn't really like it to be a standard thing for all kids. I can only imagine what if mother had had a female "spouse" in the house. I remember myself asking what "father" meant and I wouldn't like any child to have to ask about two daddies or two mummies. If a child doesn't have an ingrained understanding of what a father is in a social context (or perhaps any context), can he or she really escape the bad effects of having not just a missing parent but two parents of the same gender and mixed up gender roles?

Edit: Yes, I know you didn't mean that. What I was trying to say is that it's possible that a child could get love and protection from gay parents (I have doubts about love but it will take another post to explain -- essentially, it's about using children as validation tools), but that's not all. I had all those things from my mother, but I still didn't have a father figure in the house. I got the values, the morals, the information. But I didn't get a living example. It's not the same. And a bad, twisted example is worse than none. Children react differently, correct, so some won't be affected as much as others, but I don't think it will ever be harmless. People with a missing parent always have problems. So what about people who not only don't have a proper father but have two women who behave like mothers but only one really is? Or two fathers of whom one is real, and no mother? It's going to be even worse. I don't think it's fair to do that to children just because of gay rights.

[ December 22, 2005, 21:19: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Sorry chev, I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't get those things from your mother.
As regards this, everyone and every child is different, so I guess the situation would affect different children in different ways.