The percentage is immaterial. Even at 2%, that comes out to six million Americans. That's what, twice as many people as live in the Chicago metro area? Almost as many as live in Los Angeles. The entire population of Arkansas.
Not that I think the entire population of Arkansas is gay. I don't want to piss off Arkansas. There are a lot of states that you could get away with pissing off, but I don't think Arkansas is one of them.
And as to gay marriage being all about 'I want'... well, sure. We want, first and foremost, to make sure that our children have the same protections that all other children in this country have. That they can't be ripped away from us on the whim of a court. That if one of us passes away, they don't suddenly lose the other parent because of judicial myopia.
We want more, of course. We want to make sure that we get the same return on our Social Security investment that everyone else does. We want to be able to insure our partners. We want to be able to leave all the posessions that we bought as a couple to our partner, without them being taxed as if we were complete strangers. We want to visit our partners when they're sick or dying, something we currently do at the variable sufferance of hospital administration. We want to be able to make each other as happy and as secure as we possibly can.
Is it selfish to want these things? When the vast majority of society takes them for granted, gets them instantly with a visit to the county courthouse or the local Elvis impersonator? When there has never been any harm demonstrated that will come from, or has come from, such unions? After all, Massachusetts hasn't been reduced to smoking rubble as of yet and they've been doing the gay marriage thing for months now.
But that's not the worst part of that article. The article goes on to use Rosie O'Donnel's son Parker as a shill, painting a mental image of the kid lying in bed wishing he had a daddy.
To wit:
Quote:
And it disregards the needs of children such as Parker O'Donnell. Parker doesn't lie awake at night wishing the state would legally recognize Rosie and Kelli's relationship, or that Rosie and Kelli could share Social Security benefits.
He lies awake at night wishing he had a daddy.
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He probably also wishes he had a rocketship. Of course he doesn't have the maturity to realize that he's better off with his two mothers married than he is without them having legal status in the eyes of the state; he's six. But he'd damned sure want his mother back if one of them had something terrible happen to her, and the state took him away from the other one, the mother who'd helped raise him.
He's probably not mature enough to realize that his chances of succeeding in life are much, much better with two parents, no matter what their genders, than with just one.
I don't know where the Religious Right gets the idea that there are an infinite amount of Ward and June Cleavers just waiting in the wings, ready to adopt any adoptable infant and take the kids of gay parents under their wings (as well as to support all the children that are born as a result of abstinence-only education, but that's another rant). The reality is that kids have divorced parents, single parents, gay parents, and parents who are altogether absent. That doesn't mean those kids should be discriminated against. That means that they should be provided with all the help we can muster.
That means recognizing the marriage of two people of the same sex, so that the children they raise don't become wards of the state, they don't lack for Social Security, they don't miss out on the benefits that society has decided that kids need in order to grow up well.
As to your question on the child sexual abuse issue, here are some links. Suffice it to say that the idea that gay people abuse children is the big boogeyman in the religious right's arsenal, designed to scare people into being stupid about this issue.
http://www.thetaskforce.org/download...exualabuse.pdf
From
here:
Quote:
There is no evidence to suggest that lesbians and gay men are unfit to be parents. Home environments with lesbian and gay parents are as likely to successfully support a child’s development as those with heterosexual parents.
Good parenting is not influenced by sexual orientation. Rather, it is influenced most profoundly by a parent’s ability to create a loving and nurturing home -- an ability that does not depend on whether a parent is gay or straight.
There is no evidence to suggest that the children of lesbian and gay parents are less intelligent, suffer from more problems, are less popular, or have lower self-esteem than children of heterosexual parents.
The children of lesbian and gay parents grow up as happy, healthy and well-adjusted as the children of heterosexual parents.
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From
here:
Quote:
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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP),2 the American Academy of Family Physicians,3 the Child Welfare League of America,4 the National Association of Social Workers,5 and the American Psychological Association6 recognize that gay and lesbian parents are just as good as heterosexual parents, and that children thrive in gay- and lesbian-headed families. As the American Academy of Pediatrics report explains, "Children deserve to know that their relationships with both of their parents are stable and legally recognized. This applies to all children, whether they parents are of the same or opposite sex."7 Furthermore, in 1999, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution, prompted by its Section Family Law and its Steering Committee on the Unmet Legal Needs of Children, supporting the promulgation of laws and public policies that provide that sexual orientation shall not be a barrier to adoption when adoption is determined to be in the best interest of a child.
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Are there actually any good, non-idiotic arguments against gay marriage out there? Or are they all appeals to peoples' most fearful, bigoted, ignorant emotions?