PS: while attempting to correct spelling in the comment accidentally hit delete on the post, so had to repost. sorry - please do bear with me
for all those that are concerned that Gay/ Lesbian/ Transgendered Parents might not be good for kids
Why are we opposing same sex marriage? Is it just because we think it may not be good for children?
We talk about and argue everybody should have the right to dissent. At least in Alex'spost some of us were saying that.
Does that mean we are open to examine our concern with an open mind? Are we prepared to explore what our PRIMARY concern about same sex parenting, same sex relations is?
This post is dedicated to all of us that doubt, question the practicality, validity, rightness of same sex relationship and marriage.
Academically speaking:
Mating Problem
1) Are we apprehensive that women will have a hard time finding a mate if men preferred men?
(Latest census report, in India there are 822 females for every 1000 males)
Economics
2) Men are economically more secure, will that leave a lot of women around for state to take care of? Will men preferring men, women preferring women create economic burden on the state?
Birthrate
3) Will birthrate reduce?
(Over 100 babies are born per minute in India, right now, as I write this)
Social
4) Why would it affect babies adversely?
Does research say that babies need a set of male and female parents?
With rising divorce rates and promiscuity among heteros, hundreds of babies have become single parent babies. Then there are babies of widowed parents ( Satyajit Ray the Oscar Life time award winner from India was brought up by his mother because his father died when he was born) who grow up to be perfect gentlemen and ladies and famous and rich and great contributors to human civilization.
So what can you offer in terms of research results, social real life examples to show that single parenthood or same sex parenthood might be detrimental to babies' mental health?
What about babies raised in nunneries or missions or monasteries? All adults in such places are either all male or all female.
A lot of babies are abandoned in India and third world countries because of sexual mores of straight people - these end up in convents or monasteries - do they all turn out to be monsters, psychopaths, criminals, emotional cripples, perverts?
Where is statistics to prove that?
5) What do babies need?
Apart from affection, attention, training in life skills, nurture, protection?
What did you need as a baby? Did you really care much about where the love and attention you received came from, as long as it was genuine, nurturing and not abusive or tainted with selfish self-interest?
6) Do babies really understand or care that they should only have mum-dad homes and not dad-dad or mum-mum homes, until we adults put it into their little heads, tease them and make them feel uncomfortable?
Sex
7) Sex to have babies - wasn't that caveman's idea? Have we not evolved enough to appeciate it for what it might be, beyond the functional, beyond the procreative - have we not learned to think of sex as sacred and not wrong over the course of centuries of cultural evolution?
8) Isn't that why we devised social institutions to legalize promiscuity, experiemntation (sex toys, literature, professional services, porn, prostitution, divorce, remarriage, arrangements, live-in relations, liasions, separation)
As far as procreation is concerned in nature there is both sexual and asexual ways. And at the cell-level, replication occurs when a cell simply DIVIDES. Simple.
9) Sexual reproduction came with evolution.
10) When it became evident that it is more viable for a female, if male-female were to be together as an unit, it is then that the idea of using sex to bond was insisted upon, to keep the man - because it is easier for the female who becomes big with child and can no longe hunt for food.
It may have been a woman's doing, this whole thing about "hetero is right". Sex for babies, bonding - the ideas benefit a woman more than a man.
What is the real premise of our resistance - plain phobia (which by the way, is defined as abnormal, irrational, unaccounted for fear of something) or is it founded on reason and study and rational thought?
Am just like you - but I come from a conservative country that believes the West to be open about such matters. It is jailable offence in my country to even be found with something as inoccuos as a sex toy - let alone use it. Same sex practice is a criminal offence here. IPC 377 is still in vogue.
I come from a culture where even handholding between married couples in public is looked down upon as lack of self control and therefore sign of weakness of character and lack of respect for the rest of the society!
There is a story in the Mahabharata, where a prince had to marry a princess just because he had held her hand - you know why? She had fallen in a ditch and he had to hold her hand to pull her out of it :)
So am so very curious to know "WHY" do you resist when your culture is already so open with SEX - and all kinds too.
Your views
and my rating disappeared when I accidentally deleted the post itself by mistake (there were two windows open, so I could salvage these by doing a cut copy paste from the second window) entirely my fault, sorry :
Eight to one females to males?!? That is shocking. I mean it. Nature tends to balance that out a lot more...it tends to be 50/50 ..with women slightly up at 51%.
Eight to one is so outrageous that it actually concerns me.
I am curious. Given the huge population in India..is the idea of the birthrate leveling off a bit a bad thing?"
The people who tend to resist in the West are not so open about sex. They preach abstinance to their teenagers rather than birth control. They operate from a position of fear and denial. They seem to spend entirely too much time worrying about what other people are doing sexually, which is none of their business. When they learn that, maybe we can move on.
On the up side, the fact that this is in the news and actively being debated is a positive sign as far as I am concerned. It shows some progress.
You raise many interesting points. I will be pondering them for awhile.
May I just comment on your last point? You named it right there. We make it about sex instead of about parenting.
Gay and lesbian, and bi and transgender parents are just parents. Just people trying to do a good job raising some kids. If they had kids within a straight relationship and then came out, no doubt they may have fought hard to maintain their custodial rights. If they became parents while they were 'out', no doubt it took some planning, thinking, and effort. Obviously these are people who really want to be parents, and I would posit, they want to be good parents.
Instead of seeing them as that, just parents wanting to do a good job, they become sexualized parents. What they may or may not do sexually becomes some weird twisted focus instead of all the things that make them parents: how many diapers they change a day or how they need good, affordable child care, and how much they want a good education and healthcare for their kids. Who cares. What society wants to focus on is how the parents may or may not have sex.
It's ridiculous. GLBT parents are as tired and stressed and worried as any other parents, and they're all just trying to do a good job raising the kids they love.
It's insulting to all parents to make GLBT parents into demons because of their sexuality. It ignores the true value and work of parenting.
Thanks for this.
(And P.S., I lead an uneventful life too. We could hang out sometime and do some uneventful things.)
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Comments
wakingupslowly: thanks, I would love to, through mail now or someday when you are in mine or am in your country?
Owl: read all your comments on Alex's post. thanks . welfare of all is an answer that should be acceptable to all.