gay parents = their children can never feel secure and loved

[Confused_by_religion]

I've been debating this issue online for years, and basically right-wing social conservatives always trot out the "intentional" card. They would say that your young relatives' situation can't be helped, but that it's wrong to intentionally create a family without a mother or father. They proclaim married heterosexual parents raising their biological children to be the "gold standard" and anything that deviates from that, even slightly, isn't giving children the "ideal" or "optimal" family circumstance.

I wonder if these people never open a newspaper - every week, we learn of married heterosexual parents who mistreat, abuse, hurt, starve or even kill their children.

So married and heterosexual parents is the "gold standard", just because one happens to have a penis and the other happens to have a vagina? And no couple, regardless how loving, how empathic, how aware of their children's needs they are, can ever be really good parents as long as the penis/vagina combo is missing?

PLEASE... :doh:

[JesusFightClub]

QAF, I get asked when their dad is going to get a girlfriend so "the wee ones have a mum in their lives". Short answer - they had one, she died, it is not fair in the slightest to make dad's partners take the role. He is focused on the kids right now and single, but if he did have a long term female partner she would only be as much of a mum figure as she wanted to be. Which is quite right IMO.

Whereas with two dads or two mums there are two people committed to parenting who have presumably thought about this for a long time. This seems like a very positive setup.

[Ruby]

- the child will never be able to feel secure and confident because its existence is based on the relationship of the parents. When this relationship goes bust, he or she will question his or her right to exist. (?)

My existence is based on two teenagers who found each other incredibly hot during the Summer of Love. They weren't able to stay together, and he died in his early 20s, so I did not grow up with my biological father. Despite all this, it never occurred to me to question my right to exist.

[QAF_Rocks]

I wonder if these people never open a newspaper - every week, we learn of married heterosexual parents who mistreat, abuse, hurt, starve or even kill their children.

So married and heterosexual parents is the "gold standard", just because one happens to have a penis and the other happens to have a vagina? And no couple, regardless how loving, how empathic, how aware of their children's needs they are, can ever be really good parents as long as the penis/vagina combo is missing?

Except for the real crazies*, even most of these right-wingers will admit that loving gay parents are better than abusive straight parents, but to them it's an unfair comparison. They believe that heterosexual married parents are inherently better than same-sex or single parents. And, yes, it's due to the penis/vagina combo, although try as I might, I've never been able to pin them down on what exactly a father can do that a mother can't do just as well, and vice versa. It's the same sort of stereotyping inherent in "complementarian" views of marriage; they seem to believe that men and women have different roles and a sort of mystical gender "essence" (I had someone use that word once) that explains why both a father and mother are needed to give a child an optimal upbringing.

*I'm looking at you, Rick Santorum: http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/01/07/399942/santorum-tells-kids-with-gay-parents-youd-be-better-off-with-parents-in-prison

[QAF_Rocks]

QAF, I get asked when their dad is going to get a girlfriend so "the wee ones have a mum in their lives". Short answer - they had one, she died, it is not fair in the slightest to make dad's partners take the role. He is focused on the kids right now and single, but if he did have a long term female partner she would only be as much of a mum figure as she wanted to be. Which is quite right IMO.

This is the same sort of mentality that feeds into prejudice against gay parents, especially gay fathers. It's probably not helped by the culture at large, which persists in depicting men as clueless, bumbling dolts who have no idea how to take care of their own children. Men still aren't viewed as being capable of the same type of nurturing that women provide, so children of single fathers get more pity hurled at them than children of single mothers. "Poor motherless child" has quite a different connotation, since fathers tend to be seen as less nurturing, secondary caregivers.