Late entry
Flores
I've avoided this topic because it stirred one of those ugly tantrums of mine at the time I first read it, and I had about four tantrums going at the time. The upshot is that, while I cannot by my conscience avoid the topic forever, I have the benefit of not firing off while I'm still in a state of perturbation.
I wanted to examine first of all your general negatives:
(1)
Marriage Penalty: The marriage penalty, insofar as anyone has ever explained to me is not so much a penalty but people's expectation of a greater benefit. "Marriage Penalty" to me is still a political buzzword of the Republican Revolution that rose and foundered amid the Clinton presidency. Besides, most people I know don't count the "marriage penalty" against getting married in the first place. In fact, I can't think of any that care.
(2)
Inability to have biological offspring: I don't see this as a particular difficulty unless the individual chooses to make it a consideration in their life. I'm adopted; my mother is barren by some minor cystic condition that would eventually lead to hysterectomy, removal of ovaries, and hormonal implants to make up the difference. In the United States, we reproduce irresponsibly.
(3)
Unknown roles in raising of children....who takes the mother role, and who takes the father role: In all honesty,
Flores, I think this is an issue best left for comedy writers without a better plot. Every committed gay couple I know has a bizarre balance going on. It won't persist among new couples as society progresses because it seems a bit of a knowing road-weariness that comes from living in the closet, under the gun, however one wishes to look at it. But beyond that, I think the confusion of roles is really a comic gag that will get old in due time. Ever see the American version of
Three Men and a Baby? Many of my friends had that view of men and children in the abstract--fumbling, arrhythmic, stupid to the point of endangering the child--but they found quickly, when it was my daughter they were holding, that when you really do love something, certain things come naturally. True, my brother doesn't like the prospect of changing a diaper, but he does no worse than anyone else who doesn't do it every day, with of course the exception of grandmothers. Likewise, the stooge-like parody of gay buffoons tromping around gender roles like twaddling, mincing idiots ... I'm sure you know,
Flores, how many of your personal superficialities melted away upon the arrival of your children. Well ... as you are a mother, you may well have burned them away in labor. And besides, for those tromping, twaddling, gay buffoons who do manage to get hold of children to raise ... well, I grew up in the 1980s. My parents worked a lot because they had to. I was fortunate. My friends whose families had more money ... they grew up knowing that their parents worked a lot because they wanted to. Hi, kid, you're second fiddle to Mammon. Of course, they're the ones in the advertising agencies right now and they'll be coming to political authority in the next fifteen years, so we'll get to see what it brings. Point being, I don't know if it's fair to expect that gay idiots will be any more problematic than heterosexual idiots. Less so, in fact, because of the need for secondary routes of acquiring children.
(4)
Lack of sexual diversity: This is the one that actually got me to responding today. First off, the way society goes,
two parents is a better idea than one. But to focus for a moment on the "single mother"--we both know that the kind of women who drink and snort crank and keep whatever guy around that can charm them and give them multiple orgasms do not represent the nature of single motherhood. Certainly there exist mothers who will tolerate a constant parade of low characters in front of their children, but I will not indict the notion of single motherhood over such an issue. Rather ... what I do wish to point out is that two loving parents of common gender is hardly the worst family situation in the world for a child. One loving parent, demonstrably, can still produce shining children. But two parents can be a very good thing, and compared to other two-parent or parent-and-additional-influence families (the chain of mom or dad's "significant others"), two stable and loving parents of common gender cannot be said to be the worst option.
Also ... there's a notion in that concern about a lack of sexual diversity that disturbs me, but ....
It just has the appearance of "girls should act like girls and boys should act like boys", and frankly there is a certain degree to which that idea, in my opinion, can be done away with.
As far as artificial insemination is concerned, a potential hazard exist in destruction of geneology and understanding of ancestary of the child
As an adopted child with no proper genealogy, I can say that the only thing that ever made me regret having no blood heritage was a bunch of people throughout my life who tried to teach me to think of it as tragic in some way.
Yet even without a disease history, doctors simply took some of my blood and some of my partner's blood and looked at it under certain laboratory conditions and brought back enough of a genetic profile to start creating my daughter's "disease history". Incidentally, my partner is also an adopted child with very little medical history. We know more about ourselves in that respect through having a daughter than we ever knew before.
A carrier of fertilizer mother leaves many problems as well. First, only one of the gay guys could be the father, meaning, the other partner is not really a biological father. This can cause jealousy, differential treatment, and could eventually lead to a messy court battle on child custody.
Strangely, I think of it the other way around. Didn't Melissa Etheridge and her partner have a baby by David Crosby or some-such? To the other, columnist Dan Savage and his partner Terry sought adoption.
Adoption poses all the problems stated above.
Adoption in general is a bad idea for other reasons. It is also a very good idea, and perhaps the best route for any couple not endowed by nature to have children (e.g. my mom and dad?) to acquire children.
However, it is not
entirely a joke when I point out that if a couple cannot naturally have children, perhaps they should just take the hint. And that applies to heterosexuals as well.
Of course, once a gay marriage is legalized, one would expect the number of gay people to increase and their desire to marry one another to increase.
Specifically I think you'll find a greater acknowledgment of human bisexuality. The people who reserve themselves to homosexuality from psychological trauma will probably be reduced while those who are inherently homosexual will probably remain a stable figure.
The next generation born into a gay marriage would be more likely to become gay than an average person born into a straight marriage.
Specifically, they will be less likely to reserve their pleasures. When I was twelve or thirteen, an orgasm was an orgasm. It didn't strike me until I was seventeen that a portion of the thoughts wandering through my head were actually homosexual. In fact, it took a fifteen year-old guy hitting on me to make me figure it out. Shoulda gone out with him ... he made millions before he was done with high school.
But in the present I eschew odd heterosexual considerations of who's the hottest woman or whatnot. In my twenties it struck me that the basis of of the beauty I found in women was rooted in sexual expectation. In wiping this aside, I've come to a certain peace with the other side of my sexuality. I don't pursue it, I don't refuse it; frankly it's easier to deal with than my heterosexual aspect has been.
But in the end it's not even about hetero-, homo-, or bisexual. It's about the conditioning that tells me the propriety of where and when I may seek certain comforts. And with those assignations come tremendous limitations of human potential.
I think of all the feminists, civil rights activists, and other people dedicated to social reconciliation and harmony and wonder what the human species could accomplish if we didn't have these issues--which I regard as superficial--to worry about. Yes, sexuality is a huge conundrum in society. No, it does not have to be.
As the restrictive politic recedes, I think you'll find that much of the identity politic will abate as well.
This means that the numbers of unnatural birthes in our societies will increase, thus increasing the risk of geneology destruction and inbreeding.
I tend to think that unnatural births will increase with or without the homosexual issue. Furthermore, as our genetic technology advances, inbreeding potential will shine like pink neon in a light fog. You'll be able to see it miles away. And as humanity grows, the inbreeding potential consistently lessens naturally.
What is it we restrict in this culture as far as inbreeding? Parents and children? Siblings? First and second cousins? I'm of the opinion that inbreeding is something that someone has to put some effort into.
Or so says me.
I see the issues you raise,
Flores, but obviously in a different light. The day I become President of the United States, I'll be an American first. The day I convert to Christianity or Islam, I'll be a Christian or a Muslim first. The day I take any identity which precedes my humanity, I shall be that identity first. But until then, I'm a human being first, and all else second. It is fair to say that while I see the concerns, I question what I perceive to be the context against which they are compared. I'm not sure these issues will be much more than mundane ripples on the pond on a windy day.
I think it's one of those occasions when the people who do not face such issues will worry too much about those who do. I don't think these will be large functional difficulties in the context of homosexuality.
How we treat our genetics in general .. now there's a different issue. But I would think you would want to worry more about the damage done to genetics by
commerce than any damage homosexuality could do.
:m:,
Tiassa