Posted on 10/05/2006 4:42:21 PM PDT by SJackson
"Throw those babies overboard!"
"Why?"
"To protect the family."
"Whose babies?"
File photo A newborn infant is held in this 1998 photo. "I don't know. Maybe yours. Maybe mine. Maybe your best friends' babies. Maybe my best friends' babies."
"This is crazy. What are you talking about?"
"Don't ask questions. It's the law. Just throw those babies overboard."
Sound insane? It's no more insane than Wisconsin's gay marriage ban amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot.
The people in favor of this amendment don't seem to understand what they're doing. They don't comprehend that what they want will bounce back at some of them and wound them and their own families - in their wallets, in their legal rights, and in their confidence in the basic sanity of their state.
It will wound them as deeply as it will wound the currently visible gay and lesbian and otherwise unconventional couples, who they mistakenly think are the only targets of their blind prejudice.
They don't understand that their own precious babies whom they cuddle in their arms, to whom they pour out their hearts, and for whom their families have their highest hopes are just as likely to grow up gay or lesbian as other people's babies down the block, across town, or at the other end of the universe.
The people who support this amendment don't seem to understand or to care that the infants who are at the very center of their families' dreams have exactly the same chance of growing up to be targets for bullies, objects of fear, scorn, hatred and ugly, unfair constitutional amendments as any other babies whose arrivals are recorded in each day's birth announcements.
And they don't seem to know or care that there is not a single iota of genuine evidence that the targets of this amendment are less capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of citizenship and of parenthood than any other group in the state's population.
Biologists know the basic facts about the hormones that circulate in each baby's blood within a few weeks after it is conceived. These hormones set the delicate balance of masculinizing androgens and feminizing estrogens in the fetus and the baby's later development. These androgens and estrogens determine how each baby's body and mind will grow into the indefinitely varied combination of male and female physical and mental traits that define us all.
Physicians know that no program of treatment or prayers can substantially alter the basic, underlying templates of growth that guide our babies, our children and our teenagers in their progress toward adulthood. Their sexuality and their gender identities will become superstructures that are built "above the waterline," on foundations of biology that are shaped by God or by nature, depending upon how one chooses to view these fundamentals of life.
We know that most of the leaves will fall off most of the trees in the next few weeks. The leaves and the trees will obey the laws of nature as they have evolved in the Wisconsin environment.
It is equally lawful in nature that about 3 percent to 8 percent of the children born in Wisconsin (and everywhere else) will grow up with some pattern of androgen and estrogen balances that misguided, misinformed or hostile people judge to be "unnatural" or "abnormal." That judgment is plain and simply wrong. These people are the way they are, like leaves on the trees, as God or nature made them. There's nothing unnatural or abnormal about it. It is the most natural thing in the world for things to be this way.
There is only one thing that is unnatural or abnormal in this picture. It is that even in modern times there are still so many people among us who are willing to listen to misguided leaders, leaders who try to establish separate sets of laws and citizenship for people whose otherwise legal patterns of partnering are different from their own.
About 70,000 babies are born in Wisconsin every year. At the rate of 3 percent to 8 percent with unconventional sexual and gender identities, this means that there are 2,100 to 5,600 new babies every year whose future rights as Wisconsin and American citizens would be limited and thrown overboard if this amendment passes on Election Day. In 10 years this could be more than 50,000 people. In 20 years, it could be more than 100,000 people.
No one can predict or control which baby will grow up to be in which category. That is the heart of the matter.
Remember, voters: If this amendment opposing same-sex marriage passes, the babies and the adults you throw overboard into second-class citizenship may be your own.
Bernard Z. Friedlander is emeritus research professor of human development at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. He now lives in Wisconsin. Published: October 4, 2006
Were that true, progressives would be four square behind abortion based on future sexual preference. Which orientation they'd be aborting is an open question.
Hey, you left out the polyamorous community you lousy bigot.
Same sex marriage will in no way effect me. I'm not a deviant. The Capital Slimes seems to be a ravingly leftist party organ. First they condemn the entire GOP over one pervert congressman, then shill for pervert marriage on the other. LOL.
If I follow the author's "reasoning" correctly, not allowing homosexuals the same state sanctions for marriage as heterosexuals is the same thing as throwing babies overboard. I hope he brought enough of what he's smoking for everyone.
And what happened to the period in .3% and .8% ~ makes a lot of difference, and that's only for people reporting. It's probably much lower than that once you account for respondents who refuse to talk to pollsters.
Yes. And considering the author of this rubbish, I'm not the least bit surprised.
What? We don't have enough Kookburgers within our City Limits such as 'Resident Socialist' John Nichols to write these types of articles? Is he on vacation this week or something?
'Das Kapital Times' had to go out of state to support their lame-o argument on this topic?
ROFLMAO! I love it. :)
Here in Massachusetts we don't need to vote on a gay marriage referendum being on the ballot in 20 or so years from now (or ever) because everyone in this state is so already for it.
We are all so clearly for it that we have been repeatedly denied the opportunity to vote and prove it.
"A child's right to have two parents, one of each gender takes precedence over the desire of adults."
Amen to that! :)
He's doing Mark Foley today.
Not to sound cold, but children do not have and cannot be granted any such "right to two parents, one of each gender." That is legally and socially untenable and unobtainable. States cannot realistically guarantee any such right and would invite a veritable flood of lawsuits to suddenly declare one.
--These hormones set the delicate balance of masculinizing androgens and feminizing estrogens in the fetus and the baby's later development. These androgens and estrogens determine how each baby's body and mind will grow into the indefinitely varied combination of male and female physical and mental traits that define us all.--
Some unscrupulous scientists or doctors may even decide to suppress the hormones, and create entirely asexual individuals. Wait, come to think of it, it's already happened ... Sen. H.R. Clinton, for example...
Rights are not granted by government, but to the best of the government's ability, they are protected. Based on "The Best Interest of the Child" standard, written by the state's supreme court, it's an already an implied right in Wisconsin.
Homosexual "marriage" is not the real goal. It is a foot in the door. You won't be able to stop the rest of the agenda. More and more of our schools are looking like this:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_queering_the_schools.html
Homosexual "marriage" is not the real goal. It is a foot in the door. You won't be able to stop the rest of the agenda. More and more of our schools are looking like this:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_queering_the_schools.html
My bad. Of course he is! What was I thinking? Smearing Republicans would trump his pushing of the Gay Agenda, wouldn't it? ;)
Mixing up a pitcher of Blue Koolaid and Rat Poison for this Socialist loser...
Studies done to challenge aspects of family law back up my position. The reason visitation is seperated from child support is because studies justified overthrowing the old "tender years" doctrine.
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