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
10% of homosexual men are born that way.
So are you saying that those 10% are naturally homosexual?
And if they are natural then why would so many argue that homosexuality is unnatural? Just wondering. Would a better word be "different"?
Not having access to both parents.
Your statement;
The reason visitation is separated from child support is because studies justified overthrowing the old "tender years" doctrine.
I've had both a competent attorney and a family law judge tell me that the State has determined that both parents should have contact with the child because it was in the best interest of the child to do so. Furthermore, a parents support for that child was a separate issue because you basically can't tell someone they must 'pay' in order to visit their own child.
That's why child support is a separate issue from visitation.
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It seems we agree on the child having both parents. Have I misunderstood your post?
The people who support this ammendment do understand there is no merit in promoting or advocating homosexual behavior.
If you don't discuss or flaunt your sexuality there's nothing for others to respond to.
The author also doesn't know jack about biology!
What percentage of homosexuals were molested as children?
OKay, let's talk about natural, Joan. Natural as in "according to nature". You know: BIOLOGICAL FACT...
Can a "transgendered" woman become pregnant? Can a "transgendered" man father a child?
Can a homosexual union produce children that they can "parent"?
"I guess the child is just out of luck, huh?"
I've raised one of my own and two others for a SIL in rehab on and off for the past decade and now in PRISON for drug and alcohol abuse, her SIXTH drunk driving offense and embezzling $10K from her own mother.
You got a problem with me wanting kids to have both a FUNCTIONING Mother and Father so the REST OF US don't have to raise other peoples kids? I've done my part for society. Those boys turned out fine and I'd hold them up against any children you've raised, 'Ms. Holier Than Thou.'
How DARE you throw sand at me.
Yes, we do.
There's nothing natural about homosexuality, because the fundamental imperative of the sexual act, procreation, can never be attained by it.
Homsexual relations can only mimic natural sexual relations between a man and woman. It is always a sterile act.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Many of them don't want equal footing. Ask them if they'd be willing to give up any & all of their push for special status if they were allowed to marry. Since they are not physically able to procreate with their partner of choice, I can foresee a potential push for establishing affirmative action in adoptions down the road.
Answer me that, please.
Moo2u2! :o)
Truly one of the most stupid things I have ever read. Not even worth discussing.
This article is a sad demonstration of what happens when you don't treat syphilis.
That's the kicker.
Homosexual 'marriages' are against both natural and civil law.
In nature, a species must reproduce in order to remain viable. Homosexuals cannot.
In civil law, homosexual marriages cannot be sanctioned because civil law is based on common law. Common law is rooted in Biblical law. You cannot join two people in Holy Matrimony if that union is an abomination to God.
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Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1, 1735.
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. There are, it is true a great number of indifferent points, in which both the divine law and the natural leave a man at his own liberty; but which are found necessary for the benefit of society to be restrained within certain limits.
No barf alert?
This article is pure BS.
^5 Diana!!!
Thanks, Gidget. Women like that just tick me off!
IMHO, you can do two things about kids in crisis; Vote for Conservatives at EVERY opportunity so you don't have even MORE Socialism crammed down your throat at every turn and Walk the friggin' Walk and raise a few kids that aren't your own that don't have two functioning parents. Or even one functioning parent.
Does anyone think it was easy for my husband and I to take in two more kids than we could actually afford? And these were family members; it wasn't like we were getting Foster Care cash or ANY other financial help to raise them. I mean, we only had ONE child of our own for a reason...he was all we could afford, LOL! But it was the right and moral thing to do. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I love kids. They ARE the future.
And I don't need some snotty woman calling me out on a road I've already traveled. 'Pppfffftt' to that! ;)
Hey Joan and the rest here for that matter. I wonder how many of you are homosexual or know homosexuals. I wonder how many of those homosexuals that are afraid to admit they are for fear of being torn apart by you guys.
Oh, hey wasn't foley a homosexual that preyed on homosexual pages in the white house?
Isn't bush anti-homos?
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