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
I wonder who recruited you to be a troll at FR.
Thanks for your reply. It is refreshing to see a post that doesn't attack one personally.
I see news reports almost daily about children starved and tortured, neglected, stuffed into closets and chained to beds in homes consisting of moms and dads.
Considering this I'd be willing to consider putting these unwanted children in homes whose occupants want them and are willing to love and care for them as the highest priority.
Homes with fathers and mothers living together doesn't guarantee a loving home as we see and hear in the news daily.
I wonder how many of you are homosexual or know homosexuals
I'm a 66 year old great grandma and yes I've known homosexuals and yes some were obnoxious and some were not.
I've found that the character of an individual determines a person's worth, not sexual orientation.
I worked with a number of gays over the years and a few were jerks and a few were not, kinda like straights I worked with. Not all have an agenda and not all are out after young boys.
Look for the good in people and you're likely to find it.
Answer me that, please.
Sorry unintended
Can a "transgendered" woman become pregnant? Can a "transgendered" man father a child?
Can a homosexual union produce children that they can "parent"?
So I guess couples who can't produce children aren't eligable either? If you can't reproduce you can't have children or shouldn't be married?
Well, keep it there :^)
He far overstated his case. Most are made, not born.
And even if one has the horrible misfortune of having been flooded with the wrong genes, does that then mean that we redefine marriage?
I don't think so.
That should have been "flooded with the wrong hormones!"
"So I guess couples who can't produce children aren't eligable either? If you can't reproduce you can't have children or shouldn't be married?"
Yeah, you're a whiz at illogic. Marriage is an institution because the union of one man and one woman is the only kind of union that CAN procreate, not because it happens in every specific relation. Marriage applies to the type of relation. Get it?
No, of course you don't. You think men and women can transmogrify. Apparently, if you defend this article, you believe people can also transcend their "age" and be any age they want. A teenage man can't transform himself into a 50-something woman. Ha-ha.
So. Persist in your fantasies. But my right is to refuse to participate in them.
child-molesters (who are OVERWHELMINGLY "gay")
I'm no expert but I think studies have not supported the above statement. I surely do agree that we should resist the radical gay agenda but I don't think all gays are radical either. I'm a 66 year old great grandma and have worked with enough gays in my lifetime to have learned that ones character is a more important factor in determining a person's value.
I've found that some gays are absolute jerks to be avoided just as some straights I've known. Orientation doesn't seem to make a lot of difference.
The author is basing his thesis on the hormonal balance of the individual in question; using this framework, we could design preference with supplements, one would think.
We know that the Spartan community was nearly 100% homosexual. Heterosexual sex was performed on the wives to breed additional soldiers but once they impregnated the women, they returned to the ranks. Homosexuality was believed to create greater cohesion among the troops.
Male children were taught at an early age that this was what would be expected of them as they matured. In other words, it was cultural. It was nurture - not nature. And history is replete with examples.
The Queers are throwing every single lie they can imagine at this Amendment.
And a LOT of advertising dollars, too--
But they're losing (last poll 10/1 likely voters, 53/47) and the electorate hasn't seen any PRO-amendment advertising. Zero. Zip.
Further, nobody's been paying much attention. Things will get worse for the Q's in October.
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