"To truly be comparative, we need to examine TWO parent house-holds versus TWO parent households."

As I pointed out before, if the two parent house-holds on one side tend to be mostly -- or all -- adoptive parents, that will scew things right away.

"And the research which actually did this repeatedly finds no detriment to the child if the parents happen to be of the same gender."

"No detrement to the child" is a pretty vauge term. Sounds like a fancy way of saying, "well, the kid didn't come out totally f*cked up and wanting to do things like become a crack head or climb a bell tower with a rifle..."


Again, I'm not trying to say gay couples can't raise perfectly happy children. Clearly, they can. But to say it, or any other alternative arragnement, is simply a straight-across, even trade for natural, biological parents -- well, I'm highly skeptical.

For one thing, you just can't say there's "no differences" between the genders. Men and women are profoundly different, generally speaking, in how they percieve things, react to things and communicate. Again, generally speaking, mothers bring things to the table fathers simply can't, and vise versa.

Finally, as I think I've posted somewhere before on these boards, when it comes to family structure, I'm really old-fashioned -- in the sense that I don't think an isolated couple, regardless of gender -- is the best way to raise children. A couple shouldn't have to bear all that responsibility and burden by themselves. I think a more "tribal" or "clan" structure is actually the most advantageous -- rather than dumping everything on an over-worked, over-stressed young or middle-aged couple.

In my neck of the woods, the groups of people sticking to a true extended family structure are Hispanics and Native American Indians. And I think their children might be better off -- in mental and spiritual terms -- than white children because of that.