Note that seventeen comments after you make this case, when I concede some obscure point about the value of men or women in parenting, I'm just going to come back at you and say that this is really just evidence that we should ban divorce, like Ireland once did. What it has to do with gay marriage, I don't know.
However much we lack strong heterosexual families, we're more awash in mediocre heterosexual families, and far more disturbed by unplanned single-parent families. You will have a hard time saying that a child will do better in a loving two-parent gay family than in the median family in the US.
Is it possible that children will, for a variety of reasons, some of then intrinsic and some of them extrinsic (such as societal pressure against homosexual parents --- the same arguments that might be marshalled against racially diverse couples), do marginally better in the Ozzie and Harriet family of the '50s than in the Ozzie and Ozzie family of the '020s. I concede the last point you just made, up front. But that argument doesn't preclude my argument, which is that availability of loving gay couples to raise wanted children will be a net benefit for society and for children.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/fathers.php
You will have a hard time saying that a child will do better in a loving two-parent gay family than in the median family in the US.
Which is why I'm specifically not saying that. In fact, this is what I said: No, I would not suggest for a second that having a child requires "optimal" conditions.
* single parent homes
* poor single parent homes
* poor and middle-class single parent homes where the single parent works full-time and has less influence over their children
* poor single parents homes in cultures that overtly disrespect fatherhood and implicitly promote weak family structures
I grant you immediately that it's not optimal to be raised in single-parent households --- with the obvious caveat that you have to control for income, culture, setting, and atypically excellent parents that pull it off anyways.
It looks like you & I agree more than we disagree.
And he kicks ass: he's smart (probably smarter than me), well-liked, well-adjusted, confident and happy.
Seriously, at six he already rocks. I honestly think he's doing better than if me and his mom were together.
Yes this means I consider same sex families and single parent families "sub optimal". No, I would not suggest for a second that having a child requires "optimal" conditions.
I grew up in basically a single parent family. There are a lot of things I know I would have been able to benefit from (that I've learned and am learning along the way) had this not been the case.
We need to stop pretending that every different way of raising a child somehow produces the same results. At the same time we need to realize nobody is able to provide the optimal conditions all of the time.