Daylia, you're a fine one to lecture anyone about staying on the page! First you admonish Nerd: "Nerd, I wish that you could stay on topic and stop confusing the issue when you address my posts. This discussion is not about blacks or Jews etc, it's about gays, gay parents and what life might be like for any kids they might procure." Then, despite the fact that we're talking about healthy, stable, loving couples wanting to adopt children, you come up with this cock-eyed catalog of "wrongs" against children (that you now seem to be labeling "procurement"--but in most circles "procurement" implies prostitution in some form--is that where you're headed next?)

I have never yet personally known a gay person who adopted or otherwise procured a child. But I have known so many sickly, unhappy, socially "handicapped" homosexuals and bisexuals.

And over the years they've lost their gay friends to AIDS on a regular basis. One gay I know right now is 20 years old, and so far he's watched 3 of his friends - including one of his (many) partners - die of AIDS. He's skinny and sickly and set upon, wears the same clothes every day for months, has a grade 9 education and works at a minimum-wage job, asks me to help him with HUNA healing methods for his "rectal rips" quite often (which I do), still benefits from being (gently) reminded to shower and even to feed himself.

He keeps telling me he's gonna marry his 22 year old boyfriend in a couple months, and they want LOTS of kids! When he talks like that, I just get filled with dread and clam right up.

I have known miserable teenage girls in foster homes, where the parents WERE only out for the money, and the kids were being sexually interfered with on a regular basis by older male members of that foster family.

I have known a 4-week old infant who died of overexposure and neglect, because it's 16-yr single mother would "forget" to feed it, dress it up like a new dolly instead and stroll it all over town in 30 below weather, to show it off to her friends at the various high schools. This girl had the baby because she wanted to quit school, get out of her parent's house and go on social benefits.

So yes, I have seen kids procured only for "parental self-gratification" reasons, and suffer and die becuase of it. I'm sorry if it seems so unreasonable that I would imagine that gay people might be much the same as straight people when it comes to reasons for wanting a baby, or that the "gay factor" would most likely make such a situation even worse for the child. (I don't mean ALL straight or gay people, of course, but as far as I'm concerned putting even ONE child at risk is too much).

You're describing low- or non-functioning people. It sounds like you've made a tour of the local homeless shelter. Take a good survey and you'll find mentally ill people from all cultural walks of life there, yet you're reporting on a small slice of that population (and now you've broadened your zone to include uneducated selfish teenaged girls--how did you manage that odd leap of logic?)

After making his case about the corrupt cases that Others make when opposing gay marriage, John Peekstok concluded:

So this is what it comes down to: You don't like gay marriage because of personal revulsion. Somewhere deep inside you have enough sense to know that you can't get something outlawed in America because it turns you off. So you come up with all these other religious, traditional, public safety sort of reasons. The problem is, these other reasons don't stand up to any scrutiny. So why not just give it up and admit that there are people around who are different than you and who gross you out, and that in America part of the deal is that you have to put up with them?

I'd say you're living up to this assessment as you seek ways to confuse and distract and drag in non-sequitur elements to this argument that you can't possibly win.

It's past time to move on to other threads--I've frittered away too much ink here. The usual suspects responded to the discussion, and the usual outcomes have been acheived.

SRS