It's a Monday morning after a few day absence and Dan is in rare form and back to his old self!

Welcome back, Danielsan and congratulations to you and your adorable husband on your award this past weekend!

Muwah! xoxoxoxox

How very unBiblical of the heathen witch. Doesn't she know she's supposed to stone her disrespectful children to death? These modern technological shortcuts do nobody any favors.

Do you ever get the feeling that Tony Perkins reads you to find out what statements he could issue to get you to read and issue statements about him? It is a sort of odious fandom.

Few things annoy me as much as Bible-beaters mouthing off about "science." Building a straw airplane won't make the cargo come, Tony. You can't just say shit and claim it's science.

So wait, legalizing gay marriage abolishes the positions of mother and father...? Did the State Department just make me orphan!? Fuck you, State Department!

*recognizing, not legalizing... jumped the gun a bit there, my bad. Actually, I don't have any idea what he's referring to that the State Department did.

@5 Your new childhood home. Don't you remember yet?

Exactly, Dan. Tony's generalizing is beyond despicable.

Gees, and here I expected to read about a bill to make marriage for service members illegal - you know, because if a member of the armed services is allowed to have kids, those kids will not have that parent in the house during that parent's deployments, making their household temporarily without a father or a mother.

Tony Perkins is so full of shit, when he blows his nose, shit comes out. When he cleans his ears with a Q-Tip, it comes out covered in shit. After he gives an desperate anonymous blowjob in a truck stop, he cries tears stained brown with shit. Tony Perkins is full of shit.

5: It would abolish biological parenthood because only thing stopping Tony Perkins from sucking a big veiny cock is that he can't legally marry the owner of that cock. This is his only reason to marry a woman and have biological kids.

@10,
Reminds me of one of my favorite Hitch-slaps:
After Jerry Falwell died, Christopher Hitchens remarked that Falwell was so full of shit "if you gave him an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox."

Ouch!

Anecdotal evidence to refute goons like Perkins are fine is far as it goes, but what FRC and their ilk need is a good point-by-point website where every piece of their bullshit evidence and argument is methodically debunked. Is there such a site?

Of course, any day now the state will be going on a crusade to eliminate the parenting rights of single moms and dads.

ANY DAY NOW!

RIGHT!??!

"...social science evidence that children are most likely to thrive when born into a family led by their own married biological mother and father."

Why is Tony P. hating on adoption?

@15: Web site? There are entire countries that serve as a point-by-point refutation of their bullshit opinions. That doesn't seem to have helped.

And here I thought that social science evidence pointed to children thriving best in multiple adult environments... where there are several more adults than just the parents around.

@7 'Orphanarium' is my favorite word after 'betwixt'. Cheers, Misanthrope.

What is the next line in what TP said?
"And if they aren't born into a family led by their own married biological mother and father, fuck 'em!"?

As soon as we move in to the age where hypotheticals are always real, will this agruement even make sense. (while still being wrong. and dumb. and being said by a cancer on our world.)

@22, Are you thick? Did you read the same post everyone else here read?

On the People For the American Way web site, there is a little video box on the left. I clicked there, and then somehow ended up watching a video of Tony Perkins saying that environmentalists promote homosexuality because overpopulation is fueling global warming and homosexuals don't reproduce.

Well, that'll teach those "mouthy" teens.

Before we judge too harshly, what did those mouthy kids actually SAY?

@23: Yes. Yes, but didn't sweat comprehension.

"...children are most likely to thrive when born into a family led by their own married biological mother and father."

By this logic, we should never remove children from abusive households or allow people with children to leave their abusive spouses. After all, it's way better for children to be beaten and raped or watch their patents get beaten and raped than be raised in a single-parent household! Doesn't everyone know how very traumatizing it is to be raised by a single parent?? SO MUCH worse than being actually abused. Abused children will never have any problems later in life as long as they are raised by someone with a penis and someone with a vagina. It's a scientific fact! God told me so!

And, of course, any child who is adopted, raised by a single parent, or raised by their grandparents will ALWAYS turn out "wrong", no matter how loved they were. I'm sure that conservatives know of lots of credible studies that prove this. Except they never want to talk about what exactly these studies are, where and when they were published and by whom, and where people can go to read them. But I'm sure they exist! Maybe our local trolls can point us in the right direction.

And I find it condescending and ignorant to be told that there must be something wrong with me because I was raised by a single mother.

She loved me and was always there for me, and I had a happy childhood... But of course, these conservatives know me way better than I do. Despite all evidence of my general well-being, I'm actually fundamentally screwed up because I didn't grow up with someone who had a penis. I feel pretty happy, but hey, they're the experts!

My mother, like all women (and men), is simply incapable of raising children without a father (or mother) around. Clearly, she screwed me up for life despite being loving, supportive, patient, and hard-working. Never mind that my father was the one who decided he didn't want to be a parent and left.

Let's review the facts: abortion is bad, but so is adoption. Abortion is bad, and adoption is bad, but raising a child on your own is also bad. If you get pregnant out of wedlock, you can't get an abortion, because that's evil. But you can't give your child up for adoption, because that will screw them up and they'll never ever be happy or successful and it will be all your fault. You also can't raise the child alone, even if the father left or is an abusive asshole, because that will also screw your child up forever and ever and it will be all your fault.

There is only one solution! Force every girl to get married as soon as she hits puberty, and/or keep her in a chastity belt until she marries. Also, make divorce illegal so no one can leave their spouse and become a single parent. I'm sure the conservatives won't waste any time and will start drafting these laws right away.

Conservatives want pretty much all abortions to be illegal, but they also want children to only be raised by both of their biological parents. They can't have it both ways. They can either:

1. Oppose all abortions (unless they would be life-saving), and take the risk of those children being raised by single mothers, single fathers, working mothers (or working single mothers), gay fathers, lesbian mothers, adoptive parents, grandparents, etc.

Or,

2. Oppose children being raised by gay parents, single parents, single gay parents, adoptive parents, etc., and allow abortion to prevent this from happening.

Oh wow. Sorry for the essays, after I was just talking about Seattleblues's essays. No more for me today!

@30: I was building up a full head of steam to unleash a long diatribe against the despicable things TP spews, but you handled everything beautifully. Thanks for that!

I wonder, does TP ever LISTEN to the nonsense he pushes into the minds of the gullible?

I can't be too hard on Tony. After all, it would be "best" if all children also had clean water, enough food, a mosquito net, a trust fund, and medical care. Maybe school, too.

Before anyone jumps, the things I listed are all things Tony could actually do something about, but hasn't.

Poor Tony- if he doesn't hurry, he'll be too old and ugly to come out and get a date! Nevermind- too late.