Comments

1
My (straight) marriage is also motherless and fatherless. Does that have something to do with the giant logical fallacy?
2
Regarding point (b): the harms associated with motherlessness or fatherlessness might perhaps be linked to single parent heterosexual pairings, not to coupled unions.

Regarding point (d): children adopted by gay couples are already living in motherless or fatherless households, by definition, since being put up for adoption implies a disinterest in raising the child in a traditional family in any case.
3
Or the fact that the data about motherless and fatherless homes presumably studied families that were one-parent families in virtue of being "motherless" or "fatherless". So in effect, they are comparing one-parent straight apples to two-parent gay oranges.
4
DJ, I'd like you to meet Justices Sanders & Johnson.

Justices, this is my son DJ. And this is DJ's other dad Terry.
5
Hmmm.. This might make total sense if the gays were STEALING children from households with both mothers and fathers.
6
b) is questionable based on what #2 and 3 said - basically that 'motherless' and 'fatherless' in this context means single-parent, and people who use those statistics in gay marriage debates are playing word games.

d) is an example of the third-cause fallacy, a variation of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
7
I see two. (1) That a "fatherless" or "motherless" yet two-parent gay-marriage home will suffer equivalent stressors as a single parent home without the (presumed) opposite sex parent; and (2) that the State's action in banning gay marriage will have any effect of preventing children from being raised in "motherless" or "fatherless" homes.
8
Hard to say without the actual paper, but I'm thinking he's comparing apples to oranges.

1) With respect to comparing the length of relationships, the relevant comparison is relationships with children, not relationships in general. If you compared homos with kids to hets with kids, I'm guessing there would be no disparity in relationship durability.

2) With respect to motherless and fatherless relationships, he's comparing single-parent families with heterosexual two-parent families. The relevant comparison, however, is between two-parent gay and straight families. You'll also need to consider whether the child was adopted when making these comparisons, as well as socio-economic status, education, etc.
9
When you hatez teh fagz, nothing else matters!
10
That should compare two fathers or two mothers to no parents at all.
11
Marriage ≠ Children.
12
And Julie in Eugene @11 for the Win!! You don't have to have kids to be married, and you don't have to be married to have kids. Nowhere on any marriage license or birth certificate is there a requirement of procreation or wedlock, respectively, and there never will be.
13
@11 Of course!

(Ok, now tell us how you typed in the nifty little not-equal sign.)
14
Even if you can ignore the ridiculous supporting data, their whole argument presumes that the only legitimate purpose of marriage is to raise children.

By that logic, heterosexuals should not be allowed to marry except to raise kids. And when the children are grown and gone, their marriages should be dissolved. And they should not be allowed to divorce for any reason until the children are grown and gone.

If you allow heterosexuals to marry without kids, or to be single parents, or to divorce, or to be shitty parents, or to get married when they are past child-bearing age, then you cannot use "kids" as an excuse to disallow gay marriage.
15
@13 I'm sure there's a keyboard shortcut, but I just type my comment in Word (inserting the ≠ symbol) and pasted.
16
Man, that Satinover thing looks to be buried in the clerk's papers. Good luck!
17
@13, ≠ is U+2260 in Unicode.
18
I think I found the logical fallacy...Johnson and Sanders deny the antecedent. Their argument, if you reframe it as a syllogism, could be articulated like this:

"Children with a mother and father (this is the antecedent) are happy and successful (the consequent).

The children of homosexuals are not children with a mother and father.

Therefore they're not happy and successful"

But denying the antecedent does not necessary lead to any logical conclusion. The mistake becomes obvious when you examine a simpler argument with the same structure:

"All men are mortal

My dog is not a man

Therefore my dog is not mortal"

Even in an argument with correct premises you can't arrive at a valid conclusion. So, even if you accept Johnson and Sanders's premises (which I don't think you should) you still have to reject their argument.

19
I was reared by lesbians. I can assure anyone who is terribly concerned that I DID have a father figure in the home - my mother's girlfriend very definitely filled that role. She did not have a penis. As a child, however, I did not have a need for her to possess such an appendage. What I needed was two parents. That is what I had. It was irrelevant, immaterial, and not apparent to me as a child that my parents were both women, and thus less qualified to rear a child.
20
I was raised by woodchucks and I turned out fine.
21
Their argument is the best example of spatchcock that I have read today.

Marriage ≠ Children

22
on a Mac keyboard 'option =' makes the ≠
23
This morning CNN had Tony AND Gary (of "Tony and Gary hare having a baby!" fame, for you loyal sloggers who have been inexplicably shielded from the biggest story in Queerdom of the past six months....) on commenting on the Prop 8 decision.

Has America found new Gay Dad Spokesmodels???
24
of course not.
you don't have to be married to have children.
not if you're skipping to Gommorah.
hence our societies descending thrill ride around and around the bottom of the crapper......
25
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS AND ALWAYS MISSPELL "GOMMORAH"!!!
26
@22, works locally, but when you type it into a comment and go to preview, it changes to a "?".

Best explanation? Go here.

TL;DR? Just type & n e (without the spaces) into the "Add a comment" window (works in many forums, including Slog.

&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne&ne
27
YMMV. May depend on the browser you use and the character set in use. Obviously @22 got his &ne by typing "option =".

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