And his kids deserved that?

@1 - Okay listen, new people who found Slog through the Gawker-Mudede nonsense: Dan Savage is not literally saying Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father. It is in response to the Chritianist claptrap that the best and only way to raise a child is in a heterosexual household. The point here is that straight people can be horrible parents. There is nothing magically nurturing about the bond between parents and their natural children.

Christ. Do we have to explain this every time, you literal morons?

@3 - No one's saying that--unless you take into account that most gay couples with kids specifically want them and have to pass muster with the adoption agencies to have them at all. The point is that the obsession with children being raised by their natural parents is unfounded and often dangerous. Children deserve to be raised in the best environment available, and having a mother and a father isn't always the best thing available.

One would be more reasonable to make an argument that the distribution of good parenting (or of bad parenting) is a better one---higher (lower) mean value, or less sharply peaked if it's a bell-curve-like distribution, or both---for straight couples. This has the advantage of not being countered by anecdote alone.

I don't think it likely, but these are possible terms of a better set of arguments. Mr Savage's example is appropriate, however, because the opposition to gay marriage, rooted as they are in what they believe to be unchanging and immutable and universal truths, have a tendency to make blanket statements that are in fact refutable by single anecdotes.

Can one be a victim of a suicide? Why not a perpetrator? Seems like a weird turn of phrase.

@7 my thoughts exactly.

Good riddance. Too bad he didn't do the suicide part first.

Ah, the old NRA divorce. And the coroner got custody of the children. I bet it was a good Christian family, too.

I always wonder if the insane one (dad) isn't a massive closet case. The contortions the mind goes through when coming to terms with being a fag can be Dante-esque, especially once one invests in wife/kids.
Another sad story, Dan. Seems you're nothing but today.