Maybe I'm being paranoid... but I can't imagine that a jury would've acquitted this guy if he was a gay dad:

A jury in Port Angeles, Wash. acquitted 39-year-old Mark J. Seamands, the man who by all accounts branded his children, of second-degree assault charges, but deadlocked on two lesser charges of fourth-degree assault causing the judge to declare a mistrial. The children were branded with the letters "SK," which stands for "Seamands' kids," according to CBS affiliate KIRO.

Seamands' two teenage sons testified that they had wanted to be branded. His 18-year-old daughter was also branded, but the dad wasn't charged with assaulting her because she was old enough to give consent. The father also branded himself. He testified he wanted to bring the family closer together while he was going through a divorce.

So... it's okay to brand your children in Washington state—so long as your children want you to brand them or can be intimidated into claiming, after the branding fact, that they wanted to be branded. No word on whether this kid wanted his mother to throw him in the Hudson or if this boy wanted his stepfather to beat him to death and then mutilate his corpse before burying his body in a wilderness area. It'll all come out at trial, I guess—and remember, homos, children are not puppies, so we should leave adopting and parenting to straight people because they know what they're doing.