Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Are children better off in homes with homosexual parents than in a polygamist home?

State authorities have taken children out of polygamist homes at the same time they have placed children in homes with same-sex parents. Are we in Wonderland yet?

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

In Texas? Can you document this?

Anonymous said...

From what source are you quoting that polygamist children are being placed with homosexual foster parents?

Martin Cothran said...

Anonymous (first one),

The Liberty Council (a gay organization) lists Texas as permitting homosexual adoption (http://www.lc.org/profamily/
samesex_adoption_by_state.pdf), as does the Human Rights Campaign (http://www.hrc.org/issues/
parenting/adoptions/1746.htm).

Martin Cothran said...

Anonymous (second one),

You interpreted the "them" here as referring back to the children of the polygamists, when I was referring back to children in general. But I'll admit, on re-reading it, it was ambiguous, and so I have changed "them" to "children" to clarify my meaning.

Stevo said...

I can't speak for others, and I do not support polygamy, but I would rather have one father and four mothers than two fathers and no mother or two mothers and no father... but that makes my head hurt, so I'll stick with one father and one mother.

Anonymous said...

Well, Martin, it could be worse. They could be placing children with Christians like Ted Haggard.

Sounds to me like Wonderland is a place where decisions like this are determined by the merits of the individual cases, and not by the twisted (im)morality of a bunch of people who have a problem minding to their own messed-up affairs. No problems there, as far as I can see.

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

You're not saying that the abduction of children by the state of Texas was "determined by the merits of individual cases" are you? They took all the children away, remember, not just ones they alleged were being abused.

Anonymous said...

Hi Martin,

Judging from today's news, it seems to me that the polygamist situation in Texas will be decided on a case-by-case basis. Probably because of some activist judge somewhere.

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Anonymous said...

I think the reasons that authorities are trying to remove children from some polygamists' homes has to do with alleged instances of sexual abuse.

Given this, Martin, it seems as if you are saying that this sort of crime is not as bad as, say, a child living with two women who love and care for the child in an atmosphere completely devoid of such abuses (or of any abuse or harm).

I find such a stance to be, quite honestly, preposterous.

Anonymous said...

So...I submit two comments, both of which are pertinent to the topic of this post, and neither of which violate your terms; and you delete them both. So now, despite all your intellectual pretenses, you're now just another cowardly sophist with a Brezhnev-blog.

Martin Cothran said...

Motheral,

I first told you that unless you admitted that you had blatantly misrepresented my position on a previous post that I would pull the plug on your posts altogether, which you didn't do.

Then, I told you that I would let you finish things out on the existence of God post since you were being a fairly good boy. Now I've allowed you one last word (which is characteristic of much of what you have posted on this blog), going much further than I said I would go.

So in the interest of having you know exactly what the deal is, this was your last post. I would suggest you go home and have your mother teach you some manners now. It will benefit you not only in the blogosphere (in which your posts have been banned before, I understand), but in the rest of life.

Enjoy.

Anonymous said...

How did the post and the post's headline originally read? I think it has been completely reworded.

Anonymous said...

Um, that last anonymous poster was moi - Art.

Sorry about that. Too many things to keep track of....

Anonymous said...

It seems that I've made things worse. Apologies to Martin for wanting to keep things straight here.

To reiterate, Art (inadvertently and anonymously) said:

I think the reasons that authorities are trying to remove children from some polygamists' homes has to do with alleged instances of sexual abuse.

Given this, Martin, it seems as if you are saying that this sort of crime is not as bad as, say, a child living with two women who love and care for the child in an atmosphere completely devoid of such abuses (or of any abuse or harm).

I find such a stance to be, quite honestly, preposterous.

Martin Cothran said...

Art,

Am I seeing double, or are there two "Art"s here?

In any case, the idea that you find preposterous is an idea I find equally preposterous, so it is unfortunate that you would attribute it to me.

My comment had only to do with the comparison between taking children in whose cases no particular crime had been alleged out of polygamous homes and placing children in the homes of same-sex parents.

I fail to see the usefulness of continuing to commit the same mistake that the social services folks in Texas committed: that of failing to make a distinction between children in polygamous homes who are the victims of abuse, and children in polygamous homes who (regardless of the legitimacy of polygamy) are not the victims of abuse.

I did not directly address this distinction in my original, somewhat cryptic post, but neither did what I said justify your reading of it. And, in fact, I think I stated that I made this distinction in a previous comment.

Martin Cothran said...

Anonymous,

I did not change the title at all, I just changed the word "them" to "children" in the body of the post.

Anonymous said...

Martin, on the one hand, I agree that Texas overreacted to rumors and a possible fraudulent telephone call in removing all the cult children from the polygamous compound. Whatever we think about this wierd sects' beliefs, they have 1st amendment rights the same as we do-no child should be removed from a home without evidence that that child is in danger. OTOH, there is absolutely no evidence that same sex couple households are dangerous to children either.

Anonymous said...

Hi Martin,

Only one Art here. Again, I apologize for the confusion I caused in trying to correct an inadvertent anonymous comment.

Thanks for the clarification. Hopefully you can appreciate that, for many readers, you went about questioning the means of authorities in TX (removing all children, not just those involved in possible abuse, from the homes of polygamists) in a very odd way. One that still makes no sense to me.

Martin Cothran said...

Although I have said a few things since then, the original post was nothing but a comparison. You have two forms of marriage neither of which lends itself very well to the proper nurturing of children. But the government favors one and punishes the other.

It's simply not a coherent policy. That was the only point of the original post.