This is a tough one. It would be great if we had a perfect society, where a man loves and cares for a woman for life, and a woman does the same for her man, and together they can raise happy, well-adjusted and successful children. Well it doesn't always work out that way, and there seem to be more and more single parent families, and increasing divorce rates. Now the added question of same-gender couples raising children.

Ultimately, I think the fitness or otherwise to raise children comes down to the individual(s) concerned, and no perfect prescription is available - though it would be helpful if society could avoid promoting aberrant families of any kind, in general. So that wholesome family situations could be promoted, and aberrant family situations deterred - through the relevant construction of government support mechanisms. Tough love?

The main question is the motivation behind same-gender or hetero couples wanting to raise a child, or children. If it stems from that old desperation to 'save' a failing relationship, then it is wrong. If it is to 'reinforce' a solid and successful relationship, then , as with the situation in a hetero-relationship, this could be sound - if both partners are intent on, and capable of providing appropriate role models. The dangers here are not restricted to same-gender couples.

Personally I am not in favour of same-gender or single-parent families, or of unwanted pregnancies - and would prefer if there was an effective way to dissuade 'movements' or government programs which promote the introduction of children into unsatisfactory family situations of any kind. Some same-gender families may be fine, but in general I have reservations. Some of the related 'feminist' attitudes towards males are truly disturbing, and I sincerely trust similar 'malinist' attitudes do not exist - and that any males or females holding such attitudes never have anything whatsoever to do with children.

As with the rise in diabetes and asthma, it would be great if some problems would go away, but it appears we may be 'breeding' or 'feeding' ourselves into an increasingly fragile society.

Warwick identifies one aspect of Second Generation Communism, the basic idea though is to make every person interchangeable in every respect.
As a Polish acquaintance of mine points out "Communists don't want everyone to be equal, they want them to be IDENTICAL", of course he means they want US to be identical drones led by a wealthy, urban elite party.
The first goal of all the communist "Isms" is the destruction of the family, the raising of children by the state, the very first point the Gay Liberation Manifesto makes is on the eradication of the heterosexual family.
As pointed out the homosexual family cannot stand beside the normal family without massive state or party intervention and support, it has to have exceptional legal status, special support programs, a massive education and advertising budget and special laws to protect it from criticism or examination.

dane

The missing context of that Dworkin quote is a no-brainer, except to the lead-blinkered misogynists who dominate these OLO gender threads. It's typical reverse-gender rhetoric, designed to shock men into empathising with the dehumanising of women in a lot of pornographic material and arguments that deny the culture's underlying acceptance of violence against women. A quick google search reveals that the quote has been cut'n pasted from a few dozen misandry-obssessed websites that spew hatred towards women - especially feminists - over men's perceived lost entitlements and privileges. But why bother to provide the source of the quote, or the context in which Dworkin said it, or whether it's been correctly quoted? Much easier to just let viral bigotry do its job.

No doubt you will respond to this post with more of the same bigotry, and other misogynists here will probably back you up. That's been the pattern to date. As bigotry can't be reasoned with, I've said all I intend to say on this. The board's all yours.

"Of great concern are the pictures of the fridge magnets"

The solution is simple: get rid of fridges, then fridge-magnets will cause no harm!

Everything around us is unnatural, fridges being just one small example. According to natural-law we wouldn't have a society of millions or billions, but men and women would naturally live in tribes a few dozens each. According to natural-law, if you fill the planet with that many children, then something has to give and one (or more) form or another of a catastrophe is inevitable.

Living the unnatural way we do in every aspect of life, Warwick, you can't isolate and attempt to cure just one symptom in isolation, such as "fatherless society". Perhaps homosexuality is a natural response crying "stop breeding, there are way too many of us already, enough is enough!"

"Mother: My Son Had No Chance to Prove His Innocence"
http://womenagainstvawa.org/mother-my-son-had-no-chance-to-prove-his-innocence/

<Relda and her son thought that he would have a chance to prove his innocence. But within twelve hours of being released, Relda said that her son was back behind bars. And this time he wasn’t getting out anytime soon.>

You should be grateful Warwick… Saltpetre has given you an excellent example of the way to set and argue a debatable contention; acknowledge complexity and nuance in the real world; and still hold a respectable opinion.

And I say that as a gay man who was – (ahem) the result of an unwanted pregnancy, though never in my upbringing given any reason by my parents to think I was an unwanted child – so I strongly disagree with Saltpetre on that point at least, though there are others. (Grammatically it should have been 'masculinist' but that's a quibble)

No one so far has commented on: "…the lie that you don't need a mummy or a daddy and that gender is not important. Having experienced the pain of fatherlessness first hand, this is something I profoundly disagree with and I have paid dearly for my beliefs."

In the spirit of empathy, I am sorry for your fatherlessness and its obvious detriment to the success of your life, relationships and thinking – but I've met too many people who experienced fatherlessness who were not failures to think it's as simple as you're pretending.

I've also met too many people for whom the presence of their father was a physical and psychological curse.

Wouldn't the world be perfect if we could all just preselect better parents?