I readily concede that to observe another generation would produce more valuable data.

On the basis of anecdotal information, however, I do believe that children had been raised successfully by homosexual couples in other countries and in the USA “under cover” long before 1975.

Finally I did not intend to attribute the destruction of children’s lives to heterosexuality or church-going. I just want to observe that neither of those individually or in tandem seems to guarantee the quality of marriages or the success of raising children. Recipes are a more reliable factor in cooking food than in nurturing lives.

I have to ask, what is a “veranda-con”?

You write in the plural saying,

I’ve witnessed joyfully that the children raised by homosexual couples have thrived to become vibrant productive adults who build strong families and contribute brilliantly to their communities.

Pardon me, but I just have to do a little math here. You say you know various children raised by homosexual couples who’ve grown and built their own strong families. I think the average age to marry and have kids is about 29, so we’ll add, say, another 6 years for you to observe that they have built strong families. That 35 years total, so the children in question were born about 1977 and adopted that year or soon thereafter by a single homosexual person who was in a monogamous homosexual relationship at the time and continues to be. Perhaps you could add some years to this math, but you are talking about multiple families you have observed first-hand so we are talking about some kind of date range.

It is remarkable that you are witness to not one, but multiple cases of “grandchildren” of homosexual couples. This is remarkable because in 1975 or any reasonable timeframe thereafter, the situation you described was neither accepted nor legal. Yet despite that, you say you have observed all this thriving, and going on for perhaps three or four decades now. In what U.S. state did this occur?

As for the famlies that you described as “hurt” and “deeply troubled,” you describe them only as “church-going” and “heterosexual.” Which of those two factors do you think led to the destruction of those families, or do you see the destruction as a combination of both?

The answer has to do in part with the difference between intercourse and sodomy, or with the nature of the human body. The anus is not a sexual organ, and it is harmed by being used as such. A person cannot express the love he feels for someone through an act that is medically unsound. All of us celebrate love, but marriage is specifically sexual love. And certain sexual acts are incompatible, for anyone, with love.

To borrow his own words, this is the lowest form of thought.

Let me second Bo Grimes’s comment: the search box works very well.

Let me also recommend the following article by Russell Moore (a First Things contributor) on the harm of fornication, which is in this month’s edition of Touchstone:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=26-01-020-v

Some hope might be left if France stands it’s ground. Under French law, civil marriage, is about child-rearing, not the rights of two people in love.

The rights of children to a father and a mother, trump the rights to children, because parents ensure the well-being of their children, children do not exist to ensure the well-being of any two adults.

They are subjects not objects.