Thanks for stopping by, and if you’re not aware already, I also write at SimpleUtahMormonPolitics.com, and I keep that site much more up to date. There you’ll see that I indeed question where our country is headed.

Thanks again!

I can only conclude that because you see same sex relationships as defective morally they are therefore never able to be good parents? Of course if we make such morally intrusive judgements about peoples private lives we could have an argument to refuse adoption to a whole range of people for whole range of moral defects, adultery for example. To bar all adulterers from adoption would no doubt preclude many potentially good parents from yje adoption process. If gays are precluded should not the same moral outrage and standards be aimed at the adulterer, when it comes to adoption?

The religious lobby is obsessed with homosexuality. Again the religious prejudice against gays is the only real argument the relgionists can offer in this rather specious enterprise against gays. It is just another way of using this deep underlying prejudice to stoke the fires of exclusion, separation and discrimination in society.

I could not see anything on these pages? My comments were about how secular states organise secular marriage arrangements. Do you have any observations on my comments about that?

On the issue of children.

1. The vast majority of same sex relationships/civil partnerships do not involve children.

2. There is no evidence that children that are raised in same sex partnerships are any more dysfunctional in later life than those raised in heterosexual families.

3. I have known of 3 children raised in lesbian relationships and I have to say they are great kids. Balanced, socially articulate and open minded. One, is now at University and dating men! Is NOT a lesbian. The others are younger boys and as far as I can see will be average every day heterosexual men when they get older.

4. Often same sex couples adopt unwanted children. Here in the UK we have a shortage of foster carers and families willing to take on children. It seems to me that a loving caring same sex family is far preferable than leaving children institutionalised. I find it incredible that the religious would rather see them remain in an institution, than with loving foster or adoptive parents of the same sex! Of course some of these already neglected children come from heterosexual families!

My personal experience bears out all the evidence that despite the religious lobbies moral panic about children in same sex situations there is no compelling evidence that they suffer any substantive emotional, social or intellectual disadvantage from such a family environment.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter. Stir in the egg and extract. Add cake mix, and stir until well blended. Roll into 1 inch balls and coat in the confectioners’ sugar. Place 1 inch apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet. (I used parchment paper). Bake for 10 to 13 minutes in the preheated oven. After a few minutes remove from baking sheets to cool.

Thank you for your point of view. On my more regularly-updated weblog, I have gone into more detail about how I think same-sex marriage would be bad for children. Please check out those articles here, here, and here.

I find it completely irrational that the religious like Mormons some how think two lesbians getting ‘married’ in a town hall in San Francisco or anywhere else for that matter is a threat to their beliefs on marriage? For me it makes no sense at all. I do not recall a single person or campaigner asking for gay and lesbian marriages or unions or whatever you want to call them for any curtailment or interference of any kind in any religions ability to organise their religious unions in any way they please.

What is fundamental here is who owns ‘marriage’ ? Religionists believe they do, but do they, in a secular state? In the USA it is a civil matter, a matter that belongs to the secular state. All ‘religious’ marriages have an secular element and in the Mormons case they go off and have their temple ceremonies as well as the civil aspect of filling out the civil and state sanctioned legal documents.

It is a matter for the state. In the United Kingdom for example, which by the way is one of the few western democracies that has a state religion. They got around this issue by calling the ceremonies for gays and lesbians a ‘civil partnership’. Although a bit of a fudge (to please the state church?) most gays and lesbians are happy with this and their is not any great campaigning I am aware off to change this legislation and call it formally marriage . It is demonstrating my point that the state in this case the Parliament of the United Kingdom has made a legislative and civil choice to agree a form of civil union that is a type of marriage albeit not called that. It is the states right and prerogative to do this as it is a civil matter in most modern democracies and not a religious one. In no way has this change in the UK altered in any way religious marriage ceremonies of any kind, in any religion.

I am not convinced your great religious edifices are so fragile as to be so threatened by these simple requests for other citizens and tax payers to have the same rights under the law as many others do enjoy. It seems to me it is the religious minority that want to impose their dogmas on the majority and deny fellow citizens rights they enjoy, derived by and from the secular state. No matter what religious vestige you rap it up in, your position is nothing less than discrimination, of the most shameful kind

Jct: Best of all, when the local currency is pegged to the Time Standard of Money (how many dollars/hour child labor) Hours earned locally can be intertraded with other timebanks globally!
In 1999, I paid for 39/40 nights in Europe with an IOU for a night back in Canada worth 5 Hours.
U.N. Millennium Declaration UNILETS Resolution C6 to governments is for a time-based currency to restructure the global financial architecture.
See my banking systems engineering analysis at http://youtube.com/kingofthepaupers with an index of articles at http://johnturmel.com/kotp.htm