Oh bullshit. Any gay pride celebrations I have been to (at least the outdoor parade part) have been for the most part completely kid friendly, and there were plenty of children there.

Would you be making these points if it were carnival or a similar event that is perceived as a little more straight?

I’m not sure what you’re shamed of, but usually that’s something that affects adults a lot more than children (until we TEACH it to them). When I was in Vancouver a few years back with my nieces they got a real kick out of the gold-painted fellow on stilts wearing chaps. It was a great costume. Was there anything that needed explaining?

Eventually gay beings parents will loose whatever “interesting” factor it now has in the press and become as American as, well, gay people.

I can’t wait for stories of parents pressuring their gay son or daughter to use the good boy or girl down the street as a surrogate/sperm donor over Thanksgiving.

As to there being something wrong with me, it’s likely based on disagreement with you. THere’s something wrong with anyone who disagrees with your terrible reasoning.

As to the facile and vacuous statement that the hostility is issuing from a lack of commitment or ability to commit (I think that idiot numbers was going off about it)–idle speculation. And not everyone who is repulsed by baby inc and the parenting industry and self righteous parents of all orientations is afraid of commitment and sacrificing for someone else. Read a book, man…learn something about others. Some of the most ethical and self sacrificing people on this planet are childless.

And what a lucky child it is to have such a mature, intelligent and understanding parent. Disgusting.

If you want to have a child when you’re a gay man, then you have to commit to it way more than most straight people. And from most of the research about gay parents in Europe, not only are gay parents (or straight men who have children through surrogacy) more likely to be committed, they stay committed to their children because they’ve really thought through the mechanics of the whole parenthood thing.

Yep, there is a class aspect to all this – but I think that comes down to the ability to pay for children one way or another.

Personally I’ve always regretted not being a parent. I got a woman pregnant once (in my ‘desperate/denial’ phase) and then she had an abortion without telling me. Never slept with another woman since then. I wasn’t actually trying to get her pregnant and took precautions, but when she told me she was pregnant I was the happiest camper in the world. You have no idea what it does to your world view when someone you actively like (even if you can’t love properly) tells you they’ve aborted your child.

If I won the lottery tomorrow, the first think I’d look into would be surrogacy (I’m too old to adopt), but there’s a whole aspect of me for love and perseverance that can’t be tested because I’m gay. Even though I agree that gay parents can be socially trying, I actually celebrate their ability to be in that position. Some of the behaviours of those gay parents might be a gay/straight thing, but the desire to have children and cherish and raise them is a pretty normal human thing.

you don’t really speak english, do you… It can’t be your mother tongue unless you have severe learning disabilities… Nowhere did I say that children don’t deserve to be brought up right, and not learn to be homophobes. In fact, I said the opposite.

But they aren’t the only future there is. That is quite literally true (and your statement quite literally false). Even if humanity were to become extinct (and with an increase in fundamentalist belief and access to nuclear weapons worldwide, that is an every more likely scenario), that would be the future–in fact, it presupposes there’s a future (i.e., that the future exists to be something).

So what do you mean? You mean that I will outlive you, and that a person born today will most likely outlive me. That’s all you mean. Just because, on average, younger people outlive older people does not mean that children are the only future that there is, nor that they are the best thing that there is… I don’t think I’ll live forever, either.

So be more clear.

Do I need to be more clear?

They are the only future that there is. Unless you think you are going to live forever.

You’re absurd. First, you act like I’m somehow opposed to passing on enlightenment values to others, or proper ethical education–obviously eliminating religion for thinking people (do the right thing or else! Fire, damnation burning in hell, etc). Or that people have a responsibility to be ethical…nowhere did I say this.

And then you bring up this nonsequitur that people outlive others as somehow justifying this foolishness that “children are our hope and the most important thing there is”.

Saddling others with ethical training?

Yeah, it is our duty to be a good example to people, especially to children, even if we aren’t the people who have brought them into the world. It is also our responsibility to leave the world in at least as good shape as it was when we arrived. To ignore that responsibility is sheer immaturity.

You don’t get to shirk that one just because you’re too cool to be a breeder, IMO.

And you can cut the verbal high-wire act. If you want to ignore the fact that we will all be dead and replaced by new people in the next 100 or so years you are as deluded as those fundamentalists you like to make fun of.