OREGON MARRIAGE AMENDMENT DANGEROUS TO CHILDREN: David Sarasohn

...The real issue is whether it's better for kids if the people raising them are legally obligated to their kids and to each other.

Most people think it is.

Voters are being warned that Measure 36 is about whether children should be raised by gay couples -- and, as the initiative's Web site throbbingly warns, "The research is overwhelming; children with a married mother and father consistently do better in every measure of well-being."

Except the people who do the research say it's not true.

And besides, we've already made the decision about whether gay Americans can raise children.

Gary Gates of the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., points out that 150,000 same-sex couples in the United States are now raising 250,000 kids, according to the 2000 census -- which probably understates the number.

About a third of female same-sex couples and a fifth of male same-sex couples are raising at least one child -- which in Oregon adds up to several thousand children. ...

Nobody seriously proposes doing anything to change this reality. Nobody wants to separate parents and kids, and nobody -- even people to whom it's been revealed that gay people shouldn't be parents -- wants to deal with a quarter-million kids.

But that's a lot of kids to leave legally unprotected, or to dismiss as collateral damage of the culture wars.

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posted by Eve at 3:38 PM VOTE

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