I would, rattlerd. It has always been important for me to be able to accept the truth, even if it is not what I would like it to be. If, say, the universe turned out to be just as described in The Matrix, I certainly wouldn't like it--but I would rather know about it than not know about it. If the universe is devilish, I'd rather know that than believe it's angelic. Yes, I'd take the red pill. If sufficiently many studies showed conclusively that gay couples are worse parents to a very significant extent, I'd stop being in favor of gays as parents. Marriage would be a different issue, since gays don't have to be married to raise kids and don't have to raise kids if they're married; but I'd definitely be against gay parents if it could be demonstrated that they are indeed much worse parents than heterosexuals.

The children of gay and lesbian couples "show no increased incidence of psychiatric disorders, are just as popular at school and have just as many friends." Then there's this stereotype-shattering fact: "Neither sex is more likely to suffer from gender confusion nor to identify themselves as gay" as a result of being raised by same-sex parents.

As long as this is a true result -- I'm hoping the book has sound statistical methodology and a good analysis of all secondary variables (age, geography, income level, etc.), then this is good news.

Of course we need more studies. Please, please, let's have more research team doing similar studies, checking and rechecking these results! The more the better.

"Girls raised by lesbian mothers seem slightly more likely to have more sexual partners, and boys slightly more likely to have fewer, than those raised by heterosexual mothers." Hmm. How slightly? 0.016%? How significant is it (assuming other variables were also checked)?

I'm always careful with "slight" statistical tendencies. They might simply be a random bump up or down that doesn't mean much about what is really going on.

that's a quite accurate analysis of the current mindset with respect to sex. I especially liked:

We're guitar strings turned ten turns too tight and Madison Ave. and corporate religion aren't satisfied with that tension.[...] Try to talk to someone about sex and the conversation tips into boasting or self-deprecation or luridity. With no healthy outlets, the need bleeds into other domains.

Quite so.

I'll only add that there is a je-ne-sais-quoi here which is quite American in taste. Take your example, laurel962; I find it hard to imagine a Brazilian version of her, who would be actually spilling so much metaphorical ink (or bandwith) on gay-bashing, with angry line after line about why same-sex marriage is evil, etc. etc. etc. There are people (in fact many people, probably the majority) in Brazil who would be against same-sex marriage, but their means of expression would be quite different. Brazilians often express their hate in non-American ways.

Of course, there are also many similarities. Mob-bullying is indeed, in America as well as in Brazil, very much about feeling the superiority of numbers, and the exitement that comes with 'the kill' (do I hear something about old hunting-and-gathering instincts resurfacing? :-). The connection with sex, the excitement, the feeling of power... it's all there as well.

What I have always wondered about is if there is some way out of this situation, this "being strings turned ten turns too tight". The Sexual Revolution of the '60s was suppoed to liberate Americans from that; it obviously failed, since just making sex a possible conversation topic didn't solve anything (now sex is just some other thing we fight about, judge others by, engage in to show how normal/cool/great/'healthy' we are...). Granted, there's Svutlana, but how many other people like her are there out there?...