Jessica wrote: "Homosexuals are not all evil people and they should be tolerated, but that doesn't mean they should get to ruin children's lives, at least not legally."

But it is okay for heterosexual bigots to ruin the lives of homosexuals, right, Jess? Nice of you to allow that homosexuals ought to be "tolerated." However, in my experience, homosexuals don't care about being tolerated by people like you. They just want people like you, Jess, to butt the hell out of their lives and let them make their own decisions, just as all the other citizens of this republic are entitled to do.

...maybe you shouldn't be a doctor. Just a thought.

As for Jessica's comments, you clearly have a lot of anger to deal with - could it be that it has more to do with your cousin's specific situation than gay parents in general? Because I have both friends and family who are gay parents with perfectly happy, well-adjusted kids, and on the whole, all evidence shows that children of gay parents are no worse off than their straight-parented counterparts. In fact, they may be better off, because straight parents often get pregnant unexpectedly, and wind up with kids they're not financially or emotionally prepared to raise. That doesn't happen to gay couples.

And all this hand-writing about "not having a father" is crap. How many kids out there are raised by a single mother on her own? You can't tell me someone with two loving parents, both female, is worse off.

If you don't believe that kids can be raised by 2 women or 2 men then why should single people be allowed to have kids? Or that unmarried people get their children taken away unless they get married? As for kids being raised by grandparents or other relatives, those kids should be taken away too, that's not a "natural" family. Why don't people like Jessica recommend that all people must get pre-approved by the government to have children? That would surely be the best way to make sure there aren't any "unnatural" families.

There is some logic to follow here and it goes down a very scary path. Attacks on gay parents are fundamentally attacks on all adults who believe they should be free from governmental intervention in their most personal choices-- contraception, conception, adoption, etc.

These doctors are the soulmates of the pharmacists who refuse to give out emergency contraception for "moral" reasons. The issue in both cases isn't really morality. It's control.

It is perfectly legal for unmarried women to be artificially inseminated. Ms. Benitez is an adult who is capable of forming her own judgements about the wisdom and morality of getting pregnant out of wedlock. Although we may disagree with her choices, we cannot prevent her from making them. It is her right to start a family whenever she chooses to do so.

These doctors wanted to stop Ms. Benitez from exercising this right. They did not want her to get pregnant because they disapproved of her sexual orientation and/or marital status (taking their arguments at face value). At the very least, they wanted to jerk her around by making it more difficult and expensive for her to get pregnant. In other words, they wanted to control her reproductive behavior because she's a member of a group that they dislike. If they weren't prejudiced against her, they wouldn't have cared that she's a single lesbian and would have done the insemination without comment.

For some reason, the idea that women are capable of making their own moral decisions about sexuality and reproduction scares the pants off conservatives. So they want to deny women this right. They want to force women to bear children by denying access to contraception and prevent women who they don't like from having children, all in the name of morality. They won't admit that what they really want is the power to order all things as they see fit, regardless of whose rights they trample on.

You're not very good at breaking down complicated issues, are you? Generalize much?

The issue of "fatherlessness" in the black community is not really the same thing as lesbians having children, is it? If a father abandons his child then odds are the kid will have father issues. There is no abandonment in families with 2 moms or 2 dads. While we're on the subject, are you at all familiar with the multitude of issues that have resulted in the black community struggling to keep their families together? Do you think it might have anything to do with poverty, systematic discrimination or institutionalized racism? Fatherlessness is really not a problem as much as it is a symptom of a much larger, complicated set of problems. Really, they're apples and oranges.

Yes, dear, you are a hater, try to deny it to yourself all you want. You are attacking people's families as well as their right to have children-- and you're not doing it out of love. You believe in your own inherent supremacy and that you not only have a right to pass prejudiced judgements on others but that those judgements should be enshrined into the law. You advocate that we should measure a person's fitness to parent by one characteristic instead of who they actually are as people. You want the law to "ban" a certain kind of parent based on your distaste towards a certain class of people. I'm not sure what made you so cold, hostile and bitter but I suggest you talk to someone about it.

I know you won't answer this, but, do single women have a right to have children? Or should their children be taken away and put in "acceptable" homes? How do you define the government's ability to enforce that there are "acceptable" and "unacceptable" families? How far are you willing to go?