We live in a society world where wrong has become right and right has become wrong. A man boldly stated statistical facts about America in a discussion panel in a video clip. "The most honest 3 1/2 minutes of television ever." He lambasted an innocent college girl standing at the audience microphone, innocently asking why America was the greatest country in the world. On stage, the man stated numerous dismal numerical facts regarding areas of education, healthcare, the poor, laws, crime, science and more. It left her speechless. Even if you have seen the video clip, it's well worth re-reading the following words which clearly came from the heart of the panel member:

After the silence created by stating the dark facts about America's current condition, he concluded, "...It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought wars for moral reasons, we struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars. We acted like men, we aspired to intelligence - it didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn't we didn't scare so easily. We were all these things and did all these things because we were informed by great men, men who were revered."

"First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore........enough?" [1]

Some heads in the audience were bowed in shame, apparently realizing the countless lost great America accomplishments. Others were holding up cell phones to record every word but had their mouths gaping wide open. Personally, I think that man who stated all this should be given the Congressional Medal of Honor for speaking the cold, hard truth. So few people do this any more.

Children today have many problems and challenges. Creativity in America has been replaced by mind-numbing, smart phone video games. Children are pushed through school whether they are ready for the next grade or not. Periodically you see a young adult driving a car at very high speed weaving through traffic on a crowded interstate as though they are acting out the movie "Tron." They clearly have no regard for their life or for all the human lives surrounding them. Without a doubt, there's a new twisted viewpoint on reality and life out there which is being acted out by millions.

Children are being raised using television or video games as babysitters. Many of them have gone into college to study electrical or mechanical engineering. Then students often switch their major to computer science and programming after taking mandatory programming classes for their major. Students don't realize this can be a fatal job mistake, as colleges graduate fewer and fewer engineers each year. Why? What programmer wanna-bees fail to realize or know about is that foreign programmers have been hired more and more in America. Or they are hired as tele-computing employees who work and live overseas - foreign nationals will work for far less money than Americans. These same college graduates will eventually regret the day they changed their major when they see what the job market really is like. But they will still be faced with finding a job to pay off staggering education loans and interest that make a typical mortgage look small. What appears to be an easy decision for them today can have life-changing consequences sooner than they think.

There will always be challenges for parents raising a child to adulthood in America. After children leave the nest parents sometimes ponder, "Did I love my children enough and show it? Did I discipline them enough or not enough?" It's often said that children don't come with a manual when they are born which is absolutely true. Parents face situations to handle almost every day while raising their children. I know we sure did. Sometimes my wife's skills were needed, at other times my limited skills were needed. Today, a phone in every child's pocket has made raising children even more difficult. X rated photos, video tapes and magazines years ago were kept on high shelves in adult shops to keep them out of the reach of minors. Today, children easily find porn material anywhere on the web or easily make their own X rated images. Cell phones are effectively another hammer which pounds yet another nail in the coffin of America's moral values.

With these issues and others that increase the difficulty of raising children every year, let's consider the issue of children adopted by gay parents. These children grow up seeing two men or two women kissing every day. It would be a foolish act of denial to think these un-natural acts will not have any effect on the child's viewpoint or leanings toward the opposite sex. Our personalities and desires are largely products of our childhood environment, whether we like it or not. Children look to their peers for guidance; most our brains genetically are wired to do so from birth. Roots were established day by day while we were growing up. Have you ever listened to a song on the radio you haven't heard in 30 or 40 years? It will immediately trigger images in your mind (hopefully good) of where you were and what you were doing back at the time the song was a hit on the radio. These are just more of our roots which surface from time to time that define who and what we are.

Throughout the life of a child raised with gay parents, they will have mixed emotions to deal with every time they see two members of the same sex kissing. Mixed emotions will come from what they saw growing up vs. what they desire in their heart is right. It's difficult for any normal adult to comprehend the damage from this torment.

There are many examples of how we are largely defined by where we grow up and gravitate toward it. For example, why do children who grow up in steamy hot southern states remain there when they become adults? Or those who are raised by Cajun alligator hunting families in Louisiana stay there when they become adults and carry on that difficult, dangerous job as their life's profession? Human beings tend to gravitate towards the environment they have been raised in. This is equally true of children raised in desolate, frigid-cold northern Alaska near the Arctic Circle where it stays dark about 6 months of the year. Although this area has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and skilled jobs are nearly non-existent, when these children reach adulthood they often remain there, too. The environment we were raised in forms roots and memories just like music does.

Children of gay parents do not have, and cannot have, the same support and guidance which normal male-female couples can provide them. Only a male - female marriage will provide the foundation for all the required characteristics needed to raise a child. A child's mother is there to provide the necessary nurturing and caring, while the father provides the masculine influence and leadership. He has been customarily the bread winner. Children require BOTH male and female parents to have any chance to grow up reasonably well adjusted.

If a male child spends his childhood without a father's influence may grow up having female tendencies. Divorced children may move from one parent to another while growing up, seeking to find that missing intangible characteristics from the parent they only see during weekly visits. Divorce has far more reaching effects on children than most anyone realizes. Often parents innocently think of themselves and their futures without fully comprehending divorce effects on the children. Children's minds are not made of rubber, but are made of soft clay which is easily shaped. As children get older the clay becomes harder and harder and less able to change.

Many gay adults do not realize that children MUST see and experience the caring from normal heterosexual parents in order to grow up properly.

One does not need to be a psychologist or psychiatrist to know that a child living in a gay environment will have their their sexual preference slanted in one direction. Would this not be the inevitable result of watching two men or two women kiss and hold (or even fondle) each other year after year while growing up? It will have an effect on their sexual preferences later in life whether gay couples accept it or not. Clearly children adopted by gay couples will have unfilled needs throughout childhood, which affects a child as though they have divorced parents. Even if artificial insemination is used for a female couple, there is still the required characteristics from the father which cannot be replaced by a woman.

If most adults are gay, WHO will give birth to the next generation of children? Like it or not, there is an obligation for each of us to reproduce if possible. What are senior years like for those who remain gay throughout their lives? They can be assured that if they live long enough they will outlive their parents, brothers and sisters. These people will live their last years with a lonely life in a nursing home. They will watch day after day as other seniors with children and grandchildren come to visit while they sit lonely day after day, year after year. This is the inevitable fate of anyone who decides that having children is the responsibility of someone else. How do I know this happens? I've met childless senior citizens in and out of nursing homes who are extremely lonely right now. Nurses who care for seniors barely recognize patients exist. Nursing jobs keep nurses so busy they have no time to spend with any patients. If a heterosexual couple finds they cannot have children they can adopt.

FOX NETWORK PSYCHIATRIST - STUDIES ABOUT CHILDREN OF GAY MARRIAGES LACK IMPORTANT DETAILS

After I wrote this essay, I did a search for academic studies about children with gay parents to see if my assessment was reasonably accurate. The first on-line search result that popped up was on Fox News. Below is a copy of the first part of the story dated June 2012. The following article was authored by Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. I have reduced some of the article's content to comply with copyright laws. A link to the article is provided in the sources list. No text has been altered in the following extract, which included the highlight's of the doctor's statements:

** ARTICLE EXTRACT START **

"The "no differences" theory that children of gay parents—married or not—do not substantially differ from the children of married, heterosexual parents has now been called into question. Two studies published on June 10, in the esteemed journal, Social Science Research, come to conclusions that will cause a great deal of controversy, and should bring about further research.

Those who knew that their mothers had had a lesbian relationship fared significantly worse on measures of educational attainment and household income, reported more depression, used marijuana more, more often reported forced sexual encounters, felt less close to their biological mother, felt less safe and secure in their family of origin, had more often pled guilty to a minor criminal offense and were more likely to be on public assistance.

Those who knew their fathers had had a gay relationship were more likely to have been arrested, to have thought recently about suicide, to feel depressed, to report sexually transmitted diseases and to have experienced forced sex.

Twenty-three percent of young adults who knew their mother to have had a gay relationship reported being forced to have sexual contact with a parent or adult caregiver, while only 2 percent of intact families with a mother and father reported such contact. For female young adults, that figure leaped to 31 percent (while only 3 percent of young women from intact heterosexual families reported this).

In saying that the children of parents who were known to have engaged in homosexual relationships reported these increased rates of suffering, it is important to note that the rates were higher for these children (now young adults) than for children in intact families with two biological parents, children whose parents divorced late in life, children who were raised with a step-parent in the home, children raised by a single parent and children adopted by strangers.

And neither paper suggests how to minimize the hurdles that children of gay parents seem to face during adulthood. But the data should not be dismissed. It was generated, after all, by academic leaders at major universities and published by an esteemed journal with no political agenda and an advisory board with representatives from about three dozen universities.

This study did not specifically address (as a separate group) the children born to gay couples who were married.

What we should avoid at all costs is silencing such research and such discussion because it is seen by some as politically incorrect. Where optimizing the well-being of children is involved, no stone should be left unturned.

It would be important to know, for example, whether children who are born to gay parents seem to run into less (or more) trouble if their parents are married.

It would seem to be important to know whether children of gay parents run into less trouble if they were the products of artificial insemination vs. the product of a prior heterosexual relationship. Where the fallout of certain child-rearing circumstances seems to be more depression, suicide, lawlessness, drug use, sexually transmitted disease and economic hardship, we ought not scare off the scientific community from doing what it does—research and reporting of the facts.

** END OF FOX ARTICLE EXTRACT**

These highlights from the doctor's article illustrate how research study results can be made favorable by avoiding the more difficult yet important questions. Are inherent male - female parental requirements of human beings really all that different from the natural order through out the animal kingdom? Can a leopard change it's spots, or a zebra change it's stripes? We must return to the basic order of human beings, which requires that both a man and a woman be the parents for children. Each parent contributes their unique inherent human characteristics and abilities to the family, which are absolutely essential for any child to become a productive, well adjusted, law-abiding member of society.

For complete Fox article see [2].

Ted Twietmeyer
tedtw@frontiernet.net


[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw
[2] - http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/12/study-finds-host-challenges-for-kids-gay-parents/