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The Clock Stops HereBlocking a child's physical development.

Compiled by Geoffrey AndersenUpdated Monday, Jan. 8, 2007, at 3:07 AM ET

(Continued from page 3)

Tracker takes umbrage at the suggestion fathers are bad for children:

Every kid has the prima facie right to grow up with his mom and dad. [...] Any kid would gladly take his or her own screwed up Dad over someone else's Father of the Year. It matters to children that they come to be who they are through the training of their biological parents. [...]

Conservatives don't want government telling everyone what to do, but when society gets as screwed up as it has, their last resort is to start urging the making of laws and amendments to keep families sound. Simply because traditional families have problems doesn't mean Mary Cheney is right to get a child by sperm donation, or however she got it, and raise that child in her preferred setting. She hasn't got the right to demean the child's father that way, and her child will most likely resent her deeply for it. [...] Mary has demeaned Fatherhood, and the actual father of her child.

From the perspective of a gay man, uh-huhh is bothered by Saletan's flip conclusion that men are bad for kids:

I was astonished that, in his next to last paragraph, he chose to conclude his piece by attacking gay male parents: "You want to protect kids? Here's my proposed constitutional amendment: 'Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union involving at least one woman.'" That, of course, would mean banning only gay male marriages. WTF?

Was Mr. Saletan just being tongue-in-cheek and looking for a clever close? I assume so, since nothing in his piece supports any claim about gay male parents. [...] To the uninitiated, Mr. Saletan blamed gay men for misbehaviors overwhelmingly committed by straight men (e.g., sexual assault by a mother's live-in boyfriend), validated attacks by the most trite and extreme radical feminists on gay male couples, and reinforced ugly stereotypes that the Family Research Council loves to stoke about gay men as pedophiles and incompetent parents. How clever!

Arguing that single-parent families are unfairly maligned, plusgurl thinks their rise has burnished the luster of the nuclear unit:

I was happy to see this piece until I stumbled onto the portion that states how we all know that 2 parents are always better than one. Is this a neo-con agenda? [...]

Men continue to do diddly squat on the domestic front, forcing many progressive mothers to put these evolutionary relics out to pasture. Children are better in families with one functional person who is not being exploited by a man - especially if she is raising a son and this is his primary role model. [...] One committed and loving parent is preferable to the "thing on the couch" role modeling sexist dysfunctionality.

RMLReturns takes feckless straights to task for enabling "alternative families":

Gay parents have been welcomed with open arms by state child custody services because these people work hard at being parents and will often take kids other parents will not-handicapped or abused or unstable kids. My wife is heavily involved with adoption issues and knows many cases of gay parents taking on the challenge of being parents to kids their own parents wouldn't keep because of serious disabilities. Just imagine being a paraplegic or having some other awful disabling condition and your own mom and dad give you up for adoption......

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Olcott_Beach shares a harrowing tale of life as a stepchild:

I was born into what would have been considered a normal family; the youngest of three and I know, initially, that we were all wanted. [...] My mother passed away one-week before my fifth birthday and my father married the women he had been keeping company with while my mother was on her death bed.

By today's standards; his second wife would have been diagnosed as psychotic. Being the youngest, and not altogether the brightest, I became the family punching bag with the daily mind games and taunts.

This woman's entertainment—mind games with a six-year old, was dismissed as "just joking" but the hate was born like a spreading cancer. I have no "family values" and the word "father" and "mother" really has no meaning.

As I read this story I could not help but wonder what it would have been like to have two, loving parents. Or even one who would have provided a single word of encouragement.

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Geoffrey Andersen, co-editor of the Fray, is a law student based in California.
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