Children at the center of the gay marriage debate

http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2006/09/15/1843520-sun.html

Children are being sacrificed to social re-engineering with Canada's same-sex marriage experiment, say advocates for children.
United Mothers president Michele Dow said parliamentary debate on the controversial issue has focused only on the rights of adults and ignored those of children and the harm imposed on them by same-sex unions.
"Canadians care about children and we believe Canadians want to hear how same-sex marriage will affect the children," the mother of five said at a panel discussion yesterday.
"Canadians believe children are best served by having a mother and father committed to each other."
Roman Catholic Bishop Fred Henry and MLA Ted Morton were among several speakers that also included Syed Soharwardy, founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.
The bishop called same-sex marriage legislation the worst betrayal of children he's ever seen -- even more so than Catholic church sex scandals

If Bishop Henry is accuratey quoted as saying that gay marriage is worse than the sex abuse scandals then I am most disappointed. I think that anytime that that scandal is brought up it should be done in the spirit of acknowledging what a tragedy it was for the affected children and not used as an example of something small in comparison to a greater injury. The children damaged by those events should not have to read, even as adults, about a Bishop minimizing this event in their life. It was in poor taste to use that as a frame of reference.

I also will acknowledge that my whole life I have primarily been exposed to two parent, married for life, large families with lots of siblings kind of homes. I have had minimal exposure to gay and lesbian families. I am not quite sure that I have a good sense of how they operate and function. I am not sure how families other than the ones I was surrounded by growing up operate. That doesn't mean that I get to say that they can't exist.

My understand is that most families where the parents are gay have children through previous relationships with a heterosexual partner. These are genetic and biological children. Nobody is going to separate a parent-child over this issue alone. Only a small minority of families are created through other means.

I am chronically curious as to what gay and lesbian

It is also perplexing to me the degree of concern that is involved. We are often hearing that only 1-2% of the canadian public is gay and that activists have over-stated the number of gay and lesbian people in the community. We also hear that gay and lesbian couples gravitate towards short term relationships and a small number desire the stability of marriage. If both of those things are correct we are talking about one person in a thousand. It is also true that most gay and lesbian partners do NOT have children created from their gay unions. How can we justify the undue amount of attention that is being given to such an allegedly small group?

Heterosexual led families represent the majority of families and their difficulties greatly impact more children. Given the rate of divorce among straight couples, the risk factors that remarriage creates for children, and the failure of a significant number of families to create the environment that Bishop Henry admires I am not sure why our criticism seems to begin and end with gay marriage.

People who are divorced should have no biblically entrenched opinion on gay marriage.
People who co-habitate before marriage should have no biblically based reason for opposing gay marriage.
People who are married and do not reflect biblically traditional roles with man and wife should have no biblically based reason for opposing gay marriage.

Instead they should be focusing on their own marriage and ask themselves whether or not it reflects the image that God would want them to to the world.

Concentrate on your own marriage - not others.