From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Re: Responsibility: The Dirty Word (was Re: Insulted by... 
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 23:44:02 GMT

In article <1992Aug24.194947.7986@athena.mit.edu> jfed@athena.mit.edu (Jude G Federspiel) writes:
>In article <1992Aug24.000949.27208@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>|> 
>|> No problem there.
>|> 
>|> However if this is family values I don't see how gay's or feminists
>|> are anti family. A gay friend of mine took time off from college to
>|> care for his dying grandfather, rather than have him committed to a
>|> nursing home. 
>
>I think what they failed to express clearly at Houston but what is
>a BIG part of the family values hubbub (at least it is the only thing
>I can think of which relates morality, success of family, education,
>child care, reduction of crime, and everything else people are saying
>these "values" will improve) is about marriage.  This is how gays and 
>lesbians present a threat.  How can a gay/lesbian couple raise a child of
>the opposite sex when statistics have shown time and time again that children
>need strong family role models of the same sex to teach them how to be an
>adult; how to respect authority; how to handle their sexuality.

This would seem to be a critism of single parent households more than
homosexuals. Even if we assume this is correct I still don't see how
it applies since two people of the same sex can't get each other
pregnant :-)

>Children imitate 
>what they are brought up with (as much as people like to deny it it's true).  You 
>know why we have broken homes, broken marriages, single parents,  and high crime 
>rates in areas where poverty reigns and people are raised in those aforementioned 
>family situations?  

I agree here, but this still doesn't relate to homosexuality, unless your
trying to blame broken marriages, single parents and poverty on us.
Personally I think those have more to do with the attitudes of the "me"
generation, and its economic fallout.

>Because it's what they learn as children.  It's what they 
>grow up with.  They grow up seeing bad treatment of members of the opposite sex 
>and so that's how they treat members of the opposite sex--boom, we have more 
>broken marriages.  Some 50 or 60 % of marriages end up in divorce--boom, we've 
>got single parents.  people grow up learning they can have sex with whomever they 
>please without consequence--boom, more single parents.

This is all well and good but I still don't see the connection to
homosexuality.

>Now take a family with parents who know (and knew at the critical time) that 
>marriage is about spending the rest of your life with one person whom you love
>dearly, and not about committing yourself with someone because of great sex, then
>those parents are much better equipped to teach their children "strong family 
>values" as they see it than anyone else.  Their kids growing up seeing parents 
>treating each other like they're the best thing since apple pie, and guess what? 
>_they_ treat members of the opposite sex special too.  No broken marriages, no 
>single parents, one parent can work while the other takes care of the kids during 
>infancy, or whatever, I don't care, but the kids grow up knowing they are special,
>and learning they should treat others special as well.  Makes a lot of society's 
>problems disappear.  That's what family values are all about.

Still no link to homosexuality.

>Now, as to what this means to a politician--this is all great to endorse but 
>totally impossible to legislate--I don't know.  What I do know is--and I don't
>support Bush--is that I gained some respect for him after reading how tight and
>close he is to his family, that he _lives_ what he preaches, a rarer and rarer
>thing these days.  On the other hand, we've got Clinton, who won't deny having
>an affair with some floozie.  

Bush didn't deny having an affair either...

>I congratulate him and his wife that it didn't
>destroy their marriage but he should have just faced up to the nation in the
>same way he faced up to his wife with the problem.

Maybe I missed something someplace but I thought you where trying to
explain what homosexuality has to do with family values, if thats what
you where trying to do I just don't see how you are connecting the two.

I atleast partially agree with most of what you say, but you cannot
place the blame for broken heterosexual familys on us.

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