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Two Mommies Is One Too Many - James Dobson in Time

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BR_Parkway Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 04:49 PM
Original message
Two Mommies Is One Too Many - James Dobson in Time

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1568485,00.html

Mary Cheney is starting a family. Let's hope she doesn't start a trend
By JAMES C. DOBSON

A number of social conservatives, myself included, have recently been asked to respond to the news that Mary Cheney, the Vice President's daughter, is pregnant with a child she intends to raise with her lesbian partner. Implicit in this issue is an effort to get us to criticize the Bush Administration or the Cheney family. But the concern here has nothing to do with politics. It is about what kind of family environment is best for the health and development of children, and, by extension, the nation at large.

With all due respect to Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, the majority of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father. That is not to say Cheney and Poe will not love their child. But love alone is not enough to guarantee healthy growth and development. The two most loving women in the world cannot provide a daddy for a little boy--any more than the two most loving men can be complete role models for a little girl.

<snip>

But set aside the scientific findings for a minute. Isn't there something in our hearts that tells us, intuitively, that children need a mother and a father? Admittedly, that ideal is not always possible. Divorce, death, abandonment and unwed pregnancy have resulted in an ever growing number of single-parent families in this culture. We admire the millions of men and women who have risen to the challenge of parenting alone and are meeting their difficult responsibilities with courage and determination. Still, most of them, if asked, would say that raising children is a two-person job best accomplished by a mother and father.

In raising these issues, Focus on the Family does not desire to harm or insult women such as Cheney and Poe. Rather, our conviction is that birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples. Traditional marriage is God's design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth. When that divine plan is implemented, children have the best opportunity to thrive. That's why public policy as it relates to families must be based not solely on the desires of adults but rather on the needs of children and what is best for society at large.



How nicely phrased when it's the VP's daughter and not one of us regular old queers. No, you wouldn't want to insult them, just the rest of us.

And if this is what God really intended for all kiddies to have one man, one woman - then why on Earth would he let Mary get pregnant? I mean, there's tons of families who try to have kids and don't conceive. This was no accidental coupling in the backseat of the car - they had to work to make this happen through the miracle of modern medicine. If God didn't bless Mary with this child Dr D, why didn't he just stick his mysterious finger in between that sperm and that egg.

You still don't get it do you? Why was Foley outed right before the election? Why was Haggard outed right before the election? NJ approves marriage or civil unions or something? The Democrats? Hardly, very few of them stand up for us as it is.

Nope, this is God's Will big Daddy D. He's trying to give you a message to change your wicked ways and quit misquoting Him in ways that profit you. See, there's no mysterious thing going on here. He wants you to change your message about the people He made this way - He's making you look like a fool at every turn - But relax, it could be worse. Ask Jonah or Lot's wife.
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HughBeaumont Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 04:52 PM
Response to Original message
1. I don't listen to fundies who advocate child beating and sell the rod to do it with.
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yellowcanine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 04:55 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. After reading what that whack job did to his wiener dog, I am not so sure that the Cheney kid will
Edited on Mon Dec-11-06 04:56 PM by yellowcanine
not be way better off with his two mommies than having a father like Dobson.
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MADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 04:57 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. That thing looks like it might FIT up an alien ass!!!!!!! Oi vey!!!!!!


Folks gotta get a taste of that LINK o' yours!!!! This is incredible...!


ARLINGTON -- On a spring day, Susan Lawrence was flipping through a magazine, Home School Digest, when she came across an advertisement that took her breath away. In it, ''The Rod," a $5 flexible whipping stick, was described as the ''ideal tool for child training."
''Spoons are for cooking, belts are for holding up pants, hands are for loving, and rods are for chastening," read the advertisement she saw nearly two years ago for the 22-inch nylon rod. It also cited a biblical passage, which instructs parents not to spare the ''rod of correction."

The ad shocked Lawrence, a Lutheran who home-schools her children and opposes corporal punishment. She began a national campaign to stop what she sees as the misuse of the Bible as a justification for striking children. She also asked the federal government to deem The Rod hazardous to children, and ban the sale of all products designed for spanking. Lawrence says striking children violates the Golden Rule from the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament: ''In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.".....When Lawrence spotted the ad for The Rod, she began collecting online petition signatures protesting the device, eventually amassing more than 500 supporters, and set up a ''Stop the Rod" website. With support from US Representative Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat, Lawrence appealed in the fall of 2003 to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban the sale of The Rod. But last month, the commission said it had found ''no basis for determining that the product constitutes a substantial product hazard."...

''People are making money off these devices to beat children," she said in an interview last week. ''You have to respect children's bodies and their rights."...When used ''lovingly and properly," Dobson wrote on his website, corporal punishment is an effective tool to instill discipline and does not bring about lasting emotional damage to a child. ''God created this mechanism as a valuable vehicle for instruction," he wrote....






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Warpy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 06:05 PM
Response to Reply #4
11. That thing can easily cause some pretty nasty bruises
and could be fatal if used on toddlers.

Dobson is clearly insane. He needs a rubber room and a rear end full of antipsychotics.
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HughBeaumont Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 07:03 PM
Response to Reply #4
14. It's vomitous that anyone would listen to him, much less take him seriously.
I got accidentally hit in the arm with something similar to that (walked into it) - as brick-like as my forearms are, that shit left a mark that lasted for several days. Now can you imagine using something like that on a kid, or worse yet, an infant? Anyone using that on a child should be instantly reported to children's services.

Ask the thousands upon thousands of kids who were beaten with rods or belts or other things how great their relationships are with their parents.
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tsuki Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 05:13 PM
Response to Reply #1
7. I don't listen to fundies who advocate showering with their children
and shaking their willie at them to show them who's boss.

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MADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 04:52 PM
Response to Original message
2. So, birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples, eh?
Anyone who got here any other way has to .... what? Go to the back of the line? Not get any milk and cookies?

Who is this asswipe to tell folks how to live?
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sallyseven Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 04:58 PM
Response to Original message
5. One James Dobson is too many.
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jaxx Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 05:23 PM
Response to Reply #5
10. He's a real POS.
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NanceGreggs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 05:02 PM
Response to Original message
6. Excellent commentary on Dobson's most recent ...
... mindless dribble.

K & R!
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MasonJar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 05:16 PM
Response to Original message
8. I would say that one James Dobson takes up too much of my
now limited oxygen. He can just go poof! But I fear that he has too much lethal noxiousness to do it in his usual grandstanding manner. So go on to glory in a blaze, James, if that is your preference.
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marmar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 05:17 PM
Response to Original message
9. Words escape me....
No they don't: What an asshole!
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Arkansas Granny Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 06:19 PM
Response to Original message
12. This statement of his really has be wondering how his brain works:
"Admittedly, that ideal is not always possible. Divorce, death, abandonment and unwed pregnancy have resulted in an ever growing number of single-parent families in this culture. We admire the millions of men and women who have risen to the challenge of parenting alone and are meeting their difficult responsibilities with courage and determination."

So he is, in effect, saying that a one mommy or one daddy family is acceptable, even if it is not the ideal, but two mommies or two daddies would be detrimental to a child. What rubbish! As a woman who raised four children alone from the time the oldest one was 8 years old until the youngest one graduated high school, I believe that it is the loving, nurturing aspect of parenting that is more important than numbers, gender or sexual orientation of the parents.
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BR_Parkway Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-11-06 06:46 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. He's protecting the cashflow Granny - can't offend all the single
moms who buy his books and send their money in through all the church portals he has. He has to straddle that fence. Just like NOT coming out in favor of an amendment to ban divorce, which even Jesus himself called adultery. Those particular sinners we can all still love and accept, in spite of their continuing to live in the sin of adultery, because it would kill the golden calf that makes the manna flow.
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FreeState Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-14-06 08:03 PM
Response to Original message
15. Dobson Plagiarized this and all sources are crying foul...
Dobson Plagiarized this and all sources are crying foul...

Plagiarized:

http://www.teachthefacts.org/vigilance.html

In his article about Mary Cheney's baby, Dobson quoted Kyle Pruett, MD, of the Yale School of Medicine, in this way:
The unique value of fathers has been explained by Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale Medical School in his book Fatherneed: Why Father Care Is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child. Pruett says dads are critically important simply because "fathers do not mother." Psychology Today explained in 1996 that "fatherhood turns out to be a complex and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional and intellectual growth of children." A father, as a male parent, makes unique contributions to the task of parenting that a mother cannot emulate, and vice versa. Two Mommies Is One Too Many

Listen, this is funny. I just discovered that Dobson plagiarized this. Yeah, he took it from his own Family Blah Blah web site: HERE.

Listen to what writer Glenn T. Stanton said there:
The fathering difference is explained by fathering scholar Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale Medical School in his book Fatherneed: Why Father Care is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child. Pruett says dads matter simply because “fathers do not mother." Psychology Today explains, “Fatherhood turns out to be a complex and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional and intellectual growth of children.” A father, as a male parent, brings unique contributions to the job of parenting that a mother cannot.


TODAY, Pruett wrote the following letter:

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/12/time-slammed-by-second-doctor-for.html

13 December 2006

Dr. Dobson,

I was startled and disappointed to see my work referenced in the current Time Magazine piece in which you opined that social science, such as mine, supports your convictions opposing lesbian and gay parenthood. I write now to insist that you not quote from my research in your media campaigns, personal or corporate, without previously securing my permission.

You cherry-picked a phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes. This practice is condemned in real science, common though it may be in pseudo-science circles. There is nothing in my longitudinal research or any of my writings to support such conclusions. On page 134 of the book you cite in your piece, I wrote, “What we do know is that there is no reason for concern about the development or psychological competence of children living with gay fathers. It is love that binds relationships, not sex.”

Kyle Pruett, M.D.
Yale School of Medicine



and the other one:

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/12/time-magazine-accused-of.html

Dear Dr. Dobson:

I am writing to ask that you cease and desist from quoting my research in the future. I was mortified to learn that you had distorted my work this week in a guest column you wrote in Time Magazine. Not only did you take my research out of context, you did so without my knowledge to support discriminatory goals that I do not agree with. What you wrote was not truthful and I ask that you refrain from ever quoting me again and that you apologize for twisting my work.

From what I understand, this is not the first time you have manipulated research in pursuit of your goals. This practice is not in the best interest of scientific inquiry, nor does bearing false witness serve your purpose of furthering morality and strengthening the family.

Finally, there is nothing in my research that would lead you to draw the stated conclusions you did in the Time article. My work in no way suggests same-gender families are harmful to children or can't raise these children to be as healthy and well adjusted as those brought up in traditional households.

I trust that this will be the last time my work is cited by Focus on the Family.

Sincerely,

Carol Gilligan, PhD
New York University, Professor


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FreeState Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-14-06 08:09 PM
Response to Reply #15
16. More plagerism here:
Edited on Thu Dec-14-06 08:11 PM by FreeState
Nothing like just rearranging sentences!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,15684...
According to educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, mothers tend to stress sympathy, grace and care to their children, while fathers accent justice, fairness and duty. Moms give a child a sense of hopefulness; dads provide a sense of right and wrong and its consequences....


http://www.citizenlink.org/FOSI/marriage/A000002226.cfm
Educational psychologist Carol Gilligan tells us that fathers stress justice, fairness and duty (based on rules), while mothers stress sympathy, care and help (based on relationships). Fathers tend to observe and enforce rules systematically and sternly, which teach children the objectivity and consequences of right and wrong. Mothers tend toward grace and sympathy in the midst of disobedience, which provide a sense of hopefulness. Again, either of these by themselves is not good, but together, they create a healthy, proper balance.
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Tyo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Dec-14-06 08:55 PM
Response to Original message
17. Well here's one for Jimmy D
One dad showering with his son so that his son can check out the size of daddy's dick is one dad (and one dick) too many.
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