I don't think it's really possible to support "regular" mother/father families without stigmatizing other types of families, whether single-mother or same-sex parent. I myself am of single mother of the least stigmatized sort-i.e., a widow-but both my child (now grown) and I have had to cope with some fairly insensitive comments and remarks over the years.

Just one example: my daughter came home from grade school one day, about a year after her father had died, and asked me whether she was an orphan. The reason? A group of girls had surrounded her on the playground at recess time and pelted her with Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers, while chanting, "Orphan! Orphan!" This was, by the way, at an expensive private school.

This and similar experiences didn't wreck my daughter's life; to the contrary, at the age of 24 she's successful by any measure. In part, that's because the two of us had the support-financial and emotional-that comes with having been, in the past, part of a regular middle-class family. In particular, we had it better than a family where a same-sex partner dies or leaves, and better than a family where an unmarried opposite-sex partner dies, divorces, or leaves. We had money (including life insurance), and we had the help of grandparents, aunts and uncles, and godparents-probably more help, because I'd been married. But the stigma of not being a normal family clung to us, no matter how well we did. (Nobody ever threw crackers at me, but well-meaning people would call me "heroic" and say, patronizingly, "I don't know how you do it." Well, I didn't want to be thought of as heroic; I wanted to be like everyone else.)

Now, it may be that the goal of getting and keeping mothers and fathers married to each other is so important that the rest of us just have to bear with odious comparisons. That a stigma exists does not, per se, mean that it must be abolished. The cost of abolishing it, and treating all arrangements alike, may just be too great for society as a whole. That's a social science question that I don't feel qualified to answer. I do think, however, that you're being too optimistic in thinking that society can single out marriage for special support while simultaneously not stigmatizing other arrangements. Call one arrangement special-heck, call it "regular" or "normal"-and other arrangements-and the participants therein-will automatically be viewed as inferior.

� I do not understand your preference for civil unions over SSM. You wrote: �Legalizing SSM creates a new class of children who must struggle
with the loss of connection to their biological origins so that
adults might form the type of families they choose.�

� I think the class of kids raised in gay families will increase just as much
under civil unions (CU) as SSM. Plus, I think that the many kids born
to straight CUs will be greatly disadvantaged. [His argument for why this is the case is found here]

One final question for you, Elizabeth: Suppose that ten years from now there are plenty of longitudinal studies, with large samples, all of which fail to find significant negative consequences for adult children of same-sex parents, compared to similar children of op-sex parents. Would that cause you to change your mind and support SSM?

Thank you for reading my article, [and] for treating it seriously enough to post a critique�For the record I don't agree with much of your analysis, but I do not
want to use this forum to discuss these issues.

I will say, though, that your assumption that most children would prefer that
their parents stay married, is quite correct. As early as 1983 I reported the
results of my own study in which 84% of children told interviewers that they
wished their divorced parents would reconcile. The percentage was even higher
when children made up a story about a divorced family and were asked if the
child in the story wanted the parents back together. In fact, this is a
perfect example of how the collective voice can be used to evaluate the
statements of any individual child. Since most children want to be with both
parents, when a child expresses a strong desire to avoid a parent, the
collective voice suggests that something is amiss and merits more attention
rather than automatic acquiescence to the child's stated wishes.

There are those who claim that rejecting a parent is a normal byproduct of divorce.
These people advocate a laissez-faire approach, "respect the child's wishes,"
when a child chooses to end a relationship with a parent. I disagree and
describe my position in my book, Divorce Poison: Protecting the Parent-Child
Bond From a Vindictive Ex. Since the book was published I have been flooded
with email from parents whose children have been manipulated to the point
where the children want to have nothing to do with a parent. Many of these
alienated parents are mothers who devoted their lives to raising their
children and who enjoyed their children's love and respect until an angry
father influenced the children to take sides with him against the mother.

"The civil rights argument is a very, very compelling one," says David Blankenhorn, a marriage expert and father of three. "At the same time, everything I know, everything I have ever learned, says that children need a mother and a father."

Probably out of wedlock childbearing and divorce exacerbate the problem and make it more difficult for the parents and children to access treatment. However there is no evidence that I am aware of that family fragmentation causes autism.

One thing I can say as a parent of a mildly autistic child is that this diagnosis puts parents at risk for divorce. Most researchers believe that autism is inherited. That being the case one or both parents are more likely than not to have autistic tendencies, meaning that they are socially challenged. These social challenges play out in the marriage as well as in relationship to all potential treatment providers.

The pressures on parents of mildly autistic children are unbelievable and the most highly attentive parents are at risk for neglecting their marriages. Like parents of all children with special needs, parents of mildly autistic children are faced with highly complex and challenging decisions regarding medication, educational options, and treatment. Medication such as Ritalin and Prozac is prescribed like candy and it is then up to the parents to make excruciating choices about potential short and long term benefits vs. short and long term side effects ... Over the weekend I met a mother with a mildly autistic child who was on the verge of divorce. She and her husband have spent so much energy tending to their child that they have almost completely neglected each other.

If we are serious about strengthening marriages, we need to identify and tangibly support those that are at risk due to the demands of raising special needs children. As far as I know, no one anywhere has established this as a funding priority. Children with special needs have more to loose than most children when their parents divorce and yet we parents are at increased risk.

The most powerful protective factor for any child in any socio-economic circumstance - whether their mother works or not, whether they go to child care or not, whether they are black, white, immigrant or native born, whether they are clever or not - is an intact family. They need both mother and father.

I am a widow. The law doesn�t say so. My tax form doesn�t say so; neither do any of the countless forms that I fill out that include marital status say so. But every time I check off the box that says single I want to scream and white it out and write, "widow". But I am a Lesbian who has lost her female partner so in most places I am not accorded the status of "widow". When it came time to settle my partner�s estate, I was a class D beneficiary -- no relationship what so-ever-a roommate, a friend, the lady next door.

It does not seem to matter that we lived in a monogamous loving relationship for 31 years or that we co-parented 3 wonderful children. It does not seem to matter that those children have severe developmental disabilities and although they are now legally adults I continue to be a single parent -- what am I thinking-we were each always single parents!!! Our home, our cars, our belongings-the law said that they legally are separately hers and mine so I will pay taxes on half of all we owned.-- after all I am not a legal widow anymore than I was a legal wife or a legal co-parent.

Backing up a few years: You shouldn�t have to lie when you are in a committed relationship, but when the law doesn�t legalize or even recognize your union, sometimes you are forced to do so. While the courts here in New Jersey now allow second parent adoption of children of partners in same-sex relationships, it was not always so. We had to adopt our sons as single parents, making us in effect 2 distinct households. I will never forget the day one of our sons needed to be hospitalized-the one who bears my partners surname. I was at home alone with him. Good thing Pat and I looked somewhat alike in a poor photograph-I wound up taking one of her employee Ids with me, said I had forgotten my license in the rush as a friend had driven us up, and was very glad for once for his limited speech and that he called me "Ma"!�

[She goes on to explain the difficulty caring for her partner, Pat, who was diagnosed with a form of Lou Gherigh�s disease, without any legal protections and little social recognition of their relationship, then explains the horrendous tax burden upon her partner�s death as she continued to care for their three children.]�

[She continues:] We were a family -- socially, spiritually, blessed with children, fully committed to each other until death do us part. Death did, and in the eyes of the government it never existed�.

�What could possibly be the comparison between divorce and gay marriage? After all, one ends a relationship, the other solidifies it. The comparison is this: In both family forms, the child grows up lacking at least one biological parent in the home.

Gay marriage is new, but in every other alternative family form we've tried so far, children tell us that lacking a close relationship, or any relationship at all, with their father or mother causes serious emotional pain�.

Gay and lesbian parents love their children, and those children without question love their parents. Love is not in doubt here. But I wonder whether the children of gays and lesbians could be all that different from the children who have grown up in every other alternative family form we've tried?

Like the others, might those children say, "Yes, absolutely, I love the parents who raised me. But I always wondered about that father or mother out there who could conceive me but didn't seem to want me. Or, I always wondered what in me--my expressions, my gestures, my emotions--came from that parent I barely knew, or never even met."�

Does an abundance of love from two mommies or two daddies make children of gays and lesbians feel any differently than other children? I don't think we have the answers yet. The early studies of children of gays and lesbians are small and, so far, contradictory. It will be years before the long-term studies are done, before this first generation grows up and tells us about the experience.

Gay and lesbian couples are already raising children, and those children need legal and social protections. Civil unions will achieve that goal. In the meantime, I wonder: Before we continue experiments with marriage--which so far have been led by heterosexuals and too often resulted in children's pain--could we try to have a serious, calm discussion about what gay marriage might mean?

And let's promise ourselves that our whole society will listen, really listen, to what children have to say.