Steve -

If these couples are anything like normal couples raising children, they're not having any sex at all.

I don't think the White House are being particularly accommodating. Well no more than they are to anyone else. I'm not criticising them I'm simply saying they deserve no more compliments than they are due for hosting the event.

I'd ask one question of Ms Chrisler - what disadvantage do gay parents endure over and above other parents. I'm not aware of any disadvantage they suffer by people not realising they are there.

Gay parents have been to this event before and will be again I'm sure. I think it's quite nice when any group get together and do things together and so I think it's perfectly acceptable to organise and go to this event en-mass.

Let's face it wearing leis isn't exactly storming the castle gates, but I wouldn't have recommended it. There will be lots of very young kids there and I'm sure some of them will ask why so many people are wearing these leis - I don't think any parents should be forced into explaining things before they choose to their children. So I guess I agree with some of Steve's original post.

Hi Steve,

you seem to have an unnatural love of sodomy. By repeatedly conjuring it in every post relating to gays and lesbians I presume it is your intension to trigger some sort disgust reaction in your reader. Even when I agree with you on this subject, I disagree with your cheap rhetorical trick. If you can't argue your case on merit you shouldn't argue it. You remind me of a story.

Two monks, one young one old, were travelling through the countryside and came to a river one morning. By the river there was a a woman who couldn't cross for fear of being swept away. The older monk offered to carry the woman across the river much to the shock of the younger, as it was the custom amongst their order to have no contact with women at all. The older monk carried the woman across and the monks continued on their way. That evening the young monk said to the older - you shouldn't have carried that woman across the river. The older monk replied I only carried her across the river, you have carried her all day.

Give up your unnatural love of sodomy Steve it ill becomes you.

Hi daftright,

Arf.

Brit, as always, well said.

Cheers!

You know I looked at this story and I am filled with sense of... so what. I do think that Gay and Lesbian parents are going about it waaay wrong though much like the immigrant rallies and what not. If you are trying to prove that you are like everyone else normal and working to make sure your children are raised in a loving and secure home. Then be like every other parent. Last week I saw in the local mall two guys slobbering and kissing each other like crazy. I was with my 11 year old brother. I came up stoped them and asked them to go to a hotel or home or whatever if it was time for them to make out. They said they had the right to kiss and love each other like everyone else. I then looked around and asked them how many of the guys with thier girlfriends were kissing and groping each other. It just kind of make sense to me if you want to be treated as normal then be normal ( or as normal as kids are these days ) and if a hetro couple is not doing dont think because of your lifestyle that gives you a exemption on common desency. By all means these parents should go thier kids should have a blast and a good time should be had by all.... but they should bring the kids and leave the lays

This really doesn't bother me other than that they're using their children to gain access to a public forum.

The leis don't bother me either. I see the leis in the same way I see people wearing pink ribbons to draw attention to breast cancer or Lance Armstrong's "Live Strong" wrist bands.

I agree with Who Knew though in that I don't appreciate overt public displays of affection whether from a heterosexual couple or homosexual couple. Holding hands, hugging and even the quick kiss is fine with me but "making out" in public is rude and disrespectful in my opinion. I guess I'm getting old because that didn't bother me much when I was younger... I'm turning 32 this month.

I have a question.

Why is "gay" in quotation marks in the title?

Is it disputed? Are these 'allegedly gay' parents?

Good question.

My guess is that Steve doesn't think of homosexuality as an orientation so much as a fetish. Maybe he can clear this up.

How terrible, for homosexuals to taint the sacred white house easter egg hunt with their political agenda! Of course, they think they are representing a moral cause, so their "politics" don't seem quite as petty to them. Far be it for Steve to imagine the world through someone else's perspective. The real question is why is he so angry? This posts manages to express a fair amount of contempt in just a few words.

Whether or not it is an effective political statement is another question...

Short some harsh language Steve doesn't seem to me to be saying anything Who Knew isn't saying.

Seems to me they make the same point:

White House easter egg hunts are for kids, not protest statements.

The White House Easter Egg Hunt is a special ceremonial acknowledgement by the president (whoever he happens to be) that the United States at the very least honors the celebration of Easter, whatever one may think it represents. For those who don't consider Easter sacred because of its historical genesis, the celebration of Easter via easter egg and candy is as close as they are going to get to something holy and respectable.

Inserting into that picture the inevitable association with homosexual sex is a jarring insertion (so to speak) of something unholy (and a thought, to most, unpleasant) into what is supposed to be an innocent ceremony for kids.

I have never seen an event designed for children at which heterosexual adults did something to indicate that they were sexually attracted to each other. It makes no sense to me.

I don't understand the pressing need at the White House Easter egg hunt to let the world know what "kind" of family one has. I don't know who those adults are with their kids. I don't want them wearing signs that say "single," "divorced," "adoptive," or "gay."

It has nothing to do with the party. Leave it out.

"Gay" is in quotation marks to indicate the way we sanitize sodomy in our culture. These parents aren't "gay" -- they are raging sodomites. I'll be the first to say that it is none of my business if they want to practice consenting sodomy in the privacy of their own homes, but dragging into a kid's Easter egg hunt is disgusting. Like Kerry said, most of the rest of us get along just fine without making our sexuality the primary focus of our identity, and we shouldn't allow these folks to do it just because they like their sex differently than 97% of the rest of us. I'm sure everyone here would consider it patently absurd if a bunch of hookers, male and female, got together and decided to drag their kids to the White House in honor of their "lifestyle". Why should it be any different for sodomites? (Oh excuse me -- "gay parents which, by the way, is a oxymoron -- if these folks consistently practiced the "lifestyle" they want all of us to embrace with open arms, they wouldn't have any kids to exploit as a means of making a political statement.)

>most of the rest of us get along just fine without making our sexuality the primary focus of our identity

Have you seen MTV recently? Or anything from popular culture? Are you aware of how Paris Hilton entered the mainstream?

There are plenty of straight people out there that are much more explicit about their sexuality yet you're silent when it comes to them.

Little Kim is much more "in your face" about her sexuality than the vast majority of gays out there. Why don't you speak up?

Sigh.

Dr, for many of us, MTV, Li'l Kim, and Paris Hilton aren't PART of our culture.

We deliberately avoid things that are offensive and explicitly sexual in popular culture. The point HERE is that the White House Easter Egg Hunt DOES not and SHOULD not fall into that category.

It's like the Janet Jackson superbowl. The kind of people who tune in to the Superbowl with their kids don't WATCH MTV and don't WANT to. And they didn't like having MTV's values forced on them in a venue they had previously found mostly inoffensive.

No one is advocating that Paris Hilton attend the Easter Egg hunt, rather than gay activists. The idea ia that none of that nonsense belongs at a traditional dignified White House event--which is exactly why they picked it.

And, while I can't speak for everyone that is offended by this activism, for myself I can say that I don't "speak up" about Li'l Kim precisely because she's NOT in MY face. She is wherever it is she is, and manages to stay well away from where I am. And that's a good thing.

You'll notice that most family activists have given up trying to do anything about MTV, except when it pushes itself into places it does not belong (like the Superbowl.) Long age they accepted that MTV couldn't be abolished, so as long as it stays on its side of the world and they stay on theirs everything is calm.

The activist quoted in the article said they want to remind people that "we do exist." That's not an appropriate use of the White House Easter Egg hunt. You don't go there to be seen--you go there so your kids can have fun. People who go to events like this to be seen are missing the point and look like selfish (you'll excuse the expression) children. (And please don't tell Paris Hilton or Brittney Spears or any of those horrid celebrities that it's a "place to be seen" or to "make a statement"--we'll never see the end of them.)

Y'know, now that I think of it, I'm kind of surprised the left hasn't spun this as something the Bush people (not the Bushmen--they're in Africa; I mean the White House handlers) cooked up so that Laura could look magnanimous by not being offended.

Of course, they really haven't had time to think about it, either. Have they?

So if gay parents is an oxymoron, then do you think single parent must be as well? How about unwed mother? Whether or not you like their politics or choice of venue, I've yet to see a report that any of these couples were mugging down on the White House lawn, the poster who equated the rainbow leis to two guys "slobbering and kissing each other like crazy" was just trying to insert something that's objectionable to many reasonable people into a discussion about something that is not so clearly objectionable.

While I agree that the White House Easter Egg Roll is and should be for kids (even if I fail to see any relationship to Christ's resurrection in it), I don't see why Steve thinks gays can't be parents (biological or adoptive.) I fail to see how, for example, a lesbian couple couldn't "consistently practice" a lesbian lifestyle and get pregnant by artificial insemination like many conservative Christian women with fertility problems might. Nor do I see what (besides conservative legal artifice) prevents a gay or lesbian couple from adopting an orphaned child like a straight conservative couple would.

I think it's not so much that we want conservatives to "embrace" our lifestyle as to at least try to practice what they preach about personal freedom and responsibility. If a gay couple wants to legally adopt and care for a child who needs a family, and be subject to all the same sorts of scrutiny as any other couple trying to adopt, they shouldn't be prevented from doing so for arbitrary, unsound reasons not supported by any reputable research. There are too many children needing good homes to just tell them to wait around and hope someday a straight couple will want them.

*pulls up chair and opens popcorn*

*waits for some conservatives to show up with burning torches and pitchforks*

Hi David_in_Tx,

Well I agree with you anyway.

*wanders off, kicking can of worms opened by David earlier*

FYI:

Egg Rolling In England, Germany and some other countries, children rolled eggs down hills on Easter morning, a game which has been connected to the rolling away of the rock from Jesus Christ's tomb when he was resurrected. British settlers brought this custom to the New World.

from http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinventions/a/easter_2.htm

By the way, how did the demonstration actually go? Did anyone hear?

By the way, why does the MSM consistently use the redundancy "gay and lesbian?"

Why not just "gay?"

Just wondering.

re: the "gay and lesbian" thing... I don't think it's just the media, lots of the organizations use it in many variations... "GLBT" is the most common abbreviation I've seen in recent years.