I don't see the logic of this author's argument, I fear. Yes, some gay and lesbian families challenge our comfortable stereotypes of gender roles. Yet credible studies have found that children generally do well growing up in homes headed by gay couples. Meanwhile, some heterosexual couples make absolutely vile and dreadful parents, doing terrible emotional and physical harm to children--yet this is not taken as a serious argument against heterosexual marriage.

So this piece appears to be just an opportunity for the author to display his unease with one particular lesbian couple and their child, and from this generalizing on the purported harm that will result from legalizing same-sex marriage. The one does not follow from the other.

Indeed, I think a far more compelling case could be made for the lasting emotional (and sometimes physical) pain inflicted upon children by those who harbor and encourage prejudice against gays and lesbians. Where, pray tell, are the impassioned articles about all the children who have to endure such abuse? Nowhere to be found in this publication, it seems.

Homosexuals can rant, rave, and call the rest of the world stupid, idiots, and a lot of other ridiculous names because we will not accept sin as normal lifestyle. I don't call my own sins right so you know I'm not going to call their sins normal, right, or acceptable.

NY made a mess! All of these people should read about Sodom and Gommorah and know that the Bible says those things were done as an example for those who would come later. They should also read Romans chapter 1.

That's really all I have to say about the situation, God does not like that activity. We will be judged one day. Hopefully you will have asked for forgiveness, repented, and moved on. If not you figure it out.

Research at the Met? Raise your hand if you can't wait to see that. His quick study on the train really knocked my socks off! I'm guessing Stanton plays pretty fast and loose with the term "research."

I happen to be "daddy" of the male persuasion, married to a female wife.

My friends who are also fathers all concur about the experience of daddyhood:

WE'RE JUST PRETENDING TOO.

I venture that "Daddy" was not the child's mother, but rather the wielder of the turkey baster.

This author is a moron. Legalizing marriage doesn't change anything. This girl has been calling her mom "Daddy" for a long time, long before gay marriage was legal in NY or possibly anywhere in the U.S. Gay people exist, and they have families. "Preserving traditional marriage" does not get rid of them or take their families away from them. It only protects their families in the same way other families are protected. Spouses can visit each other in the hospital. They don't have to pay inheritance taxes on their partners' property if they die. Their children will be protected by divorce law and will get child support in the event of a breakup. It's about equal rights. They are going to continue to call it "marriage" and themselves "daddy" whether it's legal or not.

You're grading civil rights on NEGATIVE STYLE POINTS?

Some homophobes think if gays be cra-zy at an annual gay celebration that automatically should cancel out an otherwiae normal life -- and that it should penalize ALL gays.

In that case any Fat Tuesday Carnival or ugly family at the mall should make straight sex illegal.

But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

I once saw a white mother smoking while holding a toddler on her lap. You don't need me to tell you the damage that passive smoking can do to an infant.

On that basis, I think that the government should ban white people from getting married.

After all, we must think of the children.

Clearly the little girl needs a fine upstanding father like Newt Gingrich, a serial adulterer who abandons sick wives.

You know, Ronald Reagan called Nancy "mommy," even though she was not, in fact, his mother. And the world didn't end.

If your argument has deteriorated to excoriating the other side for what pet names they choose for family members, you've lost.

But you start you argument with the premise that I do not and cannot belong to a family. How is that not an aggressive act?

I can guarantee that my mother, father, siblings, nieces, and nephews (one of which I raised during his high school years (completely hetero and an amazing father himself) would take great exception to your beliefs.

I am not a pretend citizen, and I don't belong to a pretend family. If you start with the premise that I am less than you, then you have already lost the argument, I'm afraid.

My mom is a lesbian. I'm a high-functioning heterosexual dude with an MBA who likes ice hockey and hiking. Anyone who claims that gay parents produce damaged kids is both ignorant of the empirical literature on the subject (there's a lot, and it overwhelmingly concludes that gay parents are, on average, way better parents than heterosexual couples) and, I'm guessing, doesn't actually know a single gay couple with kids.

Secondly, I'm pretty comfortable with calling anyone who doesn't believe in full legal equality for gays and lesbians a bigot. That's not being incendiary - it's just definitionally true. I wonder what they called folks in the 1960s who supported segregation?

And Caylee Anthony used to call her mother "mommy".
Look where that got her.

Touring a prison where my father-in-law taught reading, we happened past the visiting area where we spied a skin head being fellated by a woman using cover of a baby blanket and only fifteen feet fom another convict surrounded by his wife and two small children.

In the world of Stanton's tribe at FOTF where, since gays started asking for their relationships to be legalized, the mantra of "Every child deserves a father and a mother" has become the rallying call, they seem not to notice that the ability to make babies does confer the title of "mother" or "father" upon two people. Rather, these titles are earned over a lifetime of love and caring for the child.

I was fairly astonished out of my gourd to see that woman emerge from under the baby blanket HOLDING A BABY!

By comparison, I believe Stanton actually found proper actively engaged in earning the titles they took seriously.

If Stanton was looking for bad examples, he was at the wrong parade.

I have long said that if you support gay marriage, you must also support male motherhood.

I think no one is giving the little girl enough credit. When I was very young, I called my father "Papa". As a teenager, that sounded too babyish, and I switched to "Pop". I've been calling him that ever since, and there was never a point when I thought about his genitals when I talked about him. My stepdad's name is Jeff. I just call him Jeff. Whatever associations go with the name are based on him, and his relationship to me, not his equipment. If you want to apply gender distinctions to the word Daddy, that's your business. As far as traditional notions of manliness are concerned, my "Pop" can't change his motor oil, but I'm a certified welder. Who's more of a man? If it sounds like a ridiculous question, it is. It's ridiculous for the same reason that the concerns raised in this article are ridiculous. That little girl will understand that her "Daddy" is her daddy, and no one else's, and is unlike anyone else's daddy, just like mine. I'm sure someday she'll appreciate your concern, but she'll be fine.

My mind was changed about this issue after spending time with a lesbian couple who became part of my extended family through my son's marriage to one of their sisters... Watching the love and respect these two have for each other, and the total acceptance of the relationship by their family, conservative folks who live in a small town in the Bible Belt of South Carolina, has been a lesson in acceptance and support. My granddaughter (their niece) loves her two aunts, and will grow up not thinking there is anything strange or wrong about two people in a relationship who love each other, gay or not. Love conquers fear.

I've become so jaded that I even doubt if Glenn was in Manhattan on Gay Pride weekend to do research and just happen to sit behind a lesbian couple whose presence gave him an opportunity to provide us with his thoughts on the subject of gay marriage. As someone who has known a good deal of lesbian parents I've never encountered in my 59 years one where the children referred to one parent as "daddy". Not saying it doesn't exist but I think it's atypical.

Yawn. The pool of people in committed, legally recognized loving relationships just expaned for all those kids in need of foster or adoptive homes and we're complaining? Are we saying those kids would be better off without them?

I find this story VERY hard to believe. I know and have known many gay women, not one of them would have called herself 'daddy'. This sounds suspiciously like a straight person thinking that gay women have a 'man' and a 'woman' in the relationship. They don't you twerps, that's the point. It is two women, so it would be two mothers. Duh. Backwards 'B', anyone?