Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 24, 2011

Maybe he should get a daughter…

If he wants a boy why doesn’t he adopt one? Or, if it must be his own “flesh and blood”, then what about a surrogate mother? Cloning?

My vote also goes to adoption.

If David Gerrold can adopt a special-needs kid (hunt down his book The Martian Child), Mark should have no problem.

Marriage in New York was so shocking it turned his hair white!

did I ever call anyone at 2 AM when I was sober?

For those that don’t know Doonesbury history, in the first few years of the strip Mark dated women and the stories involving him, mostly concerned his volatile relationship with his father.

Most states won’t allow gay people, single or couples, to adopt.

First marriage then erthquakes and now hurricanes.Expect lots of signage.

On another note regarding the strip’s history, I always wondered why GT never revisited Kim’s background as an adopted war orphan.

I also don’t remember any reason given as to why she and Mike never had a child. Anyone?

Florida now allows same sex adoption, as the state decided not to pursue the matter after the second appeal ruled against the prohibition.

One of the major points in the case was that the State of Florida allowed gay couples to be Foster Parents and thus should not disallow them to adopt.

When my daughter was in college or graduate school (I don’t remember which), she was working summers. One of her jobs was baby-sitting the legally adopted child — a bright and beautiful little girl — of a lesbian couple..The little family was vacationing in southern California, where I was living at the time, and taking the child to Disneyland and other theme parks, but also to more science oriented parks such as the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Wild Animal Park, Sea World, etc. .I visited my daughter in the high-end hotel where the four of them were staying. .Since it was her day off, I took my daughter for the day. We visited different touristy destinations, such as the famed LA Rose Garden (near USC) and the San Juan Capistrano Mission to see the swallows come back, but also for the Abraham Lincoln festival that was going on in the flower-exploding garden there, complete with “period costumes” galore and a convincing Honest-Abe impersonator who gave the same speech as the one the real Lincoln gave when he visited there long ago traveling there by rail..I met them and and their adopted child just as they were having room-service breakfast. She called one parent “Mamma” and the other one “Mommo”. The parents were highly educated: one had an academic level PhD degree (I’ve forgotten which field), and the other had a professional level degree, such as physician or attorney. (I’ve forgotten which.) I got my daughter back to the hotel in the evening around 10:00 pm after the little girl had gone to bed..From what my daughter told me, the child was so much better off with this lesbian couple than she had been in her previous situation, that it was like the little girl had gone from hell to heaven..Being a religious person myself, I praised God. And my daughter, just as religious, praised God as well — for her job, for the little girl’s good fortune, and for the safety (against reich-wing threats) and ongoing wellbeing of this beautiful little family.

Even when same-sex parenting is technically legal, some [expletive deleted] officials still go out of their way to go around both the letter and spirit of the law:

http://talkaboutequality.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/houston-judge-orders-married-gay-man-to-keep-kids-away-from-husband/

Obama is basically a moderate-conservative, despite the hopes of the left and the invective of the right. He’s on the political wavelenght of say — Eisenhower.

I voted against Prop 8 and believe that if “outsiders” (incomers heavily laden with pro-8 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$), i.e., people from other States (primarily Utah), had not entered California and flooded the already-rightward-leaning media — frightening the people of California — with scary, unjustified, pro-8 propaganda, the proposition would have failed.

My daughter worked for this lesbian couple for one summer only. She then finished her first masters in Great Books of the Western World (from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes and Nietzsche to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky … on and on). While at this college she met and later married her now husband who finished his first masters at the same school. They both then went on, he to a doctorate in law and a job as a law clerk to their new State’s Supreme Court, she to her second masters in library science and a new job in that field.

fbjsr said: “You do realize that California is overwhelmingly democrat. You do realize that it was obama and the democrats who passed prop 8 banning gay marriages in California.”Actually, while Obama said his personal views of marriage were to define it as a man and woman, he vocally opposed Prop 8. Also, while the SF area is more Democratic, the even more populous southern California is heavily Republican and this was the section that really carried Prop 8 – San Diego, LA, the Inland Empire and Orange County. There is a reason that numerous SoCal governors have been Republican, including Reagan and a reason that mega-churches like Rick Warren’s and the Crystal Cathedral are in Orange County. It’s their stronghold.

Sorry, although I consider myself a civil libertarian, child raising should only be for those that have a child begetting lifestyle. Now, many straight couples shouldn’t ever even have reptiles for pets(I am showing my prejudge here), but kids see enough aberrant behavior, and hear about other behaviors from others. Being ostracized from the other kids because of the adoptive parents sexuality is just one of the problems. Children are a result of parenting, either for or against. Unless everyone believes that homosexuality is a seperate, but equal lifestyle, it just isn’t fair for children.

Sadly, by the time that many of these kids are taken from their parents’ lives, they are pretty messed up. Add to that the group homes and the bullying of the older kids, it is surprising that any of them make it into secure relationships in their adult lives.

Mark used to live with Clive, drawn as a dead-ringer for Edmund Burke. They finally couldn’t stand each other’s politics so much that they broke up. Mark went through exactly this kind of crisis (stereotypes, anyone?) about wanting a divorce, with Mike sitting up in the middle of the night reminding him that he could not be divorced because he and Clive had never been married.Maybe this week will introduce another character. A child for Mark to adopt, or a surrogate mother, or or or or.Why should Mike and Kim have had “their own” child, when an adolescent and adoring Alex lived with them? Seems to me Alex became Kim’s “own” child even before the couple was married. Given how many women—especially highly educated ones with good careers—choose not to get pregnant and give birth, GT was not going outside the realm of reason to write Mike and Kim that way.IN fact, there are interesting non-parallels here for anyone who wants to consider them. First we have intelligent and career-driven Joanie, who gives birth to JJ, does a rotten job with her, and abandons her and then goes on to birth Jeff, do a rotten job with him, and have him living at home at age 30. Then we have career-driven JJ, who births Alex and abandons her. We have intelligent and career-driven Kim (herself adopted as an infant) who walks into the job of being Alex’s mother by virtue of being Mike’s partner and wife, who is a darn good mother to Alex. And outside the family we have Boopsie, not particularly career-driven but a very rational and caring mother to her and BD’s birth daughter. Four very different women with very different mothering styles.

sorry, the idea of a man being aroused by another man’s butt just sorta gives me the heaves.

I’d say he should get a dog … but he’s not man enought. Cat then.

gasp! I hate baseball too. AND I throw like a girl ! Dpes that mean I’m gay?

“©hild raising should only be for those that have a child begetting lifestyle.”

I’m not sure what you mean by “child-begetting lifestyle.” Would that include heterosexual couples in which one or the other is unable to conceive? As to whether children (biological or adopted) of Gay parents are sometimes harrassed by their peers, that’s true, but the more common these children are the less harrassment they’ll face. Unless the right time to start is “never”, the right time to start is “now.” When my mother was a child (1930’s), she was bullied because her parents were divorced. That’s not so much of an issue anymore. Heck, an adopted child may face a certain amount of harrassment from other kids simply for being adopted. That’s how kids are (or can be), but it’s also true that a child’s prejudices largely mirror the prejudices of their parents. Acceptance has to begin some time (it has already begun).

“Two parents” is better than “One parent”, but “One good parent” is better than “Two bad parents” or perhaps even “One good and one bad.” There are far more important considerations when a child is placed for adoption than the sexual orientation of the prospective parent, and if Mark DOES choose adoption, his status as a single man will be weighed but will not necessarily be a deal-breaker. After all, there are more children waiting to be adopted than there are parents looking to adopt (healthy White newborns being an exception).

What concerns me most about Mark’s panic is how confused his motives appear to me. Does he want to get married so he can adopt? He doesn’t even have a boyfriend at this point (so far as we’ve been told). Perhaps it’s simply the time of day (night) that’s giving him such tsimmis, and he’d be more focussed in the morning. I trust Trudeau knows what he’s doing, but at the moment what had seemed to be a “I want to get married” thread has taken a left turn into “I want a kid” thread. In real life the two often coincide, but as fiction each might detract from the potential of the other.

I could see this leading to Mark adopting an older child, maybe an adolescent who’s already identified as Gay. Trudeau has been working the younger generation (Alex and Toggle, Jeff, Sam, even Mel) into the strip more and more, and having a representative of Queer Youth present might open some doors.

@dtpi, you should be proud of your daughter (and come to that, of your son-in-law). They sound like good people.and @jack75287, I don’t see where a person’s sexual orientation has anything to do with lying. Does not compute.and @dtpi again, could you remind me of how you get the pi symbol? I knew once, but I’ve forgotten (the story of my life…).

@route66paul;If one carries your argument to its logical conclusion, you end up forbidding marriages between people of different skin colours, religions, etc. Surely you didn’t mean that? DID YOU??

@route66paul; in fact, you seem to lay a strong value on_conformity_ to social norms – rigid ones, the kind that aim to prevent independent thinking. Surely you didn’t mean that? DID YOU??

well, I have nothing more to add to this discussion. Everything I can think of has already been said by someone else. How refreshing!

troodough is getting his “homo” fix.

For the symbol “π” on a PC you can use Character Map to select and copy and then paste.

Do you realize that this has been a three day phone call, with no end in sight?

As I remember it, NO on H8 was leading in the polls during the summer of ’08. By the time Nov came around it was almost even. Most of the out-of-state support for prop 8 came from Mormon bucks in Utah (even though they were outspent). Most of the in-state support was from Catholics and 70% of the African-American vote during an amplified turnout.

I voted NO on H8 and for Obama and I"ll never forget the dancing in the street on Fillmore or the shock and tears in the Castro. What a strange night, win some lose some.

U really do live N SF, don’t U, Fris? I wasn’t sure. I lived on the peninsula 4 20 years, recognize “the Castro” & “the Fillmore” & love “the city”. I worked on “the Farm” (SU).

Actually, Strawb, I didn’t mention it but that’s one of the reasons I was thinking Mark would be better off with an older child. That’s ALSO one of the reasons, I think, that Mike and Kim haven’t had a child together.

(Of course, the REAL reason Mike and Kim haven’t had a child together is that Trudeau has not chosen to give them one…)

@route66paul; for a civil libertarian, you don’t seem to have the faintest idea what civil liberties are! Your comments chill my blood.

@fritzoid; spoken with great wisdom. If you can’t do something because it’s not socially acceptable, when and how do you expect it to become socially acceptable? Birth is usually painful – the most you can expect to do is to minimize the pain.In my lifetime the following have been socially unacceptable: – having non-white skin (includes blacks, Asians, North American native people) – having a religion other than Protestant Christianity (does anybody remember that when JFK was running for president, people said that he was unqualified, because as a Catholic, he would be taking orders from the Pope?) – having a physical or mental handicap (I never saw anybody in a wheelchair in the street – so I thought there weren’t any) – being female (when I was looking for work after graduation from university, I quickly learned that there was no point looking in the “Help Wanted – Female” section of the classified ads in the newspaper, because the kind of work I wanted to do only appeared in the “Help Wanted – Male” section)In all of these categories there have been vast improvements. Of course, there is still a long way to go. But that so much has happened in my lifetime! Miraculous!! and I’m sure I left out categories that I should have been able to think of,