worryingly jolly batman

You can't go down the same tract for parenting as 'gay couples are just as good as straights at being married'. Because marriage is isolated, it only *really* has anything to do with the couple involved, whatever else the Church might want to put upon it. You can't say the same thing about the birth and growth of a child: a child's parents are the one's that raise it, give it values, ethics and a place in the world, but a child's environment is more complex than that. A child is influenced by schooling, teachers, other kids... a child of gay parents would recieve, in the average playgroup politics, a lot more shit than the average kid - this is something outside of the parent's control, it has nothing to do with them except their existance. So however good a gay couple might be at raising a child, the current social stigmas about it mean that it actually could end up being a negative environment for the child to grow up in, through no fault of anyone except the uneducated masses and bigoted minority. But a gay couple getting married can be just as good at married life as anyone else, the only social difference placed on them is like that placed upon an infertile couple.

So you really do have to go at the issue sideways, because looking at it direct doesn't actually address the issues associated with a gay couple raising a child. Everybody is different, but most people have the ability, at some point in their life to raise a child (badly or fantastically), so a gay couple might be the best people possible to have as parents, but if society will leave the kid alone (mentally - "I'm so different, but I'm sure Daddy loves Daddy as much as Sophie L's parents love each other" as well as social outcastn