Lately I'm wondering why anyone bothers to read Townhall... because its columnists are really starting to get out there.  First there was the whole Prager thing with the Quran (ugh), and now there is this screed about Mary Cheney:

Mary Cheney's pregnancy poses problems not just for her child, but also for all Americans. Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation. With 37 percent of American children born to fatherless families, Mary Cheney is contributing to a trend that is detrimental to all Americans who will live with the ramifications of millions of children whose anger and frustration at not knowing their father will be felt in the public schools and communities of our nation.

I found the statistics and generalizations being made to be tenuous at best.  For instance, there was this little bit:

These older women are pushing out-of-wedlock birth statistics higher and higher. At a time when teen births and teen abortions are declining dramatically, older women are having more un-wed births and more abortions, including repeat abortions (indicating that they are using abortion as birth control).

If that isn't the most disingenuous argument I've heard in my life.  Mary Cheney hardly fits into the profile that Janice Crouse is talking about.  She's has been in a committed lesbian relationship for over 15 years.  In fact, if it weren't for voters like Janice Crouse, Mary Cheney would've been married to her partner long ago, and wouldn't be having this child out of wedlock!  Her talk about abortions in this context is just insulting to the whole issue, and is simply brought in to make the typical conservative emotional argument.  She should be ashamed of herself.

The rest of the column concentrates on the "wisdom" and supposed statistics that have been accumulated about children who have been raised by single parents:

One Georgia high school principal reported, "We have too many young men and women from single-mother families that don't have the role models at home to teach them how to deal with adversity and handle responsibility. They've seen their mom work 60 hours a week just to put food on the table; they end up fending for themselves."
...
Mary Cheney's action sets an example that is detrimental for mothers with less financial resources who will start down an irrevocable path into poverty that tends to be generational –– children in households without a father tend to themselves have unwed births later in life.

Frankly, I don't understand how this applies.  The evidence she cites says nothing about children raised in a two parent same-sex household... only a household with a single parent.  To suggest that replacing the father with another female parent would be detrimental simply doesn't exist in anything she states.  The idea that children of single parents may suffer could have nothing at all to do with the lack of a father, but rather the lack of time and attention that a second parent (of any gender) would provide.

Of course I should mention my bias here (as I do every time), since I was raised by a single parent after I was 11.  I really have to wonder how much of the effects cited against single parents have to do with the lack of a father, as opposed to the lack of time and attention that single parents are usually able to devote due to economic hardships that generally occur.  While I was never in a rich family, I was lucky in that my mother was always in a decent situation financially, and that even though my father was absent, he always did send his checks.

It only gets better towards the end:

Mary has repeatedly said that "studies" show that children only need a loving home. Her statement is incomplete because the experts agree that for the well-being of children, they desperately need a married father and a mother.

Amazing!  You have to love how she puts studies in quotation marks, when Crouse's "studies" are no more germane to the topic.  All of Crouse's studies have to do with single parent households, and can't draw accurate conclusions for two parent same sex households.

Children can do without a lot of the trimmings of childhood, but nothing can replace a home where the mother and dad love each other enough to commit for a lifetime and are absolutely crazy about their kids –– enough to be willing to sacrifice their own needs to see that their children get the very best.

And if that isn't the biggest insult to committed homosexual couples everywhere that I've ever seen.  As if somehow they aren't capable of that lifetime of sacrifice and commitment that children need.  Disgusting... absolutely disgusting and shameful.

Via On Deadline.