Interesting debate over there .....

[Ben Davis]

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I haven't mentioned this for a while, but to this day, I remain amazed at how many of the men I know at (gay) 12 Steppers that have fathered children.

It's like 1/3 of them.  I don't have a clear read if impairment of judgment from addiction makes them more 'prone' to inadvertently father offspring, or if some degree of bisexuality added to the addiction process gets them to 12 Steppers in numbers larger than their occurrence in the general population for some reason.

FWIW, the large number of gay friends I've lost to HIV didn't father too may kids (off the top of my head, maybe 4 or 5 kids by 2 of them out of 40), and of my still living gay friends not in 12 Steppers (the few that are left), I'm not recalling or aware of very many kids at all.

As for specifically addressing the topic as an 'outside observer', I'm surprised at the lack of societal pressure to force most/all men that have fathered children to play a part in their lives, financially and with their time/attention.

A contractor I know is $70,000 behind in his child support.  How the fuck does that happen?  How does that number go past, oh, let's say $1000, and he isn't waking up in jail every morning?

Also, governmental payments to support children, in my opinion, in almost all cases, should be distributed 50/50 between the bio mom and the bio dad.  And either party failing to use that $$$ to support the kid(s) should be imprisoned, post haste, till the kid turns 18, or the parent has an attitude shift.

But like I said, I'm an outside observer, and the hetero-world can set their own rules, but to me, the rules I'm seeing look and seem really weird considering most everyone involved from parents to lawmakers and judicial types, say the kids come first, whatever is in their best interest, etc.  From my vantage, I sure don't see that.  I don't see that at all . . . . .

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In the UK, the opposite is true, sometimes fatally so. An organisation called the Child Support Agency was set up to track down 'absent' fathers and force them to pay maintenance. It pursued this end so intensively that it drove some fathers to suicide. It's since been disbanded and is being replaced by the Child Maintenance Service, the transition is due to complete next year. Its mandate includes less compulsion to pursue claims and will be driven mainly by request from the other parent.