I find this whole argument, and the hundreds of others before it, as usual, ridiculously slanted toward hatred of LGBTs and having nothing to do with children at all.
All over this country children are raised without parents - even those in traditional man and wife marriages are raised by parents who put their careers over their kids. I am one of those. My mother hired a babysitter, happened to be a woman, and that is who raised me until I was old enough to fend for myself - which occurred somewhere around middle school. I saw my bio-father for a month or so in the summers when we visited my mothers family out of state, and my step-father was a General. I saw my parents for perhaps a few hours each night, not every night either for they played darts, so maybe three or four nights a week. On the weekends I was in my room on my computer and before I even hit HS I was out of the house every chance I could be, so with the exception of my weekly room "inspection" to ensure it was clean, I basically raised myself after Jr. HS.
By the theory presented, it is some kind of negligent abuse because my step-father had very little to do with me - in fact, we rather viciously hated each other until long after I moved out. My bio father was... completely uninvolved - there's an old fashioned idea that mom knows best or something so he essentially cut ties as my "father" after the divorce (which was when I was 5 and again due to career choices. My bio-dad left the army and went back to the farm when grandpa had a heart attack, my mom was working for the FAA and didn't want to leave her career and return to the Dakota's, so that was that.)
This is not a new concept at all either, throughout history the father was generally absent of the raising of the kids - it's reflected very clearly in our legal system as well; which only recently starting to even question the long standing idea that children are /not/ always best off in mothers custody. The idea of father's having little to do with the raising of children is even further espoused by general theories of law.
IF it were so imperative for a child to have an 'involved' father in their lives, then the courts would not specifically mandate that a step-father (or any step-parent) has /any/ say what-so-ever in how their step-child is raised. When my husband was in court over the custody of his son, both myself (step-mom) and the mother's husband (step-dad) were explicitly informed that we had zero rights nor say-so on Andrew's upbringing - to include, the step-dad was specifically informed that he was NOT allowed to enforce Andrew's attendance to church, and /I/ was specifically told that I was not allowed to take Andrew to his doctors appointments anymore and I was cautioned that I should not suggest "activities" to Andrew (which was RE Boy Scouts, which my kids were into and Andrew jumped on board so I'd kind of pushed for him to go as well -- I consider the survival skills learned in Scouts to be a great thing for Alaskan's.)
Thus I argue that even long-standing "traditional" legalities based on "values" do not point to /any/ indications that a father is some kind of magic key to a child's well being.
