A gay person ADMITS that opposite-sex parents are better!

Great Debates
1

A lot of debates on this board concerning gay marriage have spilled over (quite naturally) into issues of gay couple parenting and whether it is good for the child to have two daddies or two mommies.

The “conservative” argument is that it is more natural and more mainstream for the child (whether adopted or biologically related to at least one of the parents) to have a mommy and a daddy like most other kids. It is less confusing, and the child is less likely to be subject to homophobic teasing and discrimination. They will not stand out from other families at a glance.

Well, hold on to your pants, my conservative friends, because I, as a gay person AGREE with you on that point. I fully concede that ALL OTHER FACTORS BEING EQUAL, I would prefer to see a child raised by a traditional male-female couple than a same-sex couple. No contest, no debate on that point. But please, remember that caveat. “All other factors being equal”.

The problem is, conservatives go on to state that since it is better for a child to have opposite-sex parents, the whole issue of the suitability of gay parents is settled; end of debate.

But remember, I said “all other factors being equal”. What universe do you know of in which all factors are habitually equal from one complex situation to the next? And how likely is it that the opposite-sex versus same-sex status of the couple is the only substantive factor that must be considered in determining the suitability of the couple to raise a child?

Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine the Perfect Couple to Raise Children.

  1. They are an oppposite-sex couple (I admit it).

  2. They can and do have children from their own bodies, because I also believe it is better to have a biological link with a child than to adopt one.

  3. They have a family income of maybe $150,000 to $200,000 a year. Perhaps they have family money in reserve. Maybe the father is a doctor and the mother can stay home and give her quality time to the child at least in the first formative years (with the help of a nanny or two to do the dirty work).

  4. They are members of a mainstream religion. Episcopal, Catholic, etc. There is still a lot of anti-semitism, Islamophobia, and the most hated group is atheists. No need to subject the kid to taunts and discrimination.

  5. They are northern-European white (still lots of racism around, you know).

  6. The parents are in their 20s, in perfect health, and have no hereditary diseases they can pass on. They have never even tried illegal drugs, are non-smokers, and drink little or not at all. Psychiatrists have said they are both well-adjusted, loving, non-violent people.

Now, I could go on and on (and anyone familiar with my posts will tell you that I usually do :D) but you get the idea.

I think we all agree that they are ideal future parents and, if unable to have children, would be ideal candidates to adopt.

And if it came down to a choice between having a child adopted by this couple and a same-sex couple who are identical to them in every other way, I would without hesitation choose the opposite-sex couple.

Now, let’s leave the thought experiment and get down to reality. How many prospective parents are that perfect?

In reality, you have to evaluate every situation based on multiple factors.

It is better if the child is the same race and general colour as the parents. A black child with white parents or vice-versa screams “adopted” from a mile off.
But what if, for example, there are more black children than black families to take them? And let’s assume the white family is ideal in every other sense (financial, emotional,no addictions). Does the colour clash suddenly become much less important?)

What if a child is sick and the adoptive parents are the only ones willing or able to take him? I know of two HIV-positive gay men who adopted an HIV-positive baby nobody wanted. How important is the same-sex vs. opposite-sex issue there? The last I heard they are living fine as a happy family, taking their meds together.

What would you choose for a child? A family that is well-off and stable but where both parents smoke and have no intention of quiting, or parents who are middle-class and stable but have healthy habits and are non-smokers? Now what if the non-smokers are a same-sex couple? Does that suddenly tilt it in favour of the smokers?

How about two couples who are generally acceptable and very similar in every sense except two: one is same-sex with both partners in their twenties, and the other is opposite-sex with both partners in their fifties. And they both want to adopt the same baby. Now let’s add a wild card. The same-sex couple has a steady family income of $200,000 and the opposite-sex couple has an uncertain pension income of $40,000. Whom do you choose?

Okay, let’s stop playing maybies and what ifs. Recently, I met a REAL same-sex couple (2 men) who have adopted a young Latino boy from Central America. He was in a poor orphanage in a country where there are more than enough unwanted children. He is about 5. His mother was a prostitute, likely young and drug-addicted. Father unknown. The men are about 40 and 30. They have legally adopted the child who is now an American citizen. I met them on a luxury cruise of the Caribbean (the child gets to travel with them) and I am assuming the couple are fairly well off. I take it he will be their heir when the time comes. The child goes to private school and is learning to keep his Spanish as well as acquiring English, an obvious advantage for Americans in the coming century. He is happy, well-dressed, well-behaved, and smiles a lot.

Now my question to conservatives is this. I have fully admitted that all other factors being equal, it is better to have a mommy and a daddy than two daddies. Are YOU willing to admit that in the situation I have described, the Central American child with the two daddies has nontheless come out way ahead on this deal?

2

Best- one of each assuming they are good parents. A father that drinks and beats his family just poisons his kids. A bio mother who is a screaming maniac harms everyone.
Same sex partners bring their own problems to raising a family that heteros do. You can only judge case to case.

3

I am always amazed at how people can sum up in 100 words what it takes me 1000 to say. Maybe there is truth to the rumour that I was innoculated with a phonograph needle :stuck_out_tongue:

But the point is that conservatives regularly act as if the same-sex-different-sex factor were somehow the only factor to consider.

With all due respect to persons with disabilities, I would prefer to give a child to a non-disabled parents than to parents who are both in wheelchairs, or are deaf. But once again, how can you make that your only criterion? Maybe the disabled pair are well off, have servants to help them with the kid, and are perfect people in every way except for their disability. Maybe the non-disabled have a history of drug abuse, violence and can’t hold a job more than 2 months.

If you were a 13-year-old orphan that nobody seemed to want and who had a chance of being adopted by two deaf well-off, well-adjusted and loving people, would you be willing to learn sign language? I know I would learn it so fast I would break a wrist :D.

4

Actually, I fail to see a debate here. Here are my criteria:

  1. Almost any parent is better than none.
  2. A loving, caring, nurturing parent is preferable to an abusive, neglectful, or distant parent.
  3. Two parents are better than one. (I think this is self-explanatory; if anyone wants argument, let me know.)
  4. A child needs role models of each sex to learn adult behavior from.

In general, outside very odd circumstances (a lesbian commune, for example) a child of a same-sex couple will find a role model of the ‘missing’ sex among friends and family of the parents. Children are very adaptable if their basic needs are met.

5

Hell yes, I’ll admit the boy is better off and I thank you for your support of opposite parents. G

6

I pretty much agree with Polycarp. The point is moot, not all things are equal and there are very few people who live in perfect situations. Even if all things are equal and a traditional opposite sex couple raises their children right, then the equal homosexual couple will still have kids who’ve had it better than 95% of the population.

I think I agree in theory that opposite sex pairing is optimal, but that there are so many mitigating factors in every single real world relationship that the point is rendered moot. It’s like a difference of 100% optimum utility versus 99% optimum utility really.

7

In an ideal world, a child would have an entire host of wonderful supportive people in their lives that would provide role models, provide guidence. Even in a two gender two parent household with wonderful, non-abusive, Cleaver/Huxtable parents - if Junior loves sports and neither parent is athletic, it isn’t the “ideal” household for Junior. A musical kid will want to have adults around him who are musical. One who is geeky will probably benefit from adults in his life who went through the geeky teenage years themselves.

Parents, regardless of gender and regardless of how good they are and regardless of how many there are, will not and cannot be all things to a child. When you start to acknowledge the importance of Grandma and Grandpa, their Brownie Mom, the daycare lady, their teachers, their coaches, the neighbors, their friends parents for ‘ordinary’ two parent households - you realize how ridiculous it is to gripe over two men or two women or a single parent not being able to provide the same things as a hetrosexual couple.

8

…which makes the OP’s admission ill-advised and rather foolish in my opinion. And I think he’s wrong: if you had perfect opposite sex parents and perfect same-sex parents, neither pair would do better.

Nobody who has a problem with same-sex marriage would concede anything based on what the OP “admits,” although they would find the admission proves what they already know. People who realize that the most important thing is that the children have a good home aren’t hung up on the sexuality issues.

9

Well I don’t really look at the merits of an argument based on how they will advance one side or another.

I think Valteron has a point, but a very very very minor one.

I don’t think it matters terribly much if the parents are loving and nurturing.

10

I don’t either. But I think the OP is incorrect, and in addition to being incorrect, his argument would not achieve the kind of successful compromise he’s looking for.

11

This is an important point, and one I think you greatly underestimate. Too often issues like this wind up with both sides not wanting to grant the other the slightest concession, for fear that it will lead to their side “losing”. But I can’t tell you how refreshing it is for me to see someone on the other side of the SSM issue than I concede what I think is an extremely obvious point. A given. Whenever one side does this it makes them appear more reasonable to the other side, lowering the temperature of the debate. I think that an acknowledgement like this goes a long way in getting people, particularly the most strident, be more open to the other side. And that’s a very good thing.

12

So what concession are you willing to make, magellan?

13

You mean other than agreeing that gays should be allowed to be in the military. You may recall that one. But “concession” might not be the right word, as can imply something begrudgingly granted. I think the OP is simply sharing what he truly believes, so it’s not so much of a concession. Just like my belief that gay couple should be able to visit each other in the hospital and adopt children. I believe these are correct positions, so they’re not “concessions” in my book. But they’d probably be considered so in the debate writ large.

14

If I can sum up my terribly lengthy OP, it is this. Being the child of same-sex parents is a departure from the mainstream, and as such should probably be counted in the negative column because it makes the child different and open to scorn and peer abuse.

I would also count in the negative column a Jewish couple who want to adopt a Christian orphan and raise him Jewish. Why? Becuase there is still racism and anti-semitism.

I would also count parents adopting a child of a different race in the negative column because the fact that the children are adopted is evident to anyone.

In fact, I would even count being adopted as less desirable being the biological child of the people raising you. Don’t beleive me? Try telling one of your kids they are adopted “just for fun” and see what happens.

Having said that, though, I feel every one of the “negative column” items listed above, real as it is, is soooo minor as to be completely counterbalanced and rendered unimportant by factors that really affect the child, such as the couple being loving, reasonably prosperous, mentally stable, free of addictions, etc. etc. etc.

In other words, I am just saying that conservatives should stop trotting out “it’s not normal to have two daddies/mommies.” as if that were some kind of argument clincher. My answer is "You’re right, it’s not, but’s it’s just one of many, many factors that taken together determine the fitness of a couple to be parents.

15

The argument I have heard for why, ideally, and all else being equal, opposite-sex parents are better, is that “mother” and “father” are fundamentally different roles—not just two different words for the same thing, like “waitress” and “waiter.” That men tend to relate to kids in a different way than women do. That a girl’s relationship with her father is qualitatively different than her relationship with her mother, and that a boy’s relationship with his father is qualitatively different from his relationship with his mother, in ways that go beyond just them being two different people. That a child being raised by a lesbian couple doesn’t have a Dad, or a child being raised by a gay (male) couple doesn’t have a Mom, and is the poorer for this lack.

I would be interested to know if there is evidence (even anecdotal) for or against this viewpoint.

16

The problem with this is that my relationship with my mother is fundamentally different than my husband’s relationship with his mother. To push it even further, I have two sisters - each of us have a fundamentally different relationship with our mother - its the nature of human beings to interact in unique ways.

17

I’m not sure you get what he’s saying. The straight parents wouldn’t “do better”, it would just ultimately (unfortunately)(probably) be better for the kid, due to external circumstances.

I would rather have good gay parents than bad straight parents
I would rather have good straight parents than good gay parents

It’s nothing against homosexuality, it’s an unfortunate result of the way society treats homosexuality.

And then there’s my personal belief that the “traditional” family dynamic of a role model of each sex is good for a child’s balance, but that doesn’t affect my support for same sex marriage because the same thing happens all the time in divorce, death, deadbeat parent situations, etc.

Ultimately I can’t say there aren’t negatives to having same-sex parents but I think death and divorce are both worse and no one is trying to outlaw either one of those, nor should they.

18

Since differences between parent/child relationships are pretty obvious, I suppose the question is whether there is some quality involved in a father/child or mother/child relationship which is either always present or commonly present, and not or significantly less so in parent/child or adult figure/child relationships - and whether this quality is valuable.

I think one of the problems with approaching an answer is that i’ve never really seen either side able to entirely get across what this quality would actually consist of.

19

I really wish my mother had been the queen of a small principality and I’d been born rich. Its an unfortunate truth of the way society treats people that had I been born wealthy royalty, my life would have been a relative cakewalk.

We permit all sorts of people to parent in less than ideal circumstances - most of the world is raised in less than ideal circumstances - far less ideal than my non noble middle class life.

20

Just to clarify: you’re agreeing with me, right?