Adoption and homosexuals again (sorry)

I was asked to sign a petition at church yesterday in protest against recent changes to the law in the UK, relaxing the restrictions on who can and cannot adopt. AFAICT, the law covers all sorts of situations, but the primary concern of the petition is homosexuals, the accompanying letter said something pretty similar to what can be found here:

on first reading I thought it might be a petition in support of recognition for gay marriage (or similar), but disappointment quickly overtook that thought.

I declined to sign it.

The above link massages some impressive ‘facts’:

Oooo…kay, that’s becaus the law and adoption authorities are set up to produce just such a situation.

No shit sherlock? so does bereavement and (to a certain extent) divorce; surely if single-gendered/parenting is so bad, we should take kids away from widows and divorcees so that they can be settled with a new, complete set of parents.

Hmmm, I wonder how many of this 84% would be able/willing/suitable to become adoptive parents themselves.

Yes, because we’ve already decided it isn’t normal, haven’t we?

really? what with more than 1 in three heterosexual marriages ending in divorce? You don’t think that the widespread (84%, your figures, not mine) prejudice against homosexuality might sometimes add a little too much pressure and unhappiness to the lives of homosexuals, rendering them less able to form stable relationships (not to mention the fact that they aren’t allowed to legally cement their relationship in marriage)…

Their names? Oh, silly me; these are ‘facts’, I’ll just believe everything you say then.

See above re: unstable relationships

The moon seems to be made of cheese

Whereas anti-gay studies are detached and clinical? (I’d be a little more inclined to believe it if you hadn’t just spewed all that tripe above).

That should be enough to start us off. More later.

Well, props to you for being a true skeptical Doper and handing Mrs. Grundy back her Bic pen and telling her where she could stick it. :smiley:

Me, I’m starting a petition outlawing “fact massages” within the city limits–wanna sign it? :smiley:

I may invite the congregation to join me in my fight against left-handedness.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

How may people did they ask? Where? When? Asking half-a-dozen people in a Church (IMHO more likely to be anti-gay) is likely to give them very different results than polling the populace at large. Polling certain bars on a Friday night would get them very different results again. OK, I’m stretching credibility here, but I’m sure you get the point.

I posted a thread a while back on the same point. Gut-reaction is that it must create problems. When you analyse it, though, there’s no sound reason for them not adopting that I can see.

N.

As far as I can see, the sort of problems the adopted kids are likely to face is their adoptive parents being beaten to death by angry mobs.

I don’t think this quite follows.

If you are arguing that same-sex relationships are more or as stable than heterosexual marriage among adoptive parents, I would be very interested in your evidence. If, in fact, gay relationships break up at a greater than one-in-three rate, then the argument against gay adoption is valid (insofar as it is bad for children to be adopted into an unstable relationship).

I ask because I believe the instability argument is one that can be validly made against gay adoption (and unmarried couples adopting). If it turns out that I am wrong about the relative rates of break up, then I would appreciate knowing it.

I don’t think this kind of argument can be used to say that children should be removed from the custody of divorcing parents. The idea is to minimize instability in the lives of the children. Even if 40% of marriages break up, handing the children over to some new couple is more unsettling than for them to remain with one or the other parent.

In other words, two stable parents are better than one stable parent. One stable parent is better than no stable parents.

Of course, if you could come up with some magic test that could determine which are the relationships that will last for life, and which will break up, and you had the choice between the gay couple who sticks together “until death do us part”, and the straight couple heading for a bitter divorce, I would argue in favor of the committed gay couple. At least in terms of their ability to model stable relationships.

Adoption is a topic near and dear to my heart, as today is my daughter’s birthday, and she is the most wonderful, talented, intelligent, charming, and beautiful daughter on the face of the earth.

Grandma and grandpa think so, too, so I think we can consider the matter settled.

Regards,
Shodan

I’m happy to back down on any or all of my statements in the OP; they are just my own citeless reaction or argument to a citeless list.

I hope I didn’t come across as attacking; I really want to know.

My take on it is:

[ul]
[li]Gay relationships tend to be less stable and long-lasting than heterosexual marriage[/li][li]Children do better in stable, long-term relationships than in homes where the primary care-givers come and go over time[/li][li]Therefore, the resistance to gay adoption is not entirely simple homophobia, but arises (at least partly) out of concern for the well-being of children.[/li][/ul] I am pretty sure about the second premise. My feeling is that the first is valid as well, but this is based only on personal observation and bits and pieces elsewhere.

Maybe one way to collect information would be to allow gay marriage, and compare their break up rate against the divorce rate for heterosexual couples. If they are comparable, we have learned something. If one or the other is higher, maybe there is more to it than just blind prejudice.

Regards,
Shodan

Of course, one of the reasons that gay relationships tend to be more difficult to keep together is the lack of societal support for such relationships.

Which is what makes this question so difficult; when you’re comparing heterosexual divorce rates and gay couple breakup rates, you’re really comparing two different sets of statistics altogether. If I was to include all the relationships that heterosexuals entered into in hopes of getting married, instead of all the ones in which they actually did get married, in the statistics on the heterosexual side of this argument, how do you think they would compare to gay breakup rates?

Whatever the case, couples who are applying for adoption are thoroughly screened on an individual basis. This is the only criteria that I believe should be applied to prospective adoptive parents. Whatever the statistics for the race, orientation, or geographic location of the parents, what matters isn’t the demographics they fit into, it’s the parents themselves. How long have they been together? What kind of support network do they have? What kind of home can this particular couple provide to a child?

These are all issues that come up, time and again, in the course of a home study. It’s a rigorous procedure that does its best to assure that the adoptive child in question will have a stable, loving environment in which to grow up.

According to this summary of data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), there were 131,000 children waiting to be adopted in the US in 2001. 51,000 of those were adopted. Almost half of those had been waiting more than three years. It’s not tough to demonstrate that there is a need for more adoptive parents.

Excluding gay people as a group from being prospective adoptive parents is, quite simply, prejudice. As in, not judging people as individuals, but instead relying on judgements about groups they belong to. Pre-judging.

Nobody is asking that the nation turn over its children, willy-nilly, to any gay person who wants one. All we’re asking is that gay people are evaluated by the same criteria that straight people are, in the course of determining whether placing a child with a particular couple will be beneficial to that child.

While you may have a point, Shodan, there is no way at present to derive equivalent statistics. Do you happen to know the relative proportion of teenagers who are going together at present, the proportion of single young adults who are engaged, and so on. And, of course, the number of couples living together, whether in a committed relationship or not, “without benefit of clergy” (which is a solecism in such a use).

Two gay people who have gotten together romantically are either in the state of the teens, the engaged couple, or a married couple. But there’s no series of formalized states they go through comparable to the heterosexual set.

Perhaps in five or ten years we will have an adequate set of statistics comparing the stability of straight and gay couples in Vermont, the Netherlands, etc, and can then extrapolate for other social and cultural regimes.

But at present we’re comparing apples and root crops – there might be some valid comparison with oranges – in trying to ascertain that answer.

I think Mr Visible’s point is very well taken:

I am confident that he or gobear or Esprix could very easily name a soi-disant gay couple who should not be entrusted with a child. I know I can come up with several examples of straight couples that I would voluntarily go to court arguing against an adoption if they attempted one. Likewise, I’m confident that we could come up with examples of excellent potential parents, straight, gay, single, married, divorced, widowed, celibate, bisexual, even perhaps polyamorous.

What matters is whether this potential parent or parent couple will be good for this particular adoptable child, not whether he or she or they fall into some sociographic category that is as a group less or more well-suited as parents.

How in the world did a law get changed when 84% of the people are opposed to it?

If only there were some evidence. Any evidence. The problem is that the groups you want to see statistics for have been by and large prevented by law from engaging in the disgusting acts of producing said statistics. When domestic partnerships become documented and reconized by governments, then we can start gathering some evidence.

On reflection, I’m not entirely sure how relevant the break-up rate is anyway, aren’t adoption placements evaluated on a case-by-case basis anyway?

Suppose we determined that some demographic group within heterosexual married couples had a higher break-up rate than the rest (let’s say it was redheads, after all, everyone knows they are quick-tempered eh?) - would that statistic be sufficient grouds to deny them the possibility of adopting a child? would it matter how much higher their break-up rate was? if so, how would we decide what is an unacceptably high rate and what wasn’t?

In practice, wouldn’t we (don’t we?) evaluate prospective adoptive parents as a case apart and determine the suitability of that couple?

Although I see your point, I question its relevence.

Obviously, not every relationship is entered into with the end of a permanent commitment. This is true of gay or of straight people. But neither is entering into a casual relationship considered the basis for accepting responsibility for children, either.

One of the major problems with pregnancies resulting from casual relationships is that neither of the people responsible have positioned themselves to be able to support a child. That is why casual promiscuity is a bad thing. IMO.

So we need to compare apples to apples, not kiwi fruit. The relevant question is, is this couple, who have entered into a lifelong, committed relationship, likely to keep their commitment? Or does it turn out that very few gay relationships who have reached that level of commitment really last, and that therefore placing a child with that couple is likely to turn out to be a bad idea?

All true. I have been thru the process myself, twice. And I heartily approve of the presumption that everything reasonably possible be done to ensure as far as possible that the child is placed in a stable, safe environment, where he or she is likely to thrive. Obviously, there can be no guarantees, but we have to do our best.

But I do not know whether the predictors for long-term stability which work for straight couples will work for gay couples, or work adequately. I can think of ways in which it is possible for the dynamics of homosexual couples to differ from that of straight ones, even to the point that the presumption could be made that gay adoptions do not always work for the best interests of the child, for whatever reason.

And I am nervous of the idea that we can or should assume that the only problems with gay relationships are caused by homophobia, and that therefore gay adoption is something that has to be accepted as fully the equivalent of adoption by a married couple.

I do not know any of this for certain. All I have is my own experience. I can think of some gay people who I think would be appropriate parents, but they are few. Very few. And I can think of many others who I would not trust with a puppy.

And if, all other things being equal, we are confronted with a choice between placing a child with a gay couple, or with a straight one, and our experience has been that even what would seem to be well-qualified prospective parents tend not to work out well if they belong to one group or another, I am not prepared to label it “homophobia” if we choose the straight couple.

I want what is best for the children. I do not wish to try social experiments on them. That scares me.

None is this is meant, or should be construed to be saying, that gays are all evil child-molesters or flighty twits who cannot be trusted. And especially am I not saying that twits like Angelina Jolie and her unpleasant husband should not be roundly condemned for splitting up their bizarre relationship shortly after accepting responsibility for children. I have no idea if they went thru a home study or not, but if they did, some social worker needs to lose her license. And a couple of Hollywood half-wits need to have their heads smacked.

But I would hate like poison for this situation to be replicated with anything like regularity, if that is the effect of allowing gay adoption. If. If.

Sometimes people break up. This cannot always be avoided. But it is still bad for the children. And my experience is that gay people do too much of this to be readily considered to be adoptive parents.

YMMV. As I said, I have nothing much to go on beyond my personal experience.

Regards,
Shodan

I think that is a laudable sentiment. There are times when we should take a strong political stand… but not when the future of the children is at risk.

Note that Shodan’s comments have nothing to do with the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of homosexuality. That is not the issue at hand, and it is not the angle from which Shodan is arguing.

Do you have any evidence for that? Based on my own family I would say that the exact opposite is true. People staying together when they should break up is worse.

I’m afraid that’s the only relevant portion of that post, Shodan. You don’t have statistics, you don’t have facts, you just have vague premonitions and broad assumptions. It’s not nearly enough to base a national policy on, is it?

One of the problems with anecdotal evidence about homosexuals in this society is that homosexuals aren’t all easily identifiable in the wild. How do you know that Howie at work hasn’t been in a relationship with his male “friend” for twelve years? How do you know that Linda in accounting is happily committed to her life-partner Joyce, and that they’re raising her daughters together? When you live in a society where being open about who you are has negative consequences, you tend to be discreet.

And so, people tend to only notice those of us who are most noticeable, and a large percentage of those are noticeable for reasons that are at odds with the image of stable parents. So a lot of people make generalizations about gays based on a few, very obvious, but not universal examples. Which leads to painting all gay people with a big, broad, very discriminatory brush.

It scares me too. But every adoption, no matter who the people involved are, is a social experiment. You can’t tell if the father is going to die of a heart attack at age 41, you can’t see that the mother is going to develop a prescription painkiller problem after a car accident in four years, you can’t see the stretch of unemployment that leaves a couple destitute and at each others’ throats, you can’t see the happy lifelong marriage from where it starts. You can’t tell; you can only try and evaluate each couple by the best criteria you have, and then give them all the support you can, and training, and hope for the best.

But you know what scares me most? What if there are children out there who really, really need parents, and aren’t getting them because of some vague suspicions? What if there are perfectly good parents being denied the privilege of adopting children, because someone has decided, with no evidence, that they don’t fit the mold of the traditional heterosexual couple, no matter how qualified they might be otherwise? What if these prejudices leave kids growing up in foster homes, in group homes, never having known a family of their own?

You’ve admitted that you have no evidence that gay people have different divorce rates than straight people do. You obviously know that there is a need for adoptive parents. And you’re unwilling to try to experiment until that data is available. Well, that’s fair enough. There’s an obvious solution that will make the data available in a few years.

Gay marriage.

Make it legal, keep records, and in a few years, you can compare apples to apples, and figure out if your suspicions are borne out by the facts. You want to find out how, as a group, gay people stack up to heterosexuals in terms of how long they stay married? Let us get married, and find out. If it turns out your suspicions are unfounded, then there will be hundreds, thousands of potential adoptive parents entering the system, ready to provide the love and family life that these kids need so badly.

Until then, until you have actual data to back up the policy of denying homosexuals the privilege of adoption as a group, you are in the unenviable position of letting your unfounded prejudices deny families to children who desperately need them.

http://www.lethimstay.com/

What else have we got? If I may say so without offense, there were no more statistics in your posts than in mine.

As far as I can tell, the perception both in the straight community and in the gay community is that by and large, gay relationships do not last. I am unwilling to believe that this is something that homophobes made up out of thin air, and that most gays live in relationships that are at least as stable as heterosexual marriage.

Perhaps they are, and the perception is quite wrong. The question then becomes, on whom do you see the burden of proof lying? It is the advocates of gay adoption who are proposing the change in policy. Do you think the burden of proof lies with them, or with society in general?

Perhaps it is a simple matter of prejudice, and that gays would be no worse than anyone else as adoptive parents. The stakes are rather high, so how sure do you need to be that you are correct?

Perhaps the psycho-dynamics of gay relationships are different from straight ones, and therefore even apparently stable gay relationships are an anomaly. Suppose the divorce rate of gay marriage is not 40%, but 90%. Suppose being in a gay relationship does allow you to make predictions with some reasonable measure of certainty.

Are you willing, in other words, to be wrong?

You seem to be ready to go ahead with a rather substantial change in adoption policy, based on the evidence you have to date. But it does not seem that you have much more evidence than I do.

I think we are in agreement, except -

I would like to wait on changes until after the facts are in. You, apparently, are ready to go ahead now.

To which I answer a quote from Oliver Cromwell -

Regards,
Shodan

I don’t see the problem with putting a child in a single-parent home, be they gay or straight. Considering the overwhelming need for adoptive parents, if someone out there is viable, stable, and single, give them a kid if they want one. Would a couple be better? Sure. But there’s nothing wrong with single adoptive parents.

Just my opinion.

Esprix

You keep stating your preception as if it is fact. It is not a fact. Your preception is worthless when it comes to this matter. In fact, you don’t have any special insight into the “perception in the gay community”, so how can you tell us what that preception is?

Then you have the audacity to ask for a cite from MrVisible who has already explained why there are not statistics to cite.

If it’s OK for me to start pulling ideas out of my ass, then I’d suggest that there might be an element of self-selection involved; it’s quite possible (although I shall not be so bold as to suggest it is so) that individuals (of any orientation) who enjoy the freedom of relationships without ties and thus find themselves in sequential (relatively)short relationships would possibly not welcome the commitment of caring for a child and would never offer themselves as prospective adoptive parents.

If this were the case (and I’m not pretending it is), then it would be wrong to include such individuals in statistical analysis relating to suitability as adoptors(is that a word) - if indeed statistics are of very much use at all (as we explored above).