'Gay people should not be allowed to raise children.'

Great Debates
1

This issue may well have been debated before, but not since I’ve been here.

On the ‘Gay Marriage’ thread, Schnitt generally supported the idea of ‘registered partnerships,’ but with one caveat:

I’m not meaning to single out Schnitt, or pass any judgments on his/her other views, but that line was the opening for this thread.

This is a view I’ve often heard elsewhere too, and it’s not usually presented as homophobia, but as concern for the children. It usually goes along the lines of ‘the child will face discrimination in school / the child will be deprived of a parent of one gender / the child will ‘grow up gay’ / the child will not be given a proper moral grounding.’ None of these arguments seem particularly compelling to me, to put it briefly:

  1. The discrimination is the fault of the society, not the child or their parents. Also, there are steps that can be taken to combat this discrimination, such as choosing a school in an area with many gay couples (such as certain areas of Brighton in England), and instilling your child with self-confidence - the most important step, obviously.

  2. If the child never had contact with the gender not of his parents, this argument might be persuasive. This is not usually the case.

  3. Numerous studies have shown this not to be the case. I don’t have time at the moment, but I’ll cite some of them later. Besides, this is only a problem if you consider being gay to be an undesirable characteristic.

  4. This one I find hardest to counter, simply because I don’t understand the logic behind it. My sexuality has nothing to do with my morality or my child-rearing skills. I guess the idea must be that gay people must teach their children that being gay is OK, and this is wrong??

The original quote was about gay couples adopting children, but my question is about gay couples / single people raising their own biological children too. The reasons are twofold: one is that adoption clouds the issue somewhat, and the other is that I myself am a lesbian who has a child. Obviously, I’m not coming without bias to the issue, which is one of the reasons I’d like the opinions of others who may - MAY - have a more objective stance.

(Btw, this is the first thread I’ve started in GD, I hope I’ve formatted it correctly).

2

Given some of the stuff my mother’s seen over her 30 years as a public school teacher, I’d have to say that straight people don’t seem to be doing such a fabulous job of raising happy, well adjusted, morally upright children themselves. On the other hand, the few people I know who were raised by gays seem to turned out better than most. Maybe we should let gay people raise all the kids, then there’d be no problem about discrimination against them.

3

I am going to be a bit of a cheat, and copy-paste what i wrote in a pit thread here if thats ok? BRB

I hope it isnt too cheating to do it like that…
I had already written the rant before, it felt silly to re-write it (god knows it wouldnt have become any clearer) and I didnt want to link to another thread…

4

I’m on the fence on this one. Florida has the severest ban on gay adoptions…never never never under any circumstances. I do think, however, that children thrive when raised by both a mother and a father living together as man and wife. There are things I handle better than my husband, and vice versa, and I think our children do well in the environment.

That said, should an older child be raised in foster care simply because gay adoptions are banned? I would say no. A loving home is always better than no home. And if the only home available is a gay couple, than yes, adoption should be allowed.

QueenAl I am in NO way denigrating the way you are raising your child. I’m sure you are doing a wonderful job. I feel the same way about gay adoptions as I do with all the single moms out there (Hollywood) who feel they can raise a child sans man. When did fathers become optional? Deliberately depriving a child of a father simply because you “want” a baby is cruel, I think.

As I said, I’m waffling on this one. In an ideal world there would be no neglected children. Since there are, I think we should place those children in whatever loving home is available. First choice, however, I think, should be a married heterosexual couple. But we should not exclude committed gay couples simply because they are gay.

5

Preview is your friend.

Actually, I place deliberately single moms below gay adoptions.

6

Heya ivy, gotta ask something here :slight_smile:

In order for this to have anything to do with the issue of same-sex couples raising children you have to believe that the reason your husband handles some things better is because he is a man. In other words that you believe that there is “men work” and “womens work”? Have I understood that correctly?

'Cos I know me and my SO have wildly diverse skills, I can rip a computer to its components in the blinking of an eye, and I put up a damned good shelf. I also make fantastic bread and sew fairly well, if mainly stuffed animals. The wife is a sports-nut, knows all the teams and who plays best, she also does most of the cooking cos she rocks at it, but is definatly in charge of capturing all spiders and insects in the house.

However thats all irrellevant, since I don’t think that skills etc have anything to do whether one is male or female. If I did I would probably believe that women couldn’t be piolets cos thats mans work, and that a male nurse was just a guy without the grades to be a doctor.

7

I just don’t see any reason why gay people should not be allowed to adopt. There are so many childern, who are shuffled from foster home to foster home, how could a stable gay home possibly hurt them ?

I also think that if we want to teach tolerance to children, it needs to start in the home. We are not teaching children tolerance, when we tell them they cannot be adopted because homosexuals are not going to make good parents.

8

Please could anyone not in favour of gay adoption explain what should happen when a person (presumably in deep denial or something) becomes a parent, then discovers/decides that they are gay (for the sake of neatness, we will assume that this discovery happens after they become widowed) - should the child be taken away?

9

Not that I am the poster you are looking for Mangetout, but isn’t that more or less what happened with Rosie O’Donnel? Has had a foster kid for 5 years, came out, they took the kid back?
Very similar to another case where two gay men have been allowed to foster HIV+ kids (cos noone else wanted them). One of the kids has been with them since he was about 8 months old, up until now, when he is 14. He just stopped testing positive for HIV, so he is also being taken away from them, cos he is now “viable for adoption”.

10

I don’t understand the objections to the idea of gay people adopting; it may (or may not) be that a lower proportion of gays are suited to caring for children (I dunno, there are general ‘lifestyle’ differences, possibly), but even if this is true, generalisations shouldn’t be applied to specific cases. People should be allowed to (or prevented from) adoption on the basis of their suitability as prospective parents, what they do with their hearts and genitals is not relevant, unless they plan to involve the child (and homosexuals can hardly be described as holding a monopoly on child sexual abuse).

11

Ivylass, I note in your post that you say (in essence) that your husband and you complement each other, that each of you is better at some aspects of child-rearing than the other, and that the children benefit from this. And (not knowing you but knowing other couples for which that is the case), I’d have to agree that that is a benefit to the children – whose welfare IMHO is the principal consideration in any such question.

However, I’d have to ask, is this in any way peculiar to the fact that you are a woman and he a man? Or is it based on your particular personalities, so that if you were both of the same sex you would still be good parents through that complementarity. I have a personal reason for asking, over and above Queen Al’s OP – my wife and I have found that we are very effective together with our honorary grandkids, and in particular this holds true when I (though male) function in the nurturing, maternal role while she (though female) becomes the stricter, rule-enforcing party who is nonetheless interested in the child as a person.

Mangetout, you may not be aware of it, but (other than the material in and after the last parenthetes) this happens to be the case for one of our regular posters – he and his wife married as friends who were in denial of their own gayness, had a child, separated amicably, and share custody.

12

I wasn’t aware of that Poly, thanks; has the law attempted to get involved in their custody (in the context of their sexuality)?

13

AFAIK, no. If you don’t mind (or even if you do, actually :)), I’ll let further comments on the situation come from the poster himself, if he so chooses. But for me, at least, it’s not a hypothetical happening-to-them-out-there situation – an online friend is in precisely that position. Which means that I’d have strong opinions on any attempted state incursion on the situation.

14

Mangetout, that is the situation I am in now myself - minus the custody battles. However, I know that some women have had problems when they have left a marriage in part because of their secuality, and fought for custody of their children. There was one particular case in, I think New Jersey, where a woman was denied custody because of her sexuality. goes searching for cite

Of course, that’s not exactly the point you were making. Is there anyone who would advocate removing the children because of a priori sexuality?

I hope they wouldn’t be deterred from putting their honest point of view here just because I’ve stated my own involvement in this issue.

15

Thanks for sharing your situation QueenAl; as you rightly guessed, I am trying to break down the situation into components, in the hope that we can isolate the precise sticking point.

16

In response to everyone on this thread, no, I do not believe in women’s work vs men’s work. However, my husband has a unique perspective on what it means to be a man, and can help my son along in that regard, as I have a unique perspective on what it means to be a woman and can help my daughter along as well. Conversely, my daughter learns about men through her father, and my son learns about women through me. Our children also learn how men and women relate to each other and how they work through problems by seeing how my husband and I relate. I hope that this will teach them how to have healthy loving relationships when they grow up. Will I care if they are gay? No. I don’t think that’s an issue though, my son is already at almost 13 starting to flirt a bit with pretty waitresses and my daughter sighs over cute boys at school. I do not think this has anything to do with their environment…I truly believe people are born gay, just like I was born straight. I certainly do not believe that gays should not be allowed to adopt simply because they are gay. I’m sure all the gay parents on this board are doing wonderful jobs. I just wonder if the child misses anything by not seeing that interaction with a person of the opposite sex living in the same home in a marriage. Since most children of gay couples grow up straight, will this missed interaction be a detriment to them in any way?

17

According to the findings of the Swedish report I cited above, no.
The children of gay parenting who later turn out to be straight do not have any relevant issues in interacting with the opposite sex, neither in a social nor romantic context.

My own straight parents provided a horrific example of to treat “the one you love”. This is why I am especially thankful to my wifes straight parents for setting a fantastic example to her of how to be a loving and caring partner. If we ever get kids then I hope they will learn from us how to have a loving and equal relationship with somone. If there is something vitally specific they need to know about men-women relationships then I guess its up to Dawsons Creek to educate them :stuck_out_tongue: *
*I am kidding dammit! Obviously the hypothetical children will not be raised in some sort of vacuum, but will have contact with all sorts of different people.
These people will however have in common that they have something positive to show or teach said kids.

18

I see what you mean, Ivy, but I think it’s more important that children learn about healthy relationships, rather than how different genders act. If the child never had any significant contact with a person of the opposite gender to their parents, then there could be potential problems in the long-term, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. There are always aunties, Grandparents, and in the case of gay couples conceiving by IVF, often the biological father or mother on a visitting basis too. True, they would not be around these people every day, but as long as they were able to form bonded relationships with them, that should be enough.

19

Just another thought; it seems rather odd (to me) that anyone could accept homosexuality a valid and at the same time, be concerned that it might somehow ‘corrupt’ children…

20

Notwithstanding what QueenAl says in the OP, I think the questions of adoption by gays and gay parenting are quite different.

When a child is being placed for adoption, the only consideration which should affect the adoption decision is the best interests of the child. The prospective adopters, gay or straight, have no “right to adopt”, but the child has a right to have the decision about adoption made in his or her best interests.

If is is established that the child, if placed with gay prospective adopters, is at a material risk of suffering from prejudice and discrimination because of the adopters sexuality, this is a factor which goes to the interests of the child, and it should be taken into account. The fact that this prejudice and discrimination is not the fault of the adopters, or that it is offensive and improper, is irrelevant.

Of course, it is just one factor to be taken into account, and it is very unlikely to be conclusive. But, if it’s a real risk, it should form part of any overall assessment for adoption.

If it could be established that gay couples (or, for that matter, straight couples, or black couples or Swedish couples, or couples with red hair, or . . . ) were, as a class, less successful at parenting, this would not be a relevant factor. What matters is the attributes of the individual applicants for adoption, and not the attributes of a more-or-less arbitrarily-defined class to which they happen to belong. A proper assessment of the applicants for adoption themselves, their own history and experiences, their atttitudes to family and parenting, and so forth, will always tell us more about their suitability for parenthood than the fact that they are gay, or straight, or black, or Swedish, or red-haired.

The argument that children should have both a father and a mother (and they should be of different sexes) doesn’t really stand up. If it did, adoption by single or widowed people would equally be ruled out and, of course, very few countries rule it out.

I think when it comes to gay parents and their biological children, different considerations apply. The gay parents do have rights here which must be respected. The children also have rights, of course, and their rights must, in the end, take precedence, and the risk of prejuedice and discrimination may figure here. But the children also have a right to be part of a family with the parents who conceived and bore them, and to be raised by those parents, and to have a permanent relationship with those parents, and the parents have a corresponding right. Other factors may be so strong as to override those rights (e.g. if the parents are abusive or hopelessly unfit) but I cannot think of circumstances where the risk of social prejudice is going to outweigh these factors.