Someone brought this up in another thread, so here is the question: are you for or against gay couples adopting children? Why or why not?
I am all for it. There is a huge problem with homelessness all over the world. Children live in poverty, in every nation, including the USA. If there are loving, committed adults willing to take these suffering souls into their homes, why stop them? A gay relationship is just as real and respectable in my eyes as any other, and I think it is silly that they don’t have equal rights.
I’m all for it. Way too many kids growing up as wards of the state.
Many times when someone argues against it, they bring up the ‘modeling gay behaviour’ argument. As if a child raised by gays will ‘learn’ to be gay. Which I think is just ridiculous. If a parents modeling of behaviour determined a persons sexual orientation, we wouldn’t have too many gay folks.
One could argue that it would be best if the adoptive parents were a heterosexual man/woman couple. That may be best, I don’t really know. Or care. The fact is there are lot more kids to be adopted than heterosexual couples willing to adopt. They are beter off in homes where people are going to love them.
I have no objections to it in principle, assuming that the individuals meet the appropriate criteria (as with heterosexual couples).
The argument I usually hear against it is that homosexual couples are not in a “stable relationship” like a married couple. Which seems rational, until you discover that most of the people presenting this argument are also against gay couples getting married. Way to go, Goober… :rolleyes:
Agreed, but the legal issues involved in the dissolution of a marriage are seen as a stabilizing factor. The underlying idea is: if the couple can just leave each other without (legal) consequence, they’re more likely to split at the first sign of trouble.
Also, adoption by an unmarried couple (homo or hetero) creates legal guardianship issues: one person becomes the legal guardian and the other has no rights at all wrt the child. This tends to be unpleasant for all concerned. Marriage comes with legal rights in this regard.
Is that necessarily so? Can’t both people adopt and have legal rights and duties?
jr8 said it best in the first post–how the hell do you hold homosexuals to a standard (being in a stable, married relationship) that society will not permit them to achieve? And being single doesn’t seem to stop heterosexual adoptions.
Why shouldn’t any decent, stable people be able to adopt? Why would homosexuality preclude that? Simply hold homosexuals to the same standards that heterosexuals are held to–i.e., background checks for criminal records, home inspections, etc. If they meet the same standards, then they are eligible. Period.
People argue this issue as if there were some golden “right” way to raise a child. I don’t believe there is (although there are certainly wrong ways). Lots of people, in lots of different situations, are doing admirable jobs raising children. I think that, prospective adoptive parents need to be screeened to make sure that they are reasonably psychologically healthy, that they have some clue what they’re letting themselves in for, that they are reasonably financially stable, etc. In the case of non-married couples adopting (homo or hetero), perhaps there should be some kind of agreement required in advance dictating what would happen to the child if the relationship should dissolve. Come to think of it, maybe such a thing wouldn’t be a bad idea even if the couple were married.
If all these basic criteria were met, I don’t see why a person shouldn’t be able to adopt. If the standards were thus altered, we would have many fewer kids being raised in orphanages, group homes, foster homes, etc. Surely, there would be problems, but invariably, it would be an improvement over the current situation.
It’s a controversial issue. Jr8 has a point before speaking about gay couple adopting we need an “stable” gay couple legislation. What happen with the child if they do separate? When a married couple adopts, both of them adopt the boy. If they divorce, well divorce law take care of the issue. I don’t know about your countries but in mine all this problems are not legally solved. In fact Buenos Aires just became the first Latin American city in which a legal status is recognized to gay couples, but only in matters like pension, social care, etc. There is a lot that has to be done before even start speaking about adoption.
Yes, the rate for divorce is now generally much higher than it was 50 years ago, so in that sense marriage is not as clear an indicator of a stable relationship as it once was. However, the stats I’ve seen (at work, so I can’t be more specific) indicate that marriages generally are more stable than common law arrangements - the breakup rate for common law couples is higher than for married couples. So in that sense, a marriage can be taken as an indicator of a more stable relationship, on average.
(Note: I’m talking averages here - I’m well aware that there are people in long-term, stable common law arrangements, and there are also marriages that don’t make it to the six month anniversary.)
It depends on the laws in the jurisdiction where you live. See, for example, the summaries on this site for info on the laws of the various states.
The law will also vary from country to country. For example, in Canada several of the provinces have recently amended their laws to allow for gay & lesbian couples to adopt.
This is nonsense, at least as far as the U.S. is concerned. There is currently no universal prohibition against single heterosexual people adopting that I am aware of. Why the double standard? The whole “but they can’t get married” issue is a red herring, made even more frustrating by the fact that most gays (in the surveys I have seen) would be very pleased to have marriage as an option.
The issues mentioned here are all significant and relevant, but I wonder if we’re not prettifying the situation.
IMHO, the issue is that much of straight America assumes that much of gay male America is prone to sexually molesting children; even their OWN children.
(“Much” does not mean “all” or even “most”–just “more than enough.”)
I said straight America. But I have the impression that this belief is widespread among lesbians as well.
The best situation for a child is a mother and father, so I feel that married couples should get top priority. After that, if a married couple doesn’t want to adopt a child, then, in my own opinion, I guess it’s a toss up between a single person, and a homosexual couple.
I see no reason why responsible, committed couples should not be allowed to adopt, regardless of their mix of gender. Statistics are often wielded in this debate and I don’t think they are at all helpful (if indeed they are accurate at all) - a proper vetting process should weed out the “90% of homosexuals who think paedophilia is acceptable” (or whatever it is the opposition are shouting this week), just like a proper vetting process should weed out whatever sets of heterosexual parents are unsuitable for whatever reason.
There are several issues here which are being conflated. The question “Should gays be allowed to adopt?” can mean very different things.
This is a really short primer on adoption (and I’m no expert–please correct me if I get any of this wrong).
First, the simplest type of adoption is between individuals. This is msot common when someone adopts a spouse’s children, but also includes things like mothers who adopt their daughter’s child and adoptions that are arranged through classified ads.
Other adoptions are arranged by agencies. There are both private and public agencies. Private agencies connect biological parents with potential adoptive parents whom they connect with through everything from billboards to community outreach programs. Public agencies place children who have become, for what ever reason, wards of the state. Both public and private agencies have various standards by which they screen potential parents.
After an adoption is arranged, then all adoptions, individual or through an agency (public or private) have to be approved by the courts. It is quite possible for the courts to approve a private adoption that the public adoption agency would have rejected–for example, the public adoption agency might not approve a 60 year old couple, but the courts would let them adopt their grandchildren after thier children went to jail.
With all this in mind, the question “Should gays be allowed to adopt?” can mean the following:
If a private adoption is arranged between individuals or by a private agency, and one (or both) of the adopting individuals is gay, should the state approve it? (George and Frank meet a Rena, a girl who is having a baby and knows she can’t offer it a good life. She wants to place it up for adoption ,and since she knows George and Frank are good people, she wants her baby to go to them.)
Should a private adoption agency be allowed to place children with gay individuals/couples? (this assumes that the state will approve such an adoption, of course). (Rena decides to keep her baby, so George and Frank go to a private adoption agency and pass all of that agency’s screening procedures. Should the agency be allowed to put their information into the folder of “potential parents” they give there biological mothers to look through?)
Should a private adoption agency be forced to disregard sexual orientation when matching biological parents with potential adoptive parents? (again, this assumes that the state will approve the adoption?) (Suzie is a homophobe and tells the agency that she dosen’t want her baby to go to any gay couples. Is the adoption agency allowed to pull George and Frank’s information sheet form the folder they give Suzie?)
Should a public adoption agency disregard sexual orientation completly when placing children? (If Geroge and Frank decide that they don’t care about getting a perfect white baby and go to a public adoption agency, should they be treated just like everybody else?)
Should a public adoption agency prefer straight couples over gay couples when placing children, but still prefer gay adoptive parents to foster care? (Should Geroge and Frank be allowed into the system but be at a disadvantage?)
Anyways, each of these questions is really quite difefent, and I think each is probably worth exploring. I do think that when people talk about 'gay adoption" they need to be clear about what they mean: if one person is argueing for George’s right to adopt his nephew after his sister and her husband were killed and someone else is argueing for Lisa’s right tell Catholic Family Services that she wants her baby to go to a traditional household, we are likely to generate a lot of smoke and not much heat.
I don’t believe that a child’s sexual orientation is affected much by his or her parents’ orientation… my parents were straight, and that didn’t keep me from being gay!
I believe that second-parent adoptions are available for gay couples in some areas, but not in others. These allow the non-birth parent to legally become a child’s second parent.
I really only read up on the issue as it pertains to my life, since my partner and I plan for her carry the child, and for me to adopt as a second parent. I would expect the same process to be available for a 2nd adoptive parent (if the first was the primary adopter).
I am disturbed by the connection often made between gays and child molesters, but I know where it comes from. Back in the 1930s or 40s, the government publicized a campaign to “protect children”, called something like “Is your daughter safe?”. A couple terrible crimes were described in detail, in which children were raped and killed. Public anger raised by this was focused against homosexuals and other “sexual degenerates”, though there was no reason to believe the killers were gay. This was probably not the first time, and definitely wasn’t the last (Anita Bryant?) that anti-gay activists created some connection between the sexual behavior that scared them and sexual crimes against children. The idea is, if someone is so driven by sex that they would abandon the status quo, he/she is a sex maniac who will prey on anyone, including children.
Statistics suggest (and from reading these board, I know folks here like the sources of statistics, so I’ll look it up later) that straight men are more likely to molest children than gay men (or gay or straight women). Most men who molest boys identify as straight-- the sexual abuse is about victimizing someone too small to resist, too easily intimidated to get you in trouble.
In any event, I don’t believe a person’s sexual orientation says a thing about his or her ability to be a good parent.