Is unreasoning prejudice a good criterion for such placement?
A white child whose parents are black would get teased about it. Should we disallow such adoptions?
I think a child’s needs are the only criteria which should be taken into account in adoption decisions.
“I think a child’s needs are the only criteria which should be taken into account in adoption decisions.”
That’s my point. And for a child to go from one emotionally stresful environment (institutional care) to potentially another, in which he will likely find him (or her) self at odds with his peers isn’t exactly taking that childs best interests into consideration.
There’s no unreasoning prejudice in finding for a child a socially harmonious mom and dad type environment to nurture it through a period when the last thing it needs is criticism of its new home and family in the form of homophobic taunting and general eyebrow-raising.
It’s wouldn’t be La Cage aux Folles for most of these kids.
Unless of course a “socially harmonious mom and dad type environment” isn’t available.
The unreasoning prejudice I referred to was that of the school bullies who would taunt an adoptive kid for such a thing. Since when do we let the scum of junior high school dictate national policy? Seems a bit backwards to me. If bullying is keeping these kids from having parents, it seems like the problem that needs addressing is the bullying, and not the parents.
Keeping a kid in an institution because they might be teased about new parents isn’t taking the kid’s needs into account. This decision should be in the hands of the adoption agent in charge of the individual children in need of homes; eliminating a huge pool of available and willing parents indiscriminately is completely against the interests of children in need of them. Can’t you picture a situation in which a kid would benefit from a loving home, despite some peer teasing?
I can see where you’d think gay adoption was a bad thing, if your idea of a good gay family is taken from La Cage aux Folles, though. I’m sure you’re aware that gay people are a very diverse group, and that the stereotypes portrayed in that movie are hardly a summation of what all gay people are like.
This is not actually what I said. What I said was that public adoption agencies should not discriminate against homosexuals; I specifically said private agencies shouldn’t be forced to disregard sexual orientation.
Well, OK. I’d say if the kid’s still a baby, the sexual orientation of the couple shouldn’t come up at all, but for a child old enough to have opinions about his or her new mommy and daddy, it’s reasonable to consider sexual orientation, along with religion, living in the 'burbs vs. living on a farm, or anything else. So “disregard completely” isn’t accurate, but neither is “prefer straight couples over gay couples”, since for any given child, the public adoption agency might prefer straight couples over gay couples, prefer gay couples over straight couples, or have no preference at all regarding the sexual orientation of the prospective parents. There should be no general preference for straights over gays though, anymore than there should be general discrimination against Lutherans or Buddhists or couples who live on farms or couples who live in the city.
I hope we haven’t forgotten that there are such things as openly gay kids (adolescents) who are pretty well used to dealing with social opprobrium, and may well benefit from living with a gay couple that is morally solid, healthy, etc–ie, good role models and truly empathetic listeners.
(Does no one else agree with me that the molestation issue is the hidden gorilla in the room? Note that the question is not whether it’s reasonable, but whether it’s widely, if subliminally, believed.)
MrVisible, its not just the ‘scum of junior high’ who the kid will be dealing with. Kids of all kinds jump on anything about other kids that makes themselves feel more mainstream and acceptable (socially, and later sexually). And those kids lead others on too…you can’t blame kids for the way in which gays are seen by society. In a perfect world it wouldn’t matter who adopted who, but it isn’t perfect and so for now I fear for any child that would have to go through several years of taunting and quite possibly severe bullying in order that Gays can be acepted onto the next rung of an unfairly steep ladder.
Sorry, I did not have time yesterday and that was my simple answer to the OP>
Fascinating that you see the only end result of a gay couple adopting a child as political advancement of the gay rights movement. Have you considered the possibility that the child might really need a family? That the gay couple in question might really want to care for a kid? That you might be bringing these people together, in order to provide the child with a brighter future?
I’m not saying that we should ignore the social consequences to the kids; this is an important matter, and should be considered when reviewing the acceptability of a particular adoption. A decision left up to the case workers in charge of the adoption, not a national policy.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous it sounds to eliminate a huge quantity of potential parents from the adoption pool just because of school bullying? Do you want to be the one to try to explain to a kid that they’ll have to live their childhood in the foster home/institution system, because you’re afraid they’re going to get teased?
Try it. Here, try this speech…
"Listen, kid. Here’s the deal. We’ve found a couple that wants to share their home with you. They’ve been wanting to have kids for years, and they’d consider it a privilege to give you a loving, caring home where you could spend you childhood feeling safe and secure.
"But here’s the thing. They’re gay. And we’re worried that if they bring you up, you’ll have to deal with teasing at school. Now, I know that you already get teased because you’re a foster kid. And I know that you’d do anything to come home to people who really want you there, who care, who want to be your parents.
“But, you know, teasing. It’d be rough. So, instead we’re going to let you stay in the foster care system. Maybe you’ll get to spend time in a group home, too. Sure, it’s not going to be like having a real family of your own. But at least you won’t get teased. Except about being a foster care kid, and whatever else kids find to pick on about you. Good luck, now.”
This line of ‘reasoning’ baffles me. Mean kids are going to pick on somebody who’s adopted by a gay couple, and somehow it’s the kid who needs a home that pays the price for that? In what universe is that right? This isn’t blaming the victim, it’s taking away a victim’s chance at a decent life.
Some statistics for you, from this page:
Number of children in the United States waiting to be adopted (9/30/2000): 131,000
Number of children adopted from the public foster care system in FY 2000:51,000
58% of these kids are in non-family foster homes.
24% of these kids will be in foster care for 5 years or more.
There is a need for more foster parents. There are gay people out there who are ready and eager to provide homes for some of these kids. And you want to have a national policy eliminate them from the pool of prospective adoptive parents wholesale, because some of the kids that are given homes by gay people might get picked on?
Freaking ludicrous.
Alright, MrVisible, don’t fly off the handle with your overlong post. It’s not a fair world…these kids will be bullied and that is akin to gross mental anxiety in some cases. If you want to send them off into the unknown and untested waters of Gay Adoption, then fine. I’m not obsessing over your viewpoint, just trying to rationalize it. It’s about a lot more than getting “picked on”, it’s about providing a stress-free semblance of normality for a child who has been through the mill. I don’t blame gays for the fact that they cannot provide this, I blame the homophobic general populace. If I respond to your “Freaking ludicrous” then we’ll end up in the Pit so, I’ll leave it here for now.
And keeping the kids in the “mill” is a better alternative? Really?
You haven’t even come close to establishing the “fact” that gays cannot provide a “stress-free semblance of normality” either, you know. And whoever you blame, it’s attitudes like yours that are keeping kids out of loving homes.
Care to address any of the statistics I posted on how many kids out there need homes right now? Care to try and prove that gay people can’t provide a “stress-free semblance of normality”? Care to answer my question about why interracial adoptions are legal, even though they may cause kids to get teased just as much, or more than, gay adoptions?
Care to try and justify why this couple is in danger of having a kid they’ve raised for years taken away, and have no legal means of adopting him? Care to try and compose a letter to that 11-year-old, explaining why he may be taken away from his loving family?
If you make ludicrous arguments, you’d best be prepared to have them called ludicrous.
And you’d best be prepared not to be taken seriously because you’re obviously getting highly emotional, if not religious, on this issue. I’m not here and nor do I “care to” get too deeply into this subject just to act as your whipping boy, I merely made a statement followed by several posts to clarify my position. By which I stand.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense to stand behind a position you’re entirely unable to defend. Because, you know, your opinion is what’s important here. Not facts, not people, but your unfounded opinion.
If you don’t care to get too deeply into this subject, then stay away from threads about it. You see, to some of us this is an intensely personal issue. Some of us have done months worth of research on it. Some of us gay people hope to adopt some day. And having the unfounded and ill-informed but somehow sacrosanct opinions of people like yourself standing in the way of that goal is frustrating, annoying, and unnecessary.
I spent the past weekend celebrating Christmas with my boyfriend’s family. He has a large family; there were over eighty people there, all gathered around a woodstove, listening to the older family members speak about how much it means to them to have their family gathered around them. There were tons of kids there; babies to teenagers, all gazing longingly at the presents heaped under the tree. I watched my boyfriend hold his new nieces and nephews and cousins. I watched as he exclaimed over how cute each one was, holding them tenderly; he helped raise his brother and sisters and cousins himself, after all.
We’d love to be able to share our home with a child. We’ve got so much that we could give to them. We’re going to try to adopt, in the next couple of years. There are kids out there who need what we have to offer.
Hearing arguments like Rider’s ill-thought-out but invulnerable opinions here is beyond frustrating, because it’s that kind of ignorant posturing that is keeping us from the privilege of trying to raise a happy, healthy child.
If you’re going to try to keep kids in foster care, instead of uniting them with families that want them, you’d better have a convincing, cogent argument as to why that’s better for the kids.
Now you’re just coming across as frustrated.
And you’re coming across as whiny, petulant, and completely and thoroughly beaten.
Defend your argument, or hie thee hence, varlet.
But I’m not insulting you because you disagree with me.
Rider, what exactly is the position by which you stand?
I’m asking this because, unlike Mr Visible, I don’t have a horse in this race, but because I do care deeply about people generally and about kids needing homes and about gay people facing abuse through misunderstanding in particular.
If you’re standing by the “every kid deserves the best possible home” position, I’m there with you. The problem there is that every kid is not going to get the ideal Ward-and-June-Cleaver nuclear family – there are too many minority, special needs, gay, or other not-ideal kids for the relatively small group of “Cleavers” prepared to adopt them.
If it’s that, because you feel that gay prospective parents will not make ideal families and the kids may face problems, you believe they should be legally barred from adopting, we have issues.
If it’s that you don’t think gay people will usually make good parents and therefore have the personal opinion that they should not adopt, but you are not prepared to stand in the way of those gay people who disagree with you and want to adopt, then we can peaceably agree to disagree.
And a note to our esteemed gay posters: Though it’s usually made an issue by those who want to tar everyone with the same brush, a quick look at porn sites would clue anyone in to the fact that there are at least a small group of gay men who are “chickenhawks” and would adopt gay teens with ulterior sexual motives behind their ostensible reasons. Scott Dickenson alluded to this. Now, obviously, the overwhelming majority of gay people I know, IRL and online, don’t fall into that subset (I think I knew one person out of several hundred who would fit that category). But it’s an issue that you need to address in debates (here or in public advocacy) on this question, if only to counteract the anti-gay rhetoric that would make all of you out to be what only a miniscule minority are.
I hope I have not offended any of the gay people whom I know and care about here by saying that – but the issue does exist, albeit not to anything like the degree that the Falwells of the land would claim, and it needs to be addressed honestly and dealt with in order to make your quite valid case.
Scott also pointed out the problem of gay teens, many of whom are “in the system” after being thrown out of or running away from homophobic households, as well as the normal proportion of any population, including kids awaiting adoption, who are gay. That issue is one that I have pondered about – if we did any more fostering or sought to adopt, I’d want to take in and provide a good home for such a kid.
Polycarp, I am closest to the "“every kid deserves the best possible home” camp (no pun intended), but am aware of the shortcomings. I’m not critical of Gays per se, but am concerned about external influences of the mainstream society that will marginalize the adoptees and throw them from one frying pan into another.
Sorry to double post, but just to add that I am not saying they should be “legally barred”, only that my above points should be taken into serious consideration in the judical process.
Of course this is a consideration. But, just as only a small percentage of the heterosexual population are child molesters, only a small percentage of the homosexual population are child molesters. There are already mechanisms in place to weed out unfit parents in the adoption process; the background checks would make the FBI jealous, and the home studies are pretty intense looks into the personal lives of the prospective adoptive parents. There is no reason to believe that these methods of weeding out unfit parents will be any less suitable for use on gay people than they currently are on straight people.
I’m not asking for the government to start giving out kids to gay people as if they were food stamps; I’m asking that gay people be evaluated as prospective adoptive parents by the same criteria as straight people are.
My feelings on the matter are that gays should be allowed to adopt, but I also think that they should follow heterosexual, married couples in the pecking order. I think the ideal set of parents for a child is, generally speaking, a married man and woman. Why married? The stability, silly. Why a man and woman? Ah, there’s the part that’s probably going to upset a lot of folks.
Contrary to what a lot will have you believe, man and woman are not the same creature. They are not psychologically identical. They bring different traits to the table, and complement each other - yin and yang, so to speak. By having a father and a mother, a child is exposed to a wider variety of skills and insights than either two fathers or two mothers can provide. In the same way that the ideal football team isn’t composed of 22 runningbacks - even 22 immensely talented running backs - the ideal parenting team is not composed of two men or two women.
Of course, this isn’t to say that a gay couple can’t do a good job, or that every gay couple is inferior to every hetero couple. It’s simply another factor that I think should be considered, along with financial security, along with relationship status, along with the personalities of the prospective parents. All things being equal, I think a straight couple could do a better job. But all things never are equal, of course, and with the high number of parentless children out there, I think it’s foolish to prevent gay people, as a class, from adopting. Nevertheless, I still feel it best that they not be at the top of the list.
Jeff