Should gay couples be able to adopt?

Great Debates
1

Today an amendment is being put before the British Parliament to the effect that, while unmarried couples should be allowed to adopt children, gay couples should not be allowed.

I see myself as a liberal, and while I’m slightly uncomfortable with the idea, on closer examination, I can see no logical reason for excluding gay couples. The argurments I’ve heard against go something like this:

Children should be raised in a ‘normal’ family.
What the hell is a normal family? Hardly any of the kids in any of my wife’s classes (she’s a teacher) have the traditional mother-father-2.4-children upbringing. All are in single-parent families, have step-siblings, half-siblings, have parents with boy/ girlfriends etc. This may not be ideal, but it’s a fact of life that with divorce rates climbing nothing is stable. Why should a committed gay couple be any less stable than a comitted heterosexual couple?

A child needs role-models from both sexes.
Obviously not true, I know plenty of intelligent, well-adjusted adults, men and women, raised in single-parent families. That’s not to say that all those raised in such families are well-adjusted, just that being in such a family does not inevitably lead to problems.

I’m not even going to bother with the argument that a boy given a gay couple as parents is more likely to grow up as gay, it isn’t worth the time or space.

It’s got to be better for a child to be raised in a loving, caring, stable family with two parents (of whatever sexual orientation) than to be raised in care.

The only problem that I can see is one of teasing at school. If two men turn up for parent’s evenings I’ve no doubt that the child would hear about the following day. Having said that, if it isn’t parents it could easily be something else, clothes, hairstyle, the fact that they work hard at school maybe.

Well, what do we think? I’m against gay couples being excluded.

One small request, on the basis of the fundamental disagreement that exists over religion (i.e. Prove to me that God doesn’t exist in another thread) can we keep religion out of it?

2

Hi Nerrie,

An argument against any non-married couple adopting is that, without a public declaration of committment (i.e. a marriage certificate), there is statistically a higher proportion of break-up; even with relatively high levels of divorce, married couples are more likely to remain together (don’t have a cite, but they were quoted on Radio 4 this weekend).

The second argument against is that the “gay lifestyle” would adversely affect the child, or even “turn the child gay”. Unfortunately, I don’t know where you’d find stats to show whether there was any basis in this assertion.

My counters to both are: 1. let gay couples marry, and you’ve solved that one. 2. (Nearly) every gay person was born of a heterosexual relationship - clearly their parents’ lifestyle choice did not “turn them straight”.

I get the feeling that a lot of the opposition to gay adoption is based in gut prejudice, but cloaked in specious argument.

3

Sadly, probably not - I think that that is the prime reason behind this kind of decision. Religiously Conservative people feel that homosexuality is wrong and a learned behavior, and therefore do not want children raised in a home that would “turn them gay” (as jjimm put it). Therefore thier religious beliefs are the only foundation thier objections have.

Gp

4

I think you’re right about the prejudice thing: I must admit that my first thought was that it wasn’t right, but I could come up with no valid reasons why.

The reason for the amendment (also on R4 this morning) is that there aren’t enough people adopting children, and thus keeping them out of care. The family of any child, adopted or not, could break up. Surely it’s better to get them into a loving home?

5

Another point about “turning them gay”. As my wife pointed out this morning, gay parents are not going to turn their kids gay, but at least they wouldn’t be ashamed to admit it if they were.

6

Extrapolating from that, it might therefore be shown that gay parents would produce a statistically higher proportion of gay children than straight couples - despite the reasons - thus fuelling the fires of anti-gay adoption.

However, in the absence of any data, that’s pure speculation.

7

**

The only good reason I can think of is that they can’t get married in this country. I think married couples should receive higher priority for kids then unmarried couples. Of course I’d like gay couples to be free to marry.

**

Every single last one of them are in single parent households? Is this some sort of inner city phenomenon found in England?

**

It has been my experience that married couples are a bit more stable then unmarried couples. Of course my observations are anecdotal and if you have information otherwise I’d love to hear it.

**

Cite? Supposedly there are statistics to show that kids, particularly boys, from single parent households are more likely to drop out of high school or have problems with the law. I think you might be underestimating how much about being a boy or a girl a child learns from his parents.

**

Is it possible that kids raised in two parent households are less likely to go to jail, drop out of school, or take drugs?

**

I’d agree. A stable family unit is important.

I’m against them being excluded as well.

Marc

8

Which would be better for a child? Being raised by 2 people who had to jump through a lot of hoops for the priviledge, or being warehoused in an orphanage till he/she turns 18? I’m thinking the former…

9

I’d love to see some cites for the assertions which have been made here…

10

Hmmm…Seems to me the best argument about “child turning gay” issue isn’t that childs turn gay despite heterosexual parents, or that there isn’t evidences that kids raised by homesexuals would be more likely to become gay.

The best argument, IMO, would be :
Even assuming that kids raised by homosexuals are more likely to turn gay themselves…so what? Why would it be an issue?

11

As the law stands at this moment in the UK, single gay people who are part of a long-standing relationship can adopt- and do so- but only as an individual. The law change will only allow both aprtners to take parental responsibility, rather than only one of them having it.

12

I think the only valid argument against gay couples adopting is the teasing and bullying mentioned in the OP.

Let’s face it, the child is the most important thing here, not political correctness or rights, however unfair the situation. Kids are cruel. The way things stand at the moment there would surely be some kind of bullying and teasing going on in the schoolyard (IMO). Worse still, until gay couples adopting is commonplace the child may grow up feeling different to everyone else.

While it’s grossly unfair, and I have no doubt gay couples would make excellent parents, I feel it would be a little unfair on the child until the world becomes a little more tolerant. What we really need is for this to become normal. But then it will never become normal until a sizable amount of children have been adopted by gay couples with no adverse affects. The trouble is, the only way to do this would be to start the ball rolling with a few children getting adopted at first… but this would almost certainly (IMO) lead to these kids getting teased etc. Can we justify sacrificing these kids to break the mould? (I hate that I used the word “sacrificing” there, but I couldn’t think of an alternative.)

Reading back, this post seems a little harsh. I really would like gay couples to be able to adopt the same as anyone, and I hope people can see what I’m trying to say rather than think I’m gay bashing.

13

Of course, we have so much data about married gay couples staying together…(unless the UK has had gay marriage laws in place for a long time and for some reason we’ve never heard about them over here in the US).

Kids get teased. If you have gay parents, your peers will tease you about that. Have an ugly mom, kids tease you about that. Yet we let ugly women adopt. Don’t have enough money to dress in the “right” clothes - get teased - but we let people adopt who don’t have money to burn.

One of the most popular girls in my son’s class has two mom’s. She doesn’t get teased. She’s a great girl. Currently her family is the schools “family of the month.” Walk into school and there are pictures of her and her two moms all over the wall.

Which brings up the other point - gay people have kids. Lesbians have them relatively easily (I know lots of Lesbian parents), but it isn’t unknown for gay men to have kids either.

We shouldn’t let people adopt who don’t understand adoption and its special challenges. We shouldn’t let people adopt who are abusive. But when we start getting into the sex lives of the parents, it becomes hard to justify why we are looking there.

14

http://www.aclu.org/issues/gay/parent.html

http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html

Here are some stats on gay and lesbian parents. One relevant quote from the apa website:

15

I believe there are some studies which suggest that the ideal situation for a child is one in which there are two loving parents and which includes role models from both sexes. However, I don’t have cites to prove this.

The problems mentioned above of boys from single-parent households (which I would hypothecate are largely those where the parents are single mothers) may be less the absence of a male role model than the problem of having only one caregiver, who has needs of her (or his) own and requires an income – often resulting in time conflicts when job expectations and child’s parenting needs are irresoluble. In short, a second caregiver, which need not be the child’s father, would on my guess alleviate the stress on both parent and child from this situation.

I think it’s the rare single-sex household which does not have a suitable role model of the opposite sex at hand – woman friend of a gay male couple, father of a single mother and hence the child’s grandfather, etc.

Although the request was made to leave religion out of it, I feel it’s safe to say that the only serious arguments against a gay couple adopting are based either on religious belief or on prejudice (which need not be totally disjunctive) that such a family is not “moral” in terms of providing the child with a healthy environment in which to grow up. The answer to this is of course that it’s the moral example of the parenting individual(s), irrespective of their sexuality, which provides or fails to provide that environment, and that only by automatically defining a gay couple as “immoral” by its very nature, do you conclude that they cannot provide a healthy environment.

We have at least one example here on this board of a gay father (and a gay mother in the same family) IMHO providing a healthy role model for his kids (and IIRC she as well, on his testimony). I will leave him to speak for himself on this issue if he so chooses, however.

16

Happily, probably so - though I bely that with this post. I have a wealth of (admittedly only anecdotal) evidence that indicates that religious beliefs are almost coincidental to the issue of gay tolerance (and specifically, gay adoption).

I’m not advocating that position, but to be fair, you just gave two non-religious reasons: homosexuals choose to be homosexual, and that children would adopt this choice from their parents. The only explicitly religious aspect you mention is the moral status of homosexuality. I have (again only anecdotal) evidence that many people (both religious and non-religious) actually object to homosexuality on the grounds that it’s “sick” or “icky”.

Be careful of the sort of reasoning that would cause you to conclude that homophobic beliefs are caused by membership in the country’s most conservative political party.

I completely agree that that is the best as most correct argument, clairobscur. I usually respond to the issue of whether homosexuals are born or choose to be gay (for instance) with “so-frickin-what?”.

I’m not sure that it’s the best as in most effective argument. People do believe that homosexuality is “wrong” for all kinds of bizarre reasons. Changing that will be hard. Allowing gay adoption (and marriage) is an immediate policy step that can help those people see where their thinking has gone wrong regarding homosexuality.

kg m²/s²

17

Forgive me if I’m misreading things here, but saying religiously conservative people feel that homosexuality is learned is not the same things as believing that. I’m sure that a homosexuality gene has been found, or a certain part of a gene which predisposes one to homosexuality (sorry, no cites). That means that a homosexual person chooses homosexuality no more than they choose their sex. That, surely, means that living with homosexual parents will have no meaningful effect one the sexuality of the child.

18

I can’t tell if you’re misreading things, because I don’t fully understand your reading. You asked that we keep religious beliefs out of the discussion. grimpixie opined that it might not be possible because religion is the only objection most people have to homosexuality. I disagree with grimpixie, and counter-opined that I think we can (leave religion out of the discussion) because there are at least two non-religious beliefs that can be directly attacked.

There seem to be three propositions that together lead to the conclusion that gay adoption is bad public policy:

  1. Sexual orientation is chosen
  2. Children will mimic their parents’ sexual orientation
  3. Homosexuality is wrong

I don’t know of any mainstream religion that insists on 1 and 2 as religious tenets. I do know of several decidedly non-religious people that believe such things. We can directly address these (mis)conceptions in a spirit of fighting ignorance without requiring that anyone suffer a crisis of faith or reject their religious beliefs.

3 is often (sadly) inextricably entwined in a person’s religious beliefs, though (equally?) often has nothing to do with any religious conviction. I’m not sure that an effective gay rights strategy is to directly attack the wide variety of religious and non-religious beliefs in question.

19

Actually, grimpixie said “prime”, not “only”. I mischaracterized the position out of carelessness, not malice. I apologize.

20

Sure. But i don’t expect that a law allowing homosexuals to adopt children has much chance to be supported by people who clearly believe that homosexuality is wrong.

On the other hand, I believe that there are many people, who support homosexual rights but still struggle with this child issue. (As demonstrated by this thread, where nobody said that homosexuality was wrong, but where nevertheless, the “will the cildren turn gay?” issue has been debated).

For these people (who, I assume, tend to not have an issue, at least intellectually with homosexuality, but are still somewhat uneased on the emotionnal level), it could be a decisive argument. And these people who in some way “sit on the fence”, would propably be the ones able to move the scale in the right direction. I don’t really expect people who state “homosexuality is wrong” to change their mind about adoption, whatever could be the argumlent presented, anyway.

I myself only recently switched to the “allow adoptions” side (my issue was with this woman/man model thing, roughly). Before, I wasn’t sure, and since I also thought it will happen anyway given the evolution in our societies, I didn’t really care and felt comfortable on my fence.