Yes we should be able to adopt a child. Plan and simple.
Whilst researching a reply to include cites, it was extremely difficult to find evidence against this that was not religious. In fact the only cite I was able to find that gave any semblance of pro/con was an article with a poll found on About.com.
Personally, I am definitely in favour of allowing gay/lesbian adoptions.
From the OP, we see argument 1 being that children should be raised in a normal family. What the heck is normal nowadays? Even my upbringing was highly dysfunctional despite mom/dad/sibling components. Knowing what my family was like, seeing the horrific way my sister has attempted to raise her 2 kids (don’t even get me started on that mess!) and the way society is going today, there is no reason a long-term same sex relationship would be of detriment to the child. As long as they are being loved and given the basics of life… who should prevent this child from receiving it? It’s a hell of a lot better than being in State care for years rather than being adopted by someone who is able to love them.
The argument about children needing role models from both sexes is just preposterous. It in fact perpetuates the gender stereotypes that people are attempting to break down. Moms should be this way (June Cleaverish). Dads have to be this way… No. I am sorry but this is wrong. It is the fundamentalists who are trying to force people to remain in the days of yore. (Google here to see the countless religious websites in support of this comment). Children need love. Regardless of from whom. In a single parent relationship, should the child(ren) be taken away because the other sex is not present? Just let them be.
Yes, in school they may experience a bit of teasing, but then again this could be from jealousy rather than detest. When I was teaching I saw children tease others who were from same sex families. When I approached the child who had done the teasing to find out why one case was because the child was from a single parent household and was jealous this other child had 2 parents… Yes the same sex, but at least there were two daddies. Another occasion it was because his parents had taught the child that it was just plain wrong and disgusting to have 2 moms/dads so this child just perpetuated the hate by teasing another.
In Northern California I have many gay and lesbian friends. My best friend was approached by the State to adopt a small boy of 3 because the worker knew the relationship he was in was solid (10 years +) and that he would make a great father to this child. A couple I know adopted a brother and sister. These kids get the best love and attention – better than anything I ever received or one HELL of a lot better than anything my niece and nephew receive. They receive attention not only from the fellas, but also from their friends – male and female, gay and straight.
I like jjimm’s counter that
Besides, how many times have we read or seen news stories about a normal family man or woman discovering they were gay… It is not a disease or a virus that one can catch. When you Google ‘Gay Gene’ you get over 240,000 hits, which shows you people are looking into the genetics of it. However, until the complete DNA is broken down, we will not know for sure whether or not it is genetic. Regardless, does it matter when it comes to the love and attention an adopting family can give a child? I think not.
I would rather be in a gay family than in an institution or State home. Love is love, regardless of where is comes from.
All these positive opinions, it’s very heartwarming. We’ve come a long way. If the SDMB had existed 20 years ago, and this question had been posted, I think there would be far more negative responses 
As to the OP, my response is a most definite yes. There’s been a lot written about how children are best raised in “traditional” families, but if you go back 150 years, that “traditional” family – mother, father, 2.4 children, etc. – vanishes, and you have the “extended” family – all surviving relatives from one branch of the family tree in one household, and anyone who could help in raising the kids did. Family units change.
Having two same-sex parents is probably easier on both parent and child than being raised by a single parent, and the large circle of close friends many gays and lesbians tend to develop as a sort of support-system is probably the closest you could get these days to that idea of an extended family.
The kids would always know they were wanted. And they’d have a broader perspective of life early on.
In response to the question in the OP, the answer in Canada increasingly is “Yes.”
As far as I can tell, a gay or lesbian couple can adopt a child in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia, which I believe in terms of population includes over half of Canada. As well, I believe that Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador are indicating that they will introduce amending legislation for gay adoptions in the near future.
I’d like to throw out this scenario…
Let’s imagine a heterosexual, two parent family, but with the roles reversed. The female in the relationship happens to be a high profile prosecuting attorney in a big city. She makes more than enough to support the family. The father is more the stay-at-home type and has a flair for cooking and loves to keep house.
Mother went to college and law school thru an ROTC scholarship. She was a mechanic for tanks whilst in the service. Father went to a small, private liberal arts college and has a degree in English. His hobby is botany and he has a real green thumb when it comes to gardening.
Most (if any) adoption agencies wouldn’t give a 2nd thought to letting children be adopted by this couple. Yet a gay coulple (either two men or two women) would be frowned upon because they “wouldn’t provide the proper role models” for the children.
The role reversal I’ve done might not be common, but is certainly conceivable within the US today (and possibly England, tho I’m not absolutely sure).
I think an argument about “proper role models” is specious.
Freyr I certainly understand this scenario, expecially because I live it. The hubby and I have agreed that in the future when we have sprogs that he will be the one who stays home with them. Not that I don’t want to, but because I enjoy working so much.
However, I can see how this is very similar to a gay couple. It is quite interesting. I had not thought of this.
Food for thought this lovely bright Sunday morning.
I think the most Utopian ideal for any child is to be with their two loving, biological parents who have a wonderful, supportive relationship, don’t fight or argue, treat their child with full respect, make sure it is happy, healthy, and educated.
But life isn’t the Waltons (or whatever).
Nearly all families deviate from this Utopian ideal - it can’t even be described as a “norm” any more, if it ever could.
In its place, the best thing is to have one or two parents who are loving and supportive of each other (if a couple) and loving and supportive of their child/children.
When we allow neglectful, drug-addicted, abusive, irresponsible unloving people to have and keep their kids, how could we not allow loving, giving parents to have a child, whatever their gender/fertility status?
The only reservations I have ever had on this is the fact that a male/female marriage is a more natural marriage in terms of bearing offspring than a male/male female/female marriage. But in the grand scheme of things, this is a tiny thing compared to the overwhelming arguments that support gay adoption.
I think the problem here is that we are thinking about sex too much - what gays do (conservative moral ick factor for some people) rather than the main fact, which is just that they are two people of the same gender.
What we should be comparing the situation to is a child being brought up by its mother and aunt, eg because its father died in a war, say, or a child being brought up by a father and uncle. In neither case would we ever advocate taking the child away because its two main carers were of the same gender, and there was no heterosexual symbol for it to “learn” from.
Oh? So if a Muslim (or Wiccan, or Jewish) couple wanted to adopt in an area known for religious intolerance, the fact that the adopted child could be made fun of should be grounds to disqualify people on the basis of religion? What about adoptive parents of minority ethnicities?
You go on to say:
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How is it going to become commonplace if it is not allowed on the very grounds that it is not commonplace? This is just bad reasoning. Intolerance should not be grounds to discriminate in adoption cases.
Fluiddruid, I did actually offer my thoughts on the commonplace issue if you scroll to my first post and read the paragraph directly under the one you quoted.
As for the religion comparison, I think this is already commonplace and therefore any teasing would already be at a low (where I live anyway). It is an interesting thought though. I guess it all depends on what is accepted as normal in different places. Hopefully, it won’t be long until all this stupidness is a thing of the past and new parents for kids needing a home are chosen purely on who are the best people to offer a happy home.
Is there no one that thinks gay couples shouldn’t adopt? In the light of everything that’s already been said I’d be interested to hear their reasons. I can’t imagine that the world has yet become so enlightened that no one disagrees, or even that there’s no one who will defend this point of view here.
I suspect that no one is disagreeing because many of those who might wish to do so don’t wish to get “piled on” (and SDMB history suggests that it’d be likely to happen).
Me, I’m with jjimm et alia; my main concern is the lack of a formal commitment in the relationship, an issue which could be resolved by legalizing gay marriages. Which is not to say that I think unmarried couples of whatever configuration couldn’t be good adoptive parents, merely that it complicates things both at the adoption stage and later should the couple separate for whatever reason.
Well, you know. If someone came into a thread about scientific cosmology and claimed that the Earth is a flat disk ringed by mountains, floating on a sea of liquid nitrogen, they’d be “piled on”, too. And for pretty much the same reason.
jayjay
They should be allowed to adopt gay kids!!
A lot of places aren’t like where you live, then. I know religious intolerance is alive and well in many areas (even relatively cosmopolitan ones).
I just don’t think it’s a good idea to validate prejudice by institutionalizing reactions to it and molding the rights of individuals accordingly. If a gay couple or a Muslim couple or whomever can adopt in a big city, they should be able to adopt in suburbia or rural areas as well. I just don’t think that the acts of others (intolerance and teasing) should be cause to disqualify an otherwise qualified couple.
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I wouldn’t hold my breath, if I were you.
You’re absolutely right, Fluiddruid, we don’t want to validate any stupid prejudice in any way and in an ideal world we never would. I do believe we are getting better on such issues as a species.
What I am saying is it is not always so clear where to make a moral stand and where we’re going to cause more harm than good. For example, if we had a small town that was widely against the idea of gay couples adopting, and there was a straight couple and a gay couple, both perfectly good loving families, offering a child a home, it may save the child (and possibly the parents) a degree of bullying by choosing the straight couple. Now that is unfair and discriminative, but when you put that against the child getting the stick from the controversy, the moral stand doesn’t always add up as right. Of course, we will have to make the stand somewhere, but my thoughts are it should be a slow and steady progress to change peoples prejudices rather than just going for it and throwing the pioneers in the deep end. There are many areas in the world where gay couples adopting is rightly seen as perfectly acceptable, and as we move on as a society these areas will expand in numbers. People will see that gay couples can make excellent parents and the unfounded worries were stupid. Eventually, the right idea will sneak up on the people of the prejudice small town because neighbouring towns have many gay couples adopting, and little Billy’s best friend has two loving mothers or fathers with no adverse affects. Then will be the right time for the small town IMO. There are currently many places already at that right time, so it is a battle that can be won.
I don’t know if I’ve explained myself very well, but that’s my take on the subject. What do gay people think about it? Am I being offensive, because I’m certainly not meaning to be?
How about if the birthmother chooses the gay couple over the straight couple? Many, many adoptions are open now, where the birthmother chooses the adoptive family.
What if the straight couple has characteristics that are also “teasable?” Dad weighs 660 pounds? Mom’s hobby is siding the house with bottlecaps?
Perhaps I should change my name to “the iconoclast.” It’s funny, I feel very in touch with the zeitgeist, but I always seem to be breaking the ice on one thread or another. Am I missing a shame gene?
I am one of those aforementioned non-religious people, in fact a libertarian atheist, who believes in Homosexual rights – i.e., the right to be left alone and practice whatever they’d like behind closed doors, but that right must be measured when it begins to affects others. As soon as you bring a third party into the picture, it does matter what you practice, and that should be kept in mind with regards to the gay ‘right’ of adoption.
Of course, there is no ‘right’ to adoption. I had a child up for adoption – should we allow drug users to adopt? Obviously, and emotionally, the answer is no. Domestic abusers? No. Broken families? No. An unmarried couple? Probably not. Single parents? If we had to. Single gender? Again, not our first choice. Admit that we all already make, as a society, decisions about who and who is not appropriate for adoption – then all you’re left with is how badly does it hurt a child to be raised gay?
For instance, doesn’t everyone here disprove of single-parent households on the grounds it hurts the children? Of course, study after study has proven that the presence of an effective role model of both genders is psychically critical to the development of children. It doesn’t follow that we believe this advantage disappears when we’ve got a second type of one gender. Do we wish to purposely put kids at that much of a disadvantage? Admittedly, if you change the criteria to be would we rather the kids remain unadopted than have less-than-perfect parents, I believe that to be a false choice. Suppose the kid has to wait another month for the best parenting our government can arrange – wouldn’t that be the right choice?
Further, growing up in a gay household, IMHO, is more likely to raise gay children, as the existing studies seem quite flawed
http://www.eppc.org/books/xq/ASP/bookID.39/qx/book_viewdetail.htm
Just as clearly, some gays can choose. (Hello, Ellen Degeneres!) some percentage of the current gay populace came about from formative experiences in their youth. Some gay rights acknowledge that a greater percentage of gay kids ‘might’ be raised, only to change the argument – “Why should that be a bad thing?”. Here’s why: To do this is using children to socially engineer gay power and acceptance. Whatever you might think of gay acceptance, using children as pawns is vile. Where would we draw that line at this kind of ‘breeding’ engineering? What if I was to say I’m a bigot, I want to raise more bigots so that all this damn tolerance gets stamped out? Should we allow that?
Consider this – Are most posters are no doubt aware, some Lesbians are misandrist, to the point of refusing to adopt boys, and having only female dogs. (ok, bitches) Would you allow this sort of bigotry to be raised? Again, where do you draw the line? Racists who only adopt white kids, and want to raise them racist?
Let’s put down the emotionally charged social engineering debate for a moment, to take up my second point. In adoption, as elsewhere, the children’s needs should be primary. I maintain that children brought up by single gender households are injured psychically and should not be put on equal footing with dual gender parents. Ditto for single parents, or for tenuous marriages, and to the extent that insufficient quality adopters exist, those socially valuable adopters should be rewarded.
Further injuries possible towards the gay adoptees. Would there not be gender confusion – a gay kid brought up in a straight household can experience terrible confusion and rejection from his straight parents. And with gay parents that would happen, according to the gay gene theory, 96% of the time. Do we want thousands of closeted straight teens?
Thirdly under this count, there will always be bigotry towards the minority. It isn’t right, but the world isn’t fair, and we have to deal with it as it exists. Should we expose more children to this kind of bigotry, and possibly violent abuse?
Of course, there will always be unfit straight parents, as there isn’t a socially approved mechanism for vetting the natural procreative process. This doesn’t give the Gay & Lesbian community an entitlement to be equally unfit parents.
For the above reasons, I oppose gay adoption.
On the other hand, Racer, if everybody waits until something is “acceptable” to the cultural mores, no progress ever gets made.
I was accelerated in school and am of small stature and slight build – this resulted in my being teased unmercifully. While there is still a small residue of anger about it, it has brought me two things: personal strength of character, and an abiding “righteous wrath” against bullies generally and for whatever reason.
The kid should go to the available family that best fills his needs. JR8 raises one problem with a gay couple as currently constituted, and identifies the solution to that problem, although I doubt those who have problems with gay-couple adoptions would listen.
I see what you’re saying, Polycarp, and I agree for the most part, but I do think the “slowly slowly” approach can sometimes be more appropriate when it comes down to children’s lives. I guess there is no right or wrong answer for this as it depends entirely on the situation. Also, there are some good and bad points for both decisions. It seems some kind of balance is needed.
At this moment in time, every case should be looked at carefully in my opinion, and the best choice made for the child. I do still stick by my earlier points fully, but hopefully none of this will be necessary in the not too distant future.
Good points, Dangerosa, and all should be considered when a decision is made. It’s all down to the situation in the individual places, I guess. I’m just trying to say that the child should ultimately come before political correctness, but we should work towards proper equality. In the fictional small town I used as my example, large men may be then norm. The point was the town didn’t accept gay couples adopting. You could just as easily bring up a town that accepted gay couples adopting, but were prejudice against 660 pound people adopting. Perfectly good example, but my point would be reversed.