Gay and Lesbian Adoption
Catherine & David,
Thanks for your reply. I will be quite busy responding.
So first let me just make some overall comments about gay adoption. I'll address individual studies later.
The professional consensus regarding gays, lesbians and children is exemplified by this from the Am Psychological Ass'n web site.
The page has other "Answers to Your Questions About Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality" that are worth reading. I refer you to the first question, "What is Sexual Orientation." Please note the sexual orientation, an emotional arousal reaction, is distinct from sexual behavior. Willfully confounding these two is a common way to arrive at intentionally misleading conclusions about gays.
Organizations which support gay and lesbian children are listed here.
In addition, the American Academy of Pediatrics supports second parent adoption for gay and lesbian couples.
All fifty states and DC allow gay foster parents and all states and DC except Florida allow gay adoptions. These homes are investigated and monitored by the appropriate state agencies. Florida, too, allowed gay adoptions until 1977 when singer Anita Bryant successfully led a campaign to have the law changed.
Here is a web site with a Florida gay couple and the five children they raised in foster care.
This is the couple involved in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals case you mentioned. I agree there is no "right" to be an adoptive parent, family court judges should have great leeway in these matters. Excluding a whole class of people as no other state does seems regrettable. Gays in particular seem more willing to take children with HIV, "crack" babies, and those suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. We need "those individuals whom [the court] deems most capable of parenting adoptive children and providing them with a secure environment." Yet all 32 of the studies which compared children raised by gay or lesbian couples with those raised by comparable opposite sex couples, there hasn't been even one that suggests that the former do not do as well as the latter. The latest study is reported here.
Included in the Eleventh Circuit's 2-1 decision was recess appointed Judge William Pryor. Alone among other out of state Attorneys General, he submitted a particularly nasty anti-gay amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Lawrence v Texas supporting the states anti-sodomy laws. He suggested that any kind of homosexual activity is bad and the states have the right to prohibit it. With extreme views like this, how could he fairly judge the Florida adoption case? If he believes that gays are intrinsically evil, of course he's going to keep children away from them. No amount of objective evidence that shows that gays make fit parents is going to persuade him otherwise. More about Judge Pryor is here.
All states allow gay foster care and all states but Florida have permitted gay adoptions for decades. If there were negative consequences to this, surely someone would have noticed and reported it by now. We must separate the anti-gay rhetoric from the facts of the matter. More later, Love, Dad
posted by Bill Ware @ 8:09 AM
3 Comments:
From The Innate-Immutable Argument Finds No Basis in Science
-- What is clear, however, is that the scientific attempts to demonstrate that homosexual attraction is biologically determined have failed. The major researchers now prominent in the scientific arena-themselves gay activists-have in fact arrived at such conclusions. --
Also, to point to a "profesional concensus" on a matter that is so divided among the community is spurious.
From the American College of Pediatrics (who formed because of a scientific disagreement over this issue)
-- Heterosexual parenting is the normative model upon which most comprehensive longitudinal research on childrearing has been based. Data on long-term outcomes for children placed in homosexual households are very limited and the available evidence reveals grave concerns. Those current studies that appear to indicate neutral to favorable results from homosexual parenting have critical flaws such as non-longitudinal design, inadequate sample size, biased sample selection, lack of proper controls, and failure to account for confounding variables.2,3,4 Childrearing studies have consistently indicated that children are more likely to thrive emotionally, mentally, and physically in a home with two heterosexual parents versus a home with a single parent. 5,6,7,8,9 Therefore, the burden is on the proponents of homosexual parenting to prove that moving further away from the heterosexual parenting model is appropriate and safe for children. --
To follow the references, please use the link provided above to the page cited.
Those who suggest that sexual orientation is not an inborn trait base their strawman argument on the fact that their is no evidence for a "gay gene." A specific gene for homosexuality is completely unnecessary as I have pointed out in Genetic Basis for Sexual Orientation.
Those who deny that gays exist rely on Freud's idle speculations which were discredited decades ago. An "overbearing father." How quaint.
I totally agree that a child raised by his/her two married biological parents is ideal and should be constantly promoted. The question that a fair and just society has to address is how do we adjust to the 4%-5% of our citizens who are unable to form bonds of love and affection with those of the opposite sex because they are only attracted to those of the same gender.
Those who suggest that sexual orientation is not an inborn trait base their strawman argument on the fact that their is no evidence for a "gay gene."
First, there is no evidence for a gay-gene that is true. But there is also no evidence that any genetic basis causes innate and immutable sexual orientation one way or the other.
Those who deny that gays exist rely on Freud's idle speculations
News to me.
The search for the "true homosexual" is often a game of faith rather than science. It is shown that influences such as strong fathers role in the home (based on reasearch, not idle' speculation), whether or not they were molested or otherwise abused as children, have a large part to do with the sexual orientation of the person. The search for the "true homosexual" is mearly one of trying to control for such known external factors to find one that isn't.
That is of course what you mean by "gays exist", is it not? We all know that homosexuality exists and people practice that. But that isn't what you mean, and you are attempting to rule them out also? You turn it from a science into a search for BigFoot. Something you are so sure exists that the evidence discrediting your faith is thrown aside as mearly discrediting imposters.
So when you say 4-5% how many of those are imposters and how many are real gays? How do you know?
You can of course accomodate them as "handicapped", but as even the most adament of GLBT advocates will admit homosexuality is not a handicap.
Or you can decide that since it is a different relationship, with different capacities inherent to the natural physical makeup of the couple, that it should be at least called another name so that both (or all three ifyou want to get down to it) can be succored by the government according to their special needs. Of course, the idea of Uncle Sam succoring romantic relationships is a hurdle in its own right.
Post a Comment
<< Home