10 ms·

All in all, a great essay. But: >I’m conflicted about whether gay couples should be allowed to adopt. Why on earth shouldn't a gay couple be allowed to adopt?

natrius 17y ago
If the demand for adoption outstrips supply, and if (big if) a man and a woman parent substantially better than two people of the same gender, it might make sense to have a blanket preference for heterosexual couples when choosing parents. There could be something innate in each gender that contributes to a child's upbringing, and depending on the value of those traits, it could be responsible to maximize the number of children who benefit from both.
- count 17y ago
  What is 'parent substantially better'?
  - natrius 17y ago
    Therein lies the rub. It is logically possible. It is practically unlikely.
- wdewind 17y ago
  BIG if
  - dejb 17y ago
    It is an arrangement that is extremely uncommon through most of human history/evolution so it seems reasonable to believe that humans may not be well adapted to brought up by gay couples. You could argue that the lack of genetic relationship to the parents overwhelms any difference between heterosexual and homosexual couples. But on balance it is not difficult to see why being reared be both a male and female parent could have advantages. Additionally to this you could imagine a scenario where the genes that tended to increase heterosexuality also played a part in being a naturally 'good parent'. Of course all these 'first assumptions' could and should be replaced by actual evidence and I know there is some of that. However I'd argue that studies and statistics to date are likely to be biased by the additional hurdles placed in front of gay couples. Only the very best and most dedicated gay couples are likely to allowed to adopt. I'm not arguing that this justifies a blanket ban, but a degree of caution seems to make sense.
    - aphyr 17y ago
      Luckily, plenty of gay couples have tried raising kids, and they do just fine, thank you very much. :) http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx "Beliefs that lesbian and gay adults are not fit parents likewise have no empirical foundation."
      - dejb 17y ago
        I have no doubt that many gay couples do quite well at raising children. I would however put those cases were one of the biological parents was present in a different category to what we are talking about (which I suspect is your case). > "Beliefs that lesbian and gay adults are not fit parents likewise have no empirical foundation." As I argued in my post, most studies are likely to effected by selection bias so it is going to be tough to get a solid "empirical foundation" either way. The real question is who should have the burden of evidence? Should we say that 'until gay couples are proven to be good parents we won't allow adoption' or 'unless it is proven that gay couples are bad parents they should have identical adoption rights'. I don't think either is sensible position and some sort of middle ground would be best as more evidence accumulates.
        wdewind 17y ago
        Why do gay parents need to prove their parenting abilities when no one else does? Where are your empirical studies on straight parents being good parents, or "better" than gay parents? What is your definition of a good parent, anyway? What is your definition of "natural" (as in "naturally good parents")? We shouldn't do either of those options, they are both total horseshit. It's not a matter of what rule we should adopt, it's a matter of should we adopt a rule at all. And no, we shouldn't.
        dejb 17y ago
        > Why do gay parents need to prove their parenting abilities when no one else does? Straight parents are the origin of the our species. Everyone of your biological ancestors forms a direct and unbroken line of 'Straight parents'. It is logical to assume children are well adapted to straight parents and vice versa. In fact we have no other real choice. When a company develops a new substance and wants to use it as a food additive we naturally ask if it has been tested properly before allowing human consumption. But we do not ask whether commonly eaten foods such as rice and bananas need testing. The have been tested throughout history. To put it another way,
- caryme 17y ago
  I realize this is an explanation for the argument against same-sex couple adoption, but in the same vein I'd like to point out that where this argument falls apart is in the legality of single parent adoption. In the US, it is legal in every state for single parents to adopt. However, in some states it is illegal for same-sex couples to adopt children. For the real kicker, in Florida (where I am from), homosexual people cannot adopt. So while a single straight woman can adopt a child, a single lesbian woman cannot.
  - natrius 17y ago
    I was being excessively charitable in my framing of the argument. It makes zero sense for it to be illegal for gay people to adopt. It could make sense to prefer straight couples over gays and singles, which would effectively exclude them if the demand for adoption outstrips supply as much as I presume.
    - joubert 17y ago
      Why? What magical quality does a straight couple bring to the table? Are they innately less dysfunctional than a gay couple?
      - devinj 17y ago
        Magical quality? Well, 2 genders instead of one. I don't find the idea that children take their cues depending on the gender of the parent at all unreasonable. It's certainly entered the common mind as an idea of what happens. Is it true? No idea, haven't seen any research on it. But there's at least a possible basis for the "magical" quality of gender being important.
        joubert 17y ago
        I'm skeptical. What cues? Are you thinking a girl learns how she should act by emulating a mom, and the same for a boy in relation to his dad?
- alextgordon 17y ago
  On the other hand, having greater variation might provide a net benefit to the population as a whole.
- drivebyacct 17y ago
  Ironically, even as a homosexual, I suspect that your former predicate is actually more unlikely than the latter. Though the latter is pretty damn ridiculous as well, at least by the metric of the literature I'm exposed to so I could be unaware of something supporting that idea.
- lallysingh 17y ago
  Why? they had their chance! It was a hetero couple that created & ditched the kid in the first place+. Every couple has their own yin-yang dynamic, and it has very little to do with whether they're an innie or an outy. + Ignoring tragedies, of course. Edit: footnote symbol caused formatting changes.
- joubert 17y ago
  And what may that innate quality be? And what about gay children? Aren't straight parents the wrong setup for them?
  - gdee 17y ago
    Assuming non-homophobic heterosexual parents, why would they be the "wrong setup"?
euroclydon 17y ago
I guess that's the same as saying: "I wouldn't mind if I grew up with two dads... at my ballgames, science fairs, where ever." If you can say that, you should be all for it.
wwortiz 17y ago
He admits that he is conflicted about the whole gay marriage and adoption rights which to me says he probably wouldn't be acting against it but he also won't be acting for it. There are many reasons why someone can feel conflicted about something such as gay marriage and adopting but probably is linked most with upbringing and whether or not religion plays a factor. I'm guessing that he is personally conflicted rather than logically. But from what I have heard adoption is a hard enough process without being gay.
wheels 17y ago
I think the reservations are built on a couple things: • It's not hard to argue that it's good for a child to have a mom and a dad. I'm not going to get into such, but whether or not you agree, let's just accept that it's not a wild notion. • Adoption is one of the few places where there's any chance for society to evaluate the fitness of parents before they can have children. Usually it just happens. • A male-male couple (edit: or single male, or infertile female(s)) is the only combination that's forced into adoption, thus with the prior two points in mind, it's the only one where they are ipso facto subjected to societal evaluation, for a coupling that some consider less than perfect for children. Now the reality is that most sets of parents are far from ideal. No doubt two loving gay parents is healthier than quarrelsome straight parents. But if quarrelsome parents are knocked up biology, not society sets the conditions.
- puredemo 17y ago
  From what I understand, most studies show that the most important thing is for kids to have two parents -- kids raised in single parent households didn't do as well (but I'm not sure how many associated variables were controlled for.) The gender of the two parents didn't seem to have much of an impact.
  - axod 17y ago
    Isn't it often the case though that in gay couples one is more masculine and the other more feminine? Or dominant/submissive perhaps. That's probably more important - having both types of personality present?
    - henrikschroder 17y ago
      No, that is a stereotype. Most gay couples don't look like that.
      - axod 17y ago
        I wasn't talking about 'looks'. I was talking about behavior. Whenever I see gay couples on documentaries etc, there almost always seems to be one 'feminine' one, and one 'masculine' one. Regardless of what sex they actually are.
tman 17y ago
While mirror image thinking about gays is fun (they're just heterosexuals with a bit flip), it's not all that realist. Before we get to adoption, lets analyze an easier statement: Gays shouldn't be allowed to become Catholic priests. What? Can it be defended? Well, you've heard about the abuse cases. Two-thirds of the problem, going by published numbers, involve priests who have sex with young boys. These are not children, but rather teenagers. There can be argument about whether homosexual sex with a pre-pubescent is really homosexual behavior, but there is no argument about post-pubescent sex. This is a problem with gay priests. At most, gay priests make up 30% of the Catholic clergy. More likely, they are in the 10-20% range. The male population is 3% homosexual (yes, I know you heard 10% and that you should drink 8 glasses of water a day and that we only use 10% of our brains; the 3% number for male homosexuality has the advantage of actual facts to back it up). So gays make up an out-sized proportion of Catholic priests and there are various reasons for that. Guilt, etc., of course, and a homosexual seminary culture that is now being rooted out by Catholics who (somewhat wrongly) blame it for lots of things that are wrong with the Church. Regardless, the gay Catholic priests seem to be committing a far out-sized proportion of the abuse. The Church simply can't afford to keep paying out the damage settlements that it would have to in order to keep its gay clergy. The congregations don't like the clergy having sex with their young boys either. Hence, expect to see less gay priests going forward. While many gay men make wonderful priests, a few ruin it for the rest of them. So, adoption? While a person could make arguments about equality and fairness before the law, etc., I personally have a low tolerance for that sort of democratic cant and tune it out. It's illogical rabble-rousing. As Socrates says (I'll point out that I'm a fan of the Symposium -- yes, that's the Platonic dialogue on love with a disturbing amount of gay sex thrown in), democracies equate things that are not equal. Throw those arguments out -- which I do, and with prejudice -- and you have to make a case for choosing a segment of our population (homosexuals) that is more likely to do drugs, have psychiatric problems, etc., etc., and singling them out to allow adoption. It's not a brilliant move. Aside: The percentage of the female population that is homosexual is harder to get a feel for, but somewhere around 1.5% seems to be exclusively homosexual. Bisexual behavior is much more common in females, or so Kinsey found. The weirdness of homosexuality in humans, a weirdness found in only one other mammal, so far as I know, is that opportunistic homosexual behavior. That happens all the time in the animal kingdom. It's exclusive homosexuality that is non-standard. That's bizarre from a fitness standpoint. There are some electrode studies (electrodes + dirty pictures, you imagine the rest) that suggest that there are no genuine bisexual males as far as desire goes, only males that are bisexual in behavior. It's harder to tell with females (30% or more are unaroused by dirty pictures of either sex, which ruins the studies).
dzorz 17y ago
Devils advocate: a child raised by the gay couple might be stigmatized by its peers, so in the best interest of the child it might be better for the child to be raised in traditional nuclear family. If you look at it that way it is also a chicken and egg problem.
- theBobMcCormick 17y ago
  By that logic, we shouldn't allow ugly couples to adopt either. WAY too stigmatizing. :-)
  - astine 17y ago
    I'd actually like to see the statistics on acceptance rates of ugly couple vs good looking one. I'll bet they're pretty damning.
- cj 17y ago
  Are you saying being raised in a foster home makes for a better childhood than having two loving (same sex) parents?
  - tome 17y ago
    Where did anyone mention love? I think you've just presented us with a false dilemma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
    - cj 17y ago
      I was accentuating the difference between foster care and growing up with parents. Foster care provides for little to no genuine love.
      - tome 17y ago
        But foster care wasn't what dzorz was arguing for.
tome 17y ago
An interesting question that might help everyone learn how they feel about this: Would you allow a pair of people who are not in a relationship to adopt, for example, two great friends who just happen to live together, but are not in a sexual or romantic relationship with each other?
- jacquesm 17y ago
  The deal here is that long term stability is what it is all about. Heterosexuals and Homosexuals alike appear in all variations, some are promiscuous, some stay with the same partner all their lives. The perception is that in the gay scene because there are no children to worry about sexuality is much freer than it is in the hetero scene. I doubt if that is actually the case though. But I think the 'stable family arrangement' factor weighs heavily in all this. And elsewhere in this thread I think I've shown that there can be pressure on a child simply because it is raised by two gay parents, after all, it immediately makes you the odd one out. Of course other children should be brought up to realize that it makes no difference as far as the child is concerned, but unfortunately that is not the case. Teenagers that are gay as a rule do what they can to stay under water in plenty of cases for fear of the kind of nastiness that can come out of being 'out' at a young age. Not all schools deal with stuff like that well - in fact, most schools don't.
  - tome 17y ago
    No, long term stability is not "what it is all about". Long term stability is one of the very important aspects of the quality of parenting, but it's not all of them. In fact long term stability is itself determined to some extent by the nature of the relationships between each parent and the child or children. The point of my question was to help each person who wants to think about this issue clarify their ideas by asking themselves whether it's the nature of the relationship between the "parents" that's the issue, or whether it just matters that there is some sort of strong bond, whatever that may be. I'm not trying to lead anyone to on conclusion or other, just point out a thought experiment that might help people understand their own points of view.
axod 17y ago
If you asked the population if they'd have been happy being brought up by gay parents, the vast majority would say "no".
- protothomas 17y ago
  And if you asked the population of people who have actually been brought up by gay parents whether they were happy with that situation, my guess would be that the vast majority would say "yes".
  - axod 17y ago
    Is there enough data on that to be statistically valid? Are a truly random sample of children brought up by gay parents? I'd expect some large selection bias there.
- c3o 17y ago
  How could that question not reflect respondents prejudices more than anything else?
- eru 17y ago
  Just ask people `if they'd have been happy being brought up by [insert any religion, or lack thereof] parents, the vast majority would say "no"'.
- rue 17y ago
  If instead you ask people who actually know what the hell they are talking about, q.f. people who were brought up by gay parents, you will find the vast majority to be quite happy about it.
ElliotH 17y ago
There are studies that show that lacking either a male or female parental figure can have bad long term effects. Which I would say is a good reason to prefer a male-female paring as adoptive parents. However, with the number of children in care rather than with adoptive parents being quite massive I imagine the damage done by missing one gender of parent is significantly less than the damage done by living in such an institution.

natrius 17y ago

If the demand for adoption outstrips supply, and if (big if) a man and a woman parent substantially better than two people of the same gender, it might make sense to have a blanket preference for heterosexual couples when choosing parents. There could be something innate in each gender that contributes to a child's upbringing, and depending on the value of those traits, it could be responsible to maximize the number of children who benefit from both.

count 17y ago
What is 'parent substantially better'?
- natrius 17y ago
  Therein lies the rub. It is logically possible. It is practically unlikely.
wdewind 17y ago
BIG if
- dejb 17y ago
  It is an arrangement that is extremely uncommon through most of human history/evolution so it seems reasonable to believe that humans may not be well adapted to brought up by gay couples. You could argue that the lack of genetic relationship to the parents overwhelms any difference between heterosexual and homosexual couples. But on balance it is not difficult to see why being reared be both a male and female parent could have advantages. Additionally to this you could imagine a scenario where the genes that tended to increase heterosexuality also played a part in being a naturally 'good parent'. Of course all these 'first assumptions' could and should be replaced by actual evidence and I know there is some of that. However I'd argue that studies and statistics to date are likely to be biased by the additional hurdles placed in front of gay couples. Only the very best and most dedicated gay couples are likely to allowed to adopt. I'm not arguing that this justifies a blanket ban, but a degree of caution seems to make sense.
  - aphyr 17y ago
    Luckily, plenty of gay couples have tried raising kids, and they do just fine, thank you very much. :) http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx "Beliefs that lesbian and gay adults are not fit parents likewise have no empirical foundation."
    - dejb 17y ago
      I have no doubt that many gay couples do quite well at raising children. I would however put those cases were one of the biological parents was present in a different category to what we are talking about (which I suspect is your case). > "Beliefs that lesbian and gay adults are not fit parents likewise have no empirical foundation." As I argued in my post, most studies are likely to effected by selection bias so it is going to be tough to get a solid "empirical foundation" either way. The real question is who should have the burden of evidence? Should we say that 'until gay couples are proven to be good parents we won't allow adoption' or 'unless it is proven that gay couples are bad parents they should have identical adoption rights'. I don't think either is sensible position and some sort of middle ground would be best as more evidence accumulates.
      - wdewind 17y ago
        Why do gay parents need to prove their parenting abilities when no one else does? Where are your empirical studies on straight parents being good parents, or "better" than gay parents? What is your definition of a good parent, anyway? What is your definition of "natural" (as in "naturally good parents")? We shouldn't do either of those options, they are both total horseshit. It's not a matter of what rule we should adopt, it's a matter of should we adopt a rule at all. And no, we shouldn't.
        dejb 17y ago
        > Why do gay parents need to prove their parenting abilities when no one else does? Straight parents are the origin of the our species. Everyone of your biological ancestors forms a direct and unbroken line of 'Straight parents'. It is logical to assume children are well adapted to straight parents and vice versa. In fact we have no other real choice. When a company develops a new substance and wants to use it as a food additive we naturally ask if it has been tested properly before allowing human consumption. But we do not ask whether commonly eaten foods such as rice and bananas need testing. The have been tested throughout history. To put it another way,
caryme 17y ago
I realize this is an explanation for the argument against same-sex couple adoption, but in the same vein I'd like to point out that where this argument falls apart is in the legality of single parent adoption. In the US, it is legal in every state for single parents to adopt. However, in some states it is illegal for same-sex couples to adopt children. For the real kicker, in Florida (where I am from), homosexual people cannot adopt. So while a single straight woman can adopt a child, a single lesbian woman cannot.
- natrius 17y ago
  I was being excessively charitable in my framing of the argument. It makes zero sense for it to be illegal for gay people to adopt. It could make sense to prefer straight couples over gays and singles, which would effectively exclude them if the demand for adoption outstrips supply as much as I presume.
  - joubert 17y ago
    Why? What magical quality does a straight couple bring to the table? Are they innately less dysfunctional than a gay couple?
    - devinj 17y ago
      Magical quality? Well, 2 genders instead of one. I don't find the idea that children take their cues depending on the gender of the parent at all unreasonable. It's certainly entered the common mind as an idea of what happens. Is it true? No idea, haven't seen any research on it. But there's at least a possible basis for the "magical" quality of gender being important.
      - joubert 17y ago
        I'm skeptical. What cues? Are you thinking a girl learns how she should act by emulating a mom, and the same for a boy in relation to his dad?
alextgordon 17y ago
On the other hand, having greater variation might provide a net benefit to the population as a whole.
drivebyacct 17y ago
Ironically, even as a homosexual, I suspect that your former predicate is actually more unlikely than the latter. Though the latter is pretty damn ridiculous as well, at least by the metric of the literature I'm exposed to so I could be unaware of something supporting that idea.
lallysingh 17y ago
Why? they had their chance! It was a hetero couple that created & ditched the kid in the first place+. Every couple has their own yin-yang dynamic, and it has very little to do with whether they're an innie or an outy. + Ignoring tragedies, of course. Edit: footnote symbol caused formatting changes.
joubert 17y ago
And what may that innate quality be? And what about gay children? Aren't straight parents the wrong setup for them?
- gdee 17y ago
  Assuming non-homophobic heterosexual parents, why would they be the "wrong setup"?

euroclydon 17y ago

I guess that's the same as saying: "I wouldn't mind if I grew up with two dads... at my ballgames, science fairs, where ever." If you can say that, you should be all for it.

wwortiz 17y ago

He admits that he is conflicted about the whole gay marriage and adoption rights which to me says he probably wouldn't be acting against it but he also won't be acting for it. There are many reasons why someone can feel conflicted about something such as gay marriage and adopting but probably is linked most with upbringing and whether or not religion plays a factor. I'm guessing that he is personally conflicted rather than logically. But from what I have heard adoption is a hard enough process without being gay.

wheels 17y ago

I think the reservations are built on a couple things: • It's not hard to argue that it's good for a child to have a mom and a dad. I'm not going to get into such, but whether or not you agree, let's just accept that it's not a wild notion. • Adoption is one of the few places where there's any chance for society to evaluate the fitness of parents before they can have children. Usually it just happens. • A male-male couple (edit: or single male, or infertile female(s)) is the only combination that's forced into adoption, thus with the prior two points in mind, it's the only one where they are ipso facto subjected to societal evaluation, for a coupling that some consider less than perfect for children. Now the reality is that most sets of parents are far from ideal. No doubt two loving gay parents is healthier than quarrelsome straight parents. But if quarrelsome parents are knocked up biology, not society sets the conditions.

puredemo 17y ago
From what I understand, most studies show that the most important thing is for kids to have two parents -- kids raised in single parent households didn't do as well (but I'm not sure how many associated variables were controlled for.) The gender of the two parents didn't seem to have much of an impact.
- axod 17y ago
  Isn't it often the case though that in gay couples one is more masculine and the other more feminine? Or dominant/submissive perhaps. That's probably more important - having both types of personality present?
  - henrikschroder 17y ago
    No, that is a stereotype. Most gay couples don't look like that.
    - axod 17y ago
      I wasn't talking about 'looks'. I was talking about behavior. Whenever I see gay couples on documentaries etc, there almost always seems to be one 'feminine' one, and one 'masculine' one. Regardless of what sex they actually are.

tman 17y ago

While mirror image thinking about gays is fun (they're just heterosexuals with a bit flip), it's not all that realist. Before we get to adoption, lets analyze an easier statement: Gays shouldn't be allowed to become Catholic priests. What? Can it be defended? Well, you've heard about the abuse cases. Two-thirds of the problem, going by published numbers, involve priests who have sex with young boys. These are not children, but rather teenagers. There can be argument about whether homosexual sex with a pre-pubescent is really homosexual behavior, but there is no argument about post-pubescent sex. This is a problem with gay priests. At most, gay priests make up 30% of the Catholic clergy. More likely, they are in the 10-20% range. The male population is 3% homosexual (yes, I know you heard 10% and that you should drink 8 glasses of water a day and that we only use 10% of our brains; the 3% number for male homosexuality has the advantage of actual facts to back it up). So gays make up an out-sized proportion of Catholic priests and there are various reasons for that. Guilt, etc., of course, and a homosexual seminary culture that is now being rooted out by Catholics who (somewhat wrongly) blame it for lots of things that are wrong with the Church. Regardless, the gay Catholic priests seem to be committing a far out-sized proportion of the abuse. The Church simply can't afford to keep paying out the damage settlements that it would have to in order to keep its gay clergy. The congregations don't like the clergy having sex with their young boys either. Hence, expect to see less gay priests going forward. While many gay men make wonderful priests, a few ruin it for the rest of them. So, adoption? While a person could make arguments about equality and fairness before the law, etc., I personally have a low tolerance for that sort of democratic cant and tune it out. It's illogical rabble-rousing. As Socrates says (I'll point out that I'm a fan of the Symposium -- yes, that's the Platonic dialogue on love with a disturbing amount of gay sex thrown in), democracies equate things that are not equal. Throw those arguments out -- which I do, and with prejudice -- and you have to make a case for choosing a segment of our population (homosexuals) that is more likely to do drugs, have psychiatric problems, etc., etc., and singling them out to allow adoption. It's not a brilliant move. Aside: The percentage of the female population that is homosexual is harder to get a feel for, but somewhere around 1.5% seems to be exclusively homosexual. Bisexual behavior is much more common in females, or so Kinsey found. The weirdness of homosexuality in humans, a weirdness found in only one other mammal, so far as I know, is that opportunistic homosexual behavior. That happens all the time in the animal kingdom. It's exclusive homosexuality that is non-standard. That's bizarre from a fitness standpoint. There are some electrode studies (electrodes + dirty pictures, you imagine the rest) that suggest that there are no genuine bisexual males as far as desire goes, only males that are bisexual in behavior. It's harder to tell with females (30% or more are unaroused by dirty pictures of either sex, which ruins the studies).

dzorz 17y ago

Devils advocate: a child raised by the gay couple might be stigmatized by its peers, so in the best interest of the child it might be better for the child to be raised in traditional nuclear family. If you look at it that way it is also a chicken and egg problem.

theBobMcCormick 17y ago
By that logic, we shouldn't allow ugly couples to adopt either. WAY too stigmatizing. :-)
- astine 17y ago
  I'd actually like to see the statistics on acceptance rates of ugly couple vs good looking one. I'll bet they're pretty damning.
cj 17y ago
Are you saying being raised in a foster home makes for a better childhood than having two loving (same sex) parents?
- tome 17y ago
  Where did anyone mention love? I think you've just presented us with a false dilemma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
  - cj 17y ago
    I was accentuating the difference between foster care and growing up with parents. Foster care provides for little to no genuine love.
    - tome 17y ago
      But foster care wasn't what dzorz was arguing for.

tome 17y ago

An interesting question that might help everyone learn how they feel about this: Would you allow a pair of people who are not in a relationship to adopt, for example, two great friends who just happen to live together, but are not in a sexual or romantic relationship with each other?

jacquesm 17y ago
The deal here is that long term stability is what it is all about. Heterosexuals and Homosexuals alike appear in all variations, some are promiscuous, some stay with the same partner all their lives. The perception is that in the gay scene because there are no children to worry about sexuality is much freer than it is in the hetero scene. I doubt if that is actually the case though. But I think the 'stable family arrangement' factor weighs heavily in all this. And elsewhere in this thread I think I've shown that there can be pressure on a child simply because it is raised by two gay parents, after all, it immediately makes you the odd one out. Of course other children should be brought up to realize that it makes no difference as far as the child is concerned, but unfortunately that is not the case. Teenagers that are gay as a rule do what they can to stay under water in plenty of cases for fear of the kind of nastiness that can come out of being 'out' at a young age. Not all schools deal with stuff like that well - in fact, most schools don't.
- tome 17y ago
  No, long term stability is not "what it is all about". Long term stability is one of the very important aspects of the quality of parenting, but it's not all of them. In fact long term stability is itself determined to some extent by the nature of the relationships between each parent and the child or children. The point of my question was to help each person who wants to think about this issue clarify their ideas by asking themselves whether it's the nature of the relationship between the "parents" that's the issue, or whether it just matters that there is some sort of strong bond, whatever that may be. I'm not trying to lead anyone to on conclusion or other, just point out a thought experiment that might help people understand their own points of view.

axod 17y ago

If you asked the population if they'd have been happy being brought up by gay parents, the vast majority would say "no".

protothomas 17y ago
And if you asked the population of people who have actually been brought up by gay parents whether they were happy with that situation, my guess would be that the vast majority would say "yes".
- axod 17y ago
  Is there enough data on that to be statistically valid? Are a truly random sample of children brought up by gay parents? I'd expect some large selection bias there.
c3o 17y ago
How could that question not reflect respondents prejudices more than anything else?
eru 17y ago
Just ask people `if they'd have been happy being brought up by [insert any religion, or lack thereof] parents, the vast majority would say "no"'.
rue 17y ago
If instead you ask people who actually know what the hell they are talking about, q.f. people who were brought up by gay parents, you will find the vast majority to be quite happy about it.

ElliotH 17y ago

There are studies that show that lacking either a male or female parental figure can have bad long term effects. Which I would say is a good reason to prefer a male-female paring as adoptive parents. However, with the number of children in care rather than with adoptive parents being quite massive I imagine the damage done by missing one gender of parent is significantly less than the damage done by living in such an institution.