When talking about adoption and parenting, whats best for the child is usually the primary concern for each party. This holds
true for cases of adoption and/or parenting by same-sex couples. With the best interests of children in mind, five states currently bar homosexuals from adopting children despite a need for adoptive parents and a growing body of evidence suggesting that same-sex households are adequate environments for the developing child.In part one of the series The Strong Case for Allowing Same-Sex Adoption, we will explore the viewpoint that adoption should be limited to heterosexual couples de jure by investigating the four primary talking points that opponents of same-sex parenting use when supporting public policy that limits the ability of same-sex couples to adopt children.Talking point one: Children need both a mother and father figure to become properly developed. To allow same-sex parenting would be denying a child’s right to a proper upbringing.In his article Why Children Need Father-Love and Mother-Love, Glenn T. Staunton argues that women and men, by nature, have distinct and complimentary parenting styles. Each of these parenting styles works with the other in providing the child a proper upbringing.
Much of the value mothers and fathers bring to their children is due to the fact that mothers and fathers are different. And by cooperating together and complementing each other in their differences, they provide things that same-sex caregivers cannot. – Glenn T. Staunton
Mr. Stanton is the senior analyst for marriage and sexuality at Focus on the Family and has authored a substantial amount of their materials regarding same-sex families. He is a consultant for the Bush administration and has written and been featured in a number of books, including Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting (InterVarsity Press, 2004) and, most recently, Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation (Baker Books, 2005).Children, Stanton argues, need a balance between the “warm, nurturing” maternal love and “expectant,” rule-based love of a father. “To be concerned with proper child development,” he writes, “is to be concerned about making sure that children have daily access to the different and complimentary ways mothers and fathers parent… Fathers tend to play with, and mothers tend to care for, children… One style encourages independence while the other encourages security.”It is also important, he believes, for a child to observe both a male and female parental figure in order to understand traditional gender roles and the proper interactions between men and women:
Men and women are different. They eat differently. They dress differently. They smell different. They groom themselves differently. They cope with life differently. Fathers do ‘man things’ and women do ‘lady things.’ Mothers and fathers both help little girls and little boys learn how to grow to be women and men… ‘the boy can look at his father and see what he should do to be a male; he can look at his mother and see what he should not do to be a male.’”
He continues:
Girls with involved, married fathers are more likely to have healthier relationships with boys in adolescence and men in adulthood because they learn from their fathers how proper men act toward women. They also have a healthy familiarity with the world of men. They don’t wonder how a man’s facial stubble feels or what it’s like to be hugged or held by strong arms. This knowledge builds emotional security, and safety from the exploitation of predatory males… Girls and boys with married mothers learn from their mothers what a healthy respectful female relationship with men looks like. Girls who observe their mothers confidently and lovingly interacting with their fathers learn how to interact onfidently with men…
Without a strong male role model, he concludes, “boys and girls will be at a greater risk for gender confusion, abuse and exploitation from other men.”Throughout the article, Stanton’s argument rests on the assertion that the differences between men and women as parents are innate, and that they manifest themselves consistently across ours and other cultures. He supports this assertion by citing works by scholars such as Dr. David Popenoe, co-director of the the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, Dr. Suzanne Frayser, past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale Medical School, and Eleanor Maccoby, renowned researcher and author of The Psychology of Sex Differences (Stanford University Press, 1974.)Talking point two: Same-sex families will subject a generation of children to the status of lab rats in a vast, untested, social experiment.
Children are not guinea pigs to be used in social experiments in redefining the institution of marriage. They are vulnerable individuals with vital emotional and developmental needs. The great harm done by denying them both a mother and a father in a committed marriage will not easily be reversed, and society will pay a grievous price for its ill-advised adventurism.- Dr. Timothy Dailey, Family Research Council
In a sprawling literature review for the Family Research Council, Dr. Timothy Dailey calls into question the validity of many studies that are commonly used to support the notion that children raised in same-sex families fare no worse than those raised in traditional heterosexual families. He exposes what he sees as flawed, incomplete and biased research, frequently citing studies that contradict established beliefs regarding same-sex parenting in an attempt to portray same-sex parenting as an untested experiment which might have unhealthy consequences for children. “A careful reading of studies used to lend support to homosexual parenting,” he writes, “reveals more modest claims than are often attributed to them, as well as significant methodological limitations.” These methodological limitations include inadequate sample sizes, a lack of anonymity, an absence of controls, and insufficient randomness of sample populations. Says Dailey: “One suspects that the lack of studies with proper design and controls is due to the political agendas driving the acceptance of homosexual parenting, which favor inadequate and superficial research yielding the desired results.”
Talking point three: Legitimizing the same-sex family at the legal level would force all of society to accept same-sex families despite religious and moral objections.Glenn T. Stanton, in a different publication than the one cited above, wrote:
Same-sex proponents are asking everyone — all of society — to dramatically and permanently alter their definition of family, to say that male and female are not essential for family and society… [C]ould the statement, ‘children need a mother and father’ be deemed hate speech? It is becoming exactly that in Massachusetts.
He may be referring to the February 2007 decision by a Federal court judge in Massachusetts to throw out a lawsuit by parents against a school district in Lexington, MA after their child came home with a book depicting a gay couple. In his decision, the Judge, Mark L. Wolf, wrote that schools are “entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens.”
In his June, 2006 monthly letter to members of Focus on the Family, Dr. James Dobson expressed concern over legislation proposed in California that would require public schools to remove heterosexual-specific language from teaching materials and promote tolerance for homosexual and bisexual lifestyles.
Picture a room packed with five-year-olds sitting cross-legged on the floor. If the three dangerous bills become law, [their teacher] will be required to explain what homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals are and do. How will she go about telling them what that means? And what if she is a committed Christian who believes that exposing young minds to sexual perversion is wrong and deeply harmful? It will make no difference, because the law is the law.
Dobson sees this as part of a larger “grand strategy” on the part of homosexual-rights activists to use the nation’s media, government and educational institutions to influence the attitudes and worldview of the next generations of Americans. Referring to the social climate surrounding the authoring of his book Children at Risk (Thomas Nelson, 1994), he wrote:
It had become obvious for several years that homosexual activists and their allies on the far left had crafted an alarming new strategy to gain control of children. It focused on public education and textbooks, children’s entertainment and literature, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the nation’s legal apparatus, and especially, the massive arms of government … This effort represented an audacious attempt to reshape the beliefs and attitudes of an entire generation, beginning with the youngest and most vulnerable… It was a brilliant plan, hatched in Satan’s own lair… Not since Adolf Hitler prepared a generation of German and Austrian youth for war has so grand a strategy been attempted.
He continued:
Is there any doubt about the commitment of these people to the task of controlling children’s minds? All the ranting and raving about “tolerance” is a ruse. The real purpose here is to promote sexual “lifestyles” among the young… [T]he fate of the children of the nation hangs in the balance.
It is not just public school teachers and students that are at risk of being forced to unwillingly uphold same-sex adoption, says Senator and presidential candidate Sam Brownback (R-KS). If the same-sex couples were allowed by law to adopt children or be foster parents, “… adoption agencies, psychological clinics, social workers, … etc. [would] be forced to choose between violating their own deeply held beliefs and giving up government contracts, tax-exempt status, or even being denied the right to operate at all.”SummaryThe arguments explored here against allowing same-sex couples to adopt are rooted in the belief that a one-woman one-man partnership is the innate and singularly necessary arrangement for childrearing. While the basis for this belief is most likely rooted in religious morality, opponents of same-sex adoption rights cite what they consider valid anthropological, psychological, sociological and medical research which they say suggests or confirms that humans, historically and practically, are enhanced by the heterosexual pair-bond and that children need the balance that only a two-gender upbringing can provide to become properly developed. The same-sex family, they argue, is a new and untested social construct, an experiment which threatens to undermine centuries of established gender-roles and family structure. Research supporting same-sex adoption is invalid and politically charged. If same-sex couples are legally permitted to adopt and raise children, society will be forced to uphold the law despite personal convictions, and it may lead to the dissolution of marriage and the traditional family itself.Stay tuned for part two of The Strong Case for Allowing Same-Sex Parenting: Exploration of the primary arguments.
