Thesis Statement
It is healthy for a child to be raised by a gay couple as a kid raised by gay parents makes no difference because parenting has nothing to do with gender.
Introduction
The idea that gay men may be parents is normally supposed in contemporary society as immoral or impossible. Their status often viewed as disqualified from having children since sexual reproduction pertains to male and female couples only. My notion to this matchless divisive topic of gay parenting will be that of trying to analyze and discuss the pro side. Gays are human too and who is to say that they don’t justify equal rights of being parents in society. In this respect, rather, society should realize that now the modern family has progressed into many various forms in current years in that the nuclear family is not essentially the most general structure anymore. Consequently, gay parents should not be considered by their sexual point of reference to determine their status as a parent.
Discussion and Analysis
In today’s society, there are hundreds of thousands of children, who need a permanent home-a place where they can feel the love of a family. Dues to the fact that orphan children need a normal life like any other child, adoption is a very valuable issue. Against the public belief, there is no veracity to the widely approved intellection that only certain kinds of people are capable to adopt a child. These days, both public and private adoption agencies are directing all kinds of children with all kinds of families in all kinds of occurrences (Stacey, pp.159-83).
Homosexuals argue that parenting is about responsibility and commitment, not sexual orientation. They also argue that legislation has no real reasons behind passing the anti-homosexual adoption law, besides their own biases behind homosexuality. Gay people have searched for reasoning behind the law and have only found that there are no real reasons. First of all, there have not been any studies done and proved that children of gay or lesbian parents are disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents. There is no evidence at all that the sexual preference of adults in the home has any detrimental impact on children. Little difference exists in the overall mental health of children raised in homosexual households. And once again, the quality of parenting, not the parent’s sexual orientation, is the most crucial factor for a child’s healthy growth and development. Homosexuals strongly believe that the anti-homosexual adoption legislation is an attack against gay people. But in all reality, it is a bigger attack on the behalf of children who have no family or home.
They argue that of the 500,000 children in foster care, 100,000 of these children are awaiting adoption. And that there are only 20,000, qualified adoptive parents for these children. The rest of these 500,000 children are left to suffer without a loving family and parents (Strickland, pp.137-40). They believe that our representatives need to be lifting families and children not devising, discriminatory, unconstitutional legislation. However, there is another side to these arguments. Those who are against homosexual adoption believe that being adopted by parents, who are living together as homosexuals, may bring out unrestrained homophobia from the rest of society.
Other children who think of their home life to be normal would discriminate against children who lead a different lifestyle. Children can be very harsh with their words and actions against others who know not how to react and defend themselves because they do not know the normal lifestyle in which the other children lead. (Patterson, pp. 317-38) They would probably be teased and tormented to no end and there is nothing anyone could do about it. If the male and female household has not been the norm for millions of years, this may not propose such a problem.
The children may not even be the main problem. It is most likely that parents of male/female relationships would not allow their children to associate with gay or lesbian adopted children, and would probably create a major dispute with the school system in which they are attending school. Those who disagree with homosexual adoption also think that in response to being a child of such a lifestyle, it would encourage the children to be homosexual themselves. Whether this is true or not, I don’t know, but I do think that because that is all that they know they would most likely turn to a form of it sometime during their life, which would, in turn, increase the homosexual population. This could also pose a problem for the many people who disagree with homosexuality and it is scary to think of the extremes people may take to rid or exclude this population from their lives.
Acknowledging that gay men can be good parents, the huge majority of states no longer refuse guardianship to a person who relied on sexual orientation. State agencies and courts now exercise the best interest of the child criterion to decide these cases. Under this preliminary step, a person’s sexual orientation cannot be the footing for discontinuing or restricting parent-child affairs unless it is considering harm to a child. (Bigner, pp. 155-75). All of the inquiry up to the present moment has arrived at the same palpable conclusion about gay parenting: the children of homosexual parents mature as successfully as the children of heterosexual parents do. Not one study has found the children of lesbian or gay parents to be obstructed because of their parents’ sexual interest.
The public also argues that children of gay couples are likely to grow up gay themselves. As day by day, this saying is only a myth. All of the obtainable evidence indicates that the sexual orientation of parents has no effect on the sexual orientation of their children and that children of homosexual parents are no more likely than any other child to grow up to be gay. There is some evidence that children of gays and lesbians are more open-minded to variety, but this is assuredly not a disadvantage. As might be expected, some children of lesbians and gay men will grow up to be gay, so are some children of heterosexual parents. (Patterson, p.1025). These children will have the added benefit of growing up with parents who are supportive and accepted by the world that can sometimes be unfavorable.
Many places have support legislation to ban gay adoption. This act has emotionally affected the gay who is also humans with feelings. “Hilary and I have always had gay rights issues in the forefront of our lives, but we have never had anything cut as close to our souls as becoming parents,” Birch says. “The bonding process with your children is so deep that we would do anything to protect it from those who threaten it. What we did in adopting is a very private thing, and when the Right got a hold of it, it felt very mean and personal.”(Badgett, pp. 23-25).
Gay parenting corresponds with an extensive reconfiguration of households and relationships. The meaning of the word “family” has been varying at a fast speed, and the change is not just about gay people. More heterosexual parents are having children through alternates; there are more children of divorced parents, and there are more single moms and dads than ever before. Society is in the outgrowth of realizing that family is not its form; it’s what you make of it since there is a lifetime responsibility to children.
The direction of the research appears that gay parents are as gifted as any other parents. Willing adoptive parents, whether gay or straight, attend to be among the best parents because they want to be parents (Parke, pp. 1-24). Children need to feel that they are wanted. Once courts and legislators look at the attention instead of the fixed pattern, it will make a big difference. Children raised in families with gay or lesbian parents do not seem to be impacted negatively by their acquaintance.
To secure their children from provocation arising from homophobia, gay parents seem to practice important prudence when opening their sexual orientation. Studies on gay families provide compelling evidence that gay parents are as capable of raising children as heterosexual parents. (Mastro, pp. 15-20) Lesbian mothers are as child-oriented, warm, confident, nurturing, and responsive as their heterosexual complements. Gay fathers were found to be more likely to tolerate paternal care and attention, less likely to express economic support as a central appearance of fathering way, and rather less traditional in their primary address to parenting. This will lead the children more closely to their dads, and more communications will occur since dads are not as traditional. As a result of an action lawsuit in the interest of homosexual partners, gay couples have the same positions as married heterosexuals in adoptions. (Koppelman, p. 197)
Think of the times of the Civil War days, when blacks were practically banned from the majority of public places because they were not the majority of the “normal” color. Could this ever happen to gays and lesbians? This is a question we must ask ourselves. I know laws are prohibiting such acts, but laws are discouraging many things that still go on today, like murder, sexual abuse, etc.
There is nothing stopping people from moving out of town, taking their kids out of school, or utilizing the same public places that they share with homosexual people. There are cases where this has already happened. Children have been moved to different schools because parents don’t want their child to be influenced in any way by a homosexual, or even a child of one. There is nothing to stop them from taking such actions or even actions much worse (Bozett, pp. 39-57). It is hard to tell the extremes that people may go to carry out their beliefs.
A growing number of agencies are accepting applications from gay adults, however, when the child to be adopted is a child with special needs. If the home study reveals that the applicant will be a good parent, his or her sexual orientation is immaterial. If state law does not prohibit gays and lesbians from adopting, most agencies will be willing to work with you. If you are successful in finding an agency, there are great places where you can find adoption support groups for gay adults. One of these places is the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, NAIC (Gottman, pp. 177-196).
People get down when they have turned away from adoption agencies because of their sexual orientation, even though they know they would make fantastic parents and provide greatly for a child. Therefore, support groups may be needed at times to help you to keep your head up and to keep trying until you find someone who can see it from your point of view. They may even be able to point you in the right direction in helping you to find an agency that works well with gays and lesbians wanting to adopt.
Data Analysis
A question that often arises when I start to discuss parents who are LGBT and their children is, “How many children/families are we talking about?” Estimates vary; people may be concerned about safety, job security, child custody, etc., and so may not be willing to disclose their situation. Traditional estimates point out that presently out of one and nine million children in America, under the age of 19 are being raised by parents who are lesbian or gay (Lesser, pp. 33-34). Nevertheless, other estimates imply that the number of children presently being raised by lesbian or gay parents is between 6 and 14 million (Lituchy, pp. 121-26).
The National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce revealed the statistics from the 2004 Census concerning immensely rural areas: in Alaska, thirty-seven percent of the gay couples and 39 percent of lesbian couples were raising children while, on the other hand, in Mississippi, the numbers were 31 percent and 44 percent respectively; and in South Dakota, the statistics were 34 percent and 42 percent, respectively (Fox, pp. 67-70).
Conclusion
To conclude, there is no convincing rationale for refuting to call gay-headed household families. The strong points elaborated above confirm that they fall under every feasible standard for recognizing families and the theory of a family. To a larger extent, they are groups of co-resident families affording mutually through income pooling for each other’s necessities of clothes, shelter, and food. They are also capable to socialize children, connect in physical and emotional support, and contribute towards a larger family system. Overall, gay couples are, in all ways, like heterosexual couples. They have the potentials as any other human being to afford love, compassion and care for their children. Sexual orientation has no impact on parenting traits.
There is no indication to propose that gay men are disqualified to be parents. Good parenting is not affected by sexual orientation. Instead, it is affected most completely by a parent’s ability to generate a loving and fostering home — an ability that does not lean on whether a parent is gay or straight. The one reason people used most to deny homosexual adoption is that children need parents who are both male and female as role models in their lives. If homosexual couples are not able to adopt children, then these children without homes have neither a mother nor a father as role models. The truth is that children get their role models from all around besides their parents. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, friends, and neighbors are some of the examples. Trained professionals can guarantee that the child to be adopted or placed in foster care is advancing into a background with sufficient role models of all types.
Gay and lesbian people have searched for reasoning behind the law and have only found that there are no real reasons. First of all, there have not been any studies done and proved that children of gay or lesbian parents are disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents. There is no evidence at all that the sexual preference of adults in the home has any detrimental impact on children. Little difference exists in the overall mental health of children raised in homosexual households. And once again, the quality of parenting, not the parent’s sexual orientation, is the most crucial factor for a child’s healthy growth and development. Homosexuals strongly believe that the anti-homosexual adoption legislation is an attack against gay and lesbian people. But in all reality, it is a bigger attack on the behalf of children who have no family or home.
There are studies about homosexual adoptions since the early 1990s. Homosexual couples are seeking more equal rights toward gays and lesbians. Homosexual adoptions have been going through so many difficulties from the past until now. The ways to solve the problem are either educates people not to be prejudice against homosexuals and tell them how they are the same as everyone else or set a law that accepts homosexual adoptions.
Many homosexuals are not afraid of facing society anymore. More and more same-sex couples are out of the closet and started to adopt children and form families. People usually consider gays and lesbians are abnormal of the norm in society, but we must ask ourselves the question: are they truly abnormal that lack the ability of good parenting? If people think about this question carefully, they will find out that homosexuals are just like everyone else in society except for their sexual orientation. Up until now, people are gradually beginning to accept this type of behavior. Since the 1990s, public and civil rights leaders began to debate the controversy of homosexual adoptions but many of them are still being denied by adoption organizations. That means millions of children are losing the opportunity of being adopted and being in a family for their lives every year. In the light of the above-mentioned facts, I find it redundant to confine any rights to adopt and raise children in homosexual families.
Works Cited
- Badgett, M.V. Lee (1994) “Influence of Family-Related Institutions on Lesbian and Gay Couples’ Decision-making or Lesbian and Gay Campus Organizing for Domestic Partner Benefits.” Paper for American Political Science Association. 23-25
- Bigner, J. J., & Bozett, F. W. (1989). Parenting by gay fathers. Marriage and Family Review, 14, 155-175.
- Bozett, F. W. (1987). Children of gay fathers. In F. W. Bozett (Ed.), Gay and lesbian parents. (pp. 39-57). New York: Paper.
- Fox, R. K. (2006). Listening to silences and whispers of early childhood educators who care for children with parents who are lesbian or gay. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. 67-70
- Gottman, J. S. (1990). Children of gay and lesbian parents. In F. W. Bozett, & M. B. Sussman (Eds.), Homosexuality and family relations (pp. 177-196). New York: Harrington Park.
- Koppelman, Andrew (1988) “The Miscegenation Analogy: Sodomy Law as Sex Discrimination.” Yale Law Journal. 98:45 1994 “Why Discrimination Against Lesbians and Gay Men is Sex Discrimination.” New York University Law Review. 69:197.
- Lesser, L. K., Burt, T., & Gelnaw, A. (2005). Making room in the circle: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families in early childhood settings. San Rafael, CA: Parent Services Project. 33-38
- Lituchy, J., & Lituchy, S. (2004). What makes a family? Ridley Park, PA: Two Lives Publishing. 121-26
- Mastro, David (1994) “Gay Marriage: promoting family and values.” The Daily Iowan. 15-20
- Parke, R. D. (2004). The Society for Research in Child Development at 70: Progress and promise. Child Development, 75, 1-24.
- Patterson, C. J. (2002). Lesbian and gay parenthood. In M. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting, 2nd ed. (Vol. 3, pp. 317-338). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Patterson, Charlotte (1992) “Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents.” Child Development. p. 1025.
- Stacey, J., & Biblarz, T. J. (2001). (How) does the sexual orientation of parents matter? American Sociological Review, 66, 159-183.
- Strickland, B. R. (1995). Research on sexual orientation and human development: A commentary. Developmental Psychology, 31, 137-140.