Gay adoption - why not?

David Farrar asks the following question in his blog post Labour's Rainbow Policy :

My God, why can’t they just say they will allow gay couples to adopt? Are they so scared of having the words gay and adoption in the same sentence? There are thousands of children being raised by gay parents and gay couples already. The law should focus on what is best for the child, and if that is a gay couple, then they should be allowed to adopt. What is so hard about saying that explicitly?

Here is my response in the comments:

What’s best for a child is having a mother and a father, not two people of the same sex who are involved in an unnatural sexual relationship. That is not healthy modelling for a child. But then, neither is it healthy modelling for children who live with single mothers and their never-ending stream of live-in boyfriends, either. Nor is it healthy for children when their parents divorce. All these situations do not give a child an optimal chance of growing up to be a person who can live a normal, productive life.

Here is a story of a girl who grew up with her homosexual father (link):

The many personal, professional and social experiences with my father did not teach me respect for morality, authority, marriage, and paternal love. I felt fearfully silenced as I was not allowed to talk about my dad, his male housemates, his lifestyle and encounters within the subcultures without being browbeaten and threatened by my father. While I lived at home, I had to live by his rules. Yes, I loved my dad. However, I felt abandoned and neglected as my needs were not met since my father would often leave suddenly to be with his partners for days. His partners were not really interested in me. I was outraged at the incidences of same-sex domestic abuse, sexual advances toward minors, and loss of sexual partners as if people were only commodities. I sought comfort looking for my father’s love from boyfriends starting at 12 years old.

From a young age, I was exposed to explicit sexual speech, self-indulgent lifestyles, varied GLBT subcultures and gay vacation spots. Sex looked gratuitous to me as a child. I was exposed to all-inclusive manifestations of sexuality including bathhouse sex, cross-dressing, sodomy, pornography, gay nudity, lesbianism, bisexuality, minor recruitment, voyeurism and exhibitionism. Sado-masochism was alluded to and aspects demonstrated. Alcohol and drugs were often contributing factors to lower inhibitions in my father’s relationships.

My father prized unisex dressing, gender-neutral aspects and a famous cross-dressing icon when I was eight years old. I did not see the value of biological complementing differences of male and female or think about marriage. I made vows to never have children since I had not grown up in a safe, sacrificial, child-centered home environment. Due to my life experience, I ask, “Can children really perform their best academically, financially, psychologically, socially and behaviorally in experimental situations?” I can tell you that I suffered long term in this situation, and this has been professionally documented.

Over two decades of direct exposure to these stressful experiences caused me insecurity, depression, suicidal thoughts, dread, anxiousness, low self-esteem, sleeplessness and sexuality confusion. My conscience and innocence were seriously damaged. I witnessed that every other family member suffered severely as well.

She didn’t come out with her story until her Dad was dead, because she didn’t want to hurt him.

Additional Thoughts

There is a world-wide push for gay adoption right now.  Catholic adoption agencies in Britain and the United States have been forced to close down because they will not put a child into a harmful situation.

There is also a fundamental disconnect in the West about what is good for children.  Many believe that if the parents are happy and the child is loved, the child will be alright.  However love needs to be love in action, not in emotion.  If a person lives in such a way that exposes a child to all sorts of physical and emotional dangers, they are not living the love they profess.

Happiness of the parents also allows many to think it is better for them to divorce than to allow children to grow up with unhappy parents.  But guess what, children don't care if their parents are happy!  It's far more devastating to children to have their family split apart than to live with parents that are unhappy.  In fact, that sacrifice of the parents is a good role model for children, to show them that life is about more than personal gratification, that there are bigger things at stake.

So, in relation to gay adoption and some people thinking that two parents of the same sex can't be any worse that two of the opposite, it is that same disconnect at work here.  It's that same thought that if the parents are happy, then the children will be alright.  They forget that much of what we learn in life is not taught at school, it is modelled, it is learned at home from family life.  How is a child raised with two men going to learn how to get on with a pre-menstral wife when that child grows up?  From TV?

Related links: Labour's Rainbow Policy ~ Kiwiblog
First-Person: Same-Sex 'Marriage' — Have the Best Interests of Children Been Considered? ~ CERC, Dawn Stefanowicz

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