Marriage Equality and adoption…The Right Thing to do For The Children By Progressive Patriot 9.12.14
People who use children to assail gay marriage and adoption either have not given much thought to the down side of these bans-or – are being intellectually dishonest in saying that they take their position on behalf of the children which they really care little about.
It is a logical fallacy-an appeal to ignorance if you will to insist that same sex marriage and adoption of children by gays will be detrimental to those children, and that society as a whole, will somehow be harmed by these arrangements. Many will take the position that children are entitled to a “mom and a dad” That may be so but the reality is that many people in this life do not have everything that they are entitled to. There are many children without both a mother and a father, and some without either. Banning gay marriage and adoption is not going to change that.
Children also have a right to a stable, nurturing and permanent home and it is well established that that goal can be realized in a variety of family structures. The NJ Department of Families and Children-the public agency charged with the responsibility of finding adoptive homes for children –states, in part, on their web site that no one will be denied the opportunity to adopt based on sexual orientation. In fact, the Department’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency (formerly DYFS) has been placing children for adoption with gay and lesbian people- those who are single and those who are in a relationship- for decades with good outcomes for the children. And there are many, many more who still need homes while there is a dearth of people willing and able to adopt them. I know this because I worked in the foster care and adoption field in New Jersey for 26 years. I might add that children who are placed for adoption are already in a situation where they have neither a mother nor a father available to them. To imply that that a child would better off languishing in the foster care system as a ward of the state, than to be adopted into a nontraditional family is beyond absurd.
Furthermore, the vast majority of child psychologists will tell you that there are far more important factors that impact a child’s development than the gender or sexual orientation of the parents. No doubt that one could dredge up research studies that claim to prove that gay parenting is harmful. However, well established organizations like the American Psychological Association take the position that gay and lesbian parents are just as capable of rearing emotionally healthy children as anyone else. Yet even if family composition was, as some purport, a critical factor in children’s development, the fact is that there are and will always be children in non-traditional living situations where they do not have a mother and a father. Like it or not, it is also a fact that gay and lesbian people have children, be it from a prior relationship, adoption, or surrogacy.
Denying gay and lesbians the opportunity to marry does nothing to ensure that any greater number of children will have a home with a mother and a father. All that will be accomplished will be to deny numerous children the legal rights, protections, status and stability that comes with having married parents. And, to deny gays the ability to adopt will only ensure that more children will have neither a mother nor a father. Everyone is entitled to their moral views and religious beliefs but it is disingenuous and opprobrious to use children as pawns in the lost fight against equality by bloviating about how children would be harmed by it. While single people can be great parents, the benefits to children of having two parents is undeniable
The benefits to children of allowing two people who are in a committed relationship to be married are obvious for anyone willing to look at the issue objectively. Those who truly care about children should be willing to open all of the possible pathways for them to be adopted and to have married parents when possible.