Can a homossexual couple raising kids be called a family?

[LisaA]

So you’re saying that the good is the enemy of the perfect?

Many homosexual couples adopt children out of charity. Is this somehow different because they are homosexual?

Fewer than half the children in the Zu.s. Grow up in a family with two biological parents.

I have no idea what the “Zu’s” is but wherever, if more than half of the children grow up without both parents, that is a very sad thing and unfortunate for the children. Thus why would one deliberately deprive a child of a father or mother from the outset?

I think you are mistaken that many homosexual couples adopt children out of “charity.” Quite honestly NO ONE has an opportunity to adopt these days as most single women keep their children…resulting in a multitude of problems that have been discussed at length. While everyone trots out the nice gay couple that was the ONLY possible place for a special need child, the reality is that many states put singles (gay or straight) on the same track to adopt as a married couple…we can’t be discriminating after all… who cares that the CHILD will be better off with the married couple. I am against both singles and homosexual(s) adopting children unless there is a specific reason for the specific adoption. Married couples should always get the priority…but they don’t. That is not putting the child’s interests at heart.

BTW no it’s not because they are homosexual but because the child is deliberately denied a relationship with either a mommy or a daddy, just as with single adoptions that I also do not think should be the norm.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

So…. unmarried, engaged pregnant young women going on to marry their betrothed, who of course become stepdads raising kids who aren’t their genetic offspring is the divine model?

Yep, it’s a hard one to grasp, but when you think about it that’s how incarnation works.

 

[EasterJoy]

Why is the connection of a biological parent so important? A lot of the time, when children are not raised by their biological parents, it’s because they cannot support them with love and life in the same way that another loving couple can. My friend is adopted (no connection to her biological category). With your defense, she is in the same situation and it seems, in your opinion, that she has been deprived of this love that MUST be provided by biological parents.

No, sometimes when children are not raised by one biological parent, it is because their other biological parent paid money to be able to raise the child with their gay lover, as if it were in the nature of a homosexual union to produce children. (This is not a situation that the Church finds morally permissible for heterosexuals, either: that is, *deliberately *producing children out of wedlock so that a couple can have a child that is related to one of them.) By this, children are being made into a commodity, and one blood parent is being dismissed as irrelevant. Is that what you are saying–that is, that our link to our biological parents is irrelevant and not worthy of any protection?

It is one thing when someone steps in to provide loving guardianship that a biological parent was incapable of providing for their child. It is quite another thing when the adults get together and plan to deprive the child of a biological parent because that parent is only wanted to be used as a source of biological material and biological capacity.

 

[EasterJoy]

So…. unmarried, engaged pregnant young women going on to marry their betrothed, who of course become stepdads raising kids who aren’t their genetic offspring is the divine model?

Yep, it’s a hard one to grasp, but when you think about it that’s how incarnation works.

St. Joseph and Our Lady weren’t giving their consent to a run-of-the-mill surrogacy situation. The special case where the man and wife were both created, joined in marriage, and sustained in every detail of their existence by the Almighty Power of the real Father of the Child who existed from all eternity and took on human flesh in order to save humanity from its rebellion is substantially different than that. Let’s not twist our minds around to make them out to be the same thing.

 

[religioussoup]

No, sometimes when children are not raised by one biological parent, it is because their other biological parent paid money to be able to raise the child with their gay lover, as if it were in the nature of a homosexual union to produce children. (This is not a situation that the Church finds morally permissible for heterosexuals, either: that is, *deliberately *producing children out of wedlock so that a couple can have a child that is related to one of them.) By this, children are being made into a commodity, and one blood parent is being dismissed as irrelevant. Is that what you are saying–that is, that our link to our biological parents is irrelevant and not worthy of any protection?

It is one thing when someone steps in to provide loving guardianship that a biological parent was incapable of providing for their child. It is quite another thing when the adults get together and plan to deprive the child of a biological parent because that parent is only wanted to be used as a source of biological material and biological capacity.

Totally agree with you. That is not okay. But if heterosexuals do it too, why is it being a specific reason listed on this thread, which, as you may recall, is whether or not homosexual parents raising children should not be regarded as a family?

Just wondering

 

[EasterJoy]

Totally agree with you. That is not okay. But if heterosexuals do it too, why is it being a specific reason listed on this thread, which, as you may recall, is whether or not homosexual parents raising children should not be regarded as a family?

Just wondering

Thank you for asking for the clarification. I am not saying that a family that is founded on a morally problematic premise is not a family. If you grow up in a family of bigamists, that’s a family. If you grow up in an organized crime family, that’s a family. If you had a guardian who took you on as a personal ward and made you a part of his or her or their life in a personal way, rather than as an employee of an institution, that is your family. Whether it is you and one person, unrelated to you but who freely took you on, or you and every living person who is your blood relative living in harmony under one roof, both are a family. It is a family because it is your family.

There is no way you are going to let anyone else come along and say that you didn’t have a family. Even if you yourself say you had a* hideous* family, it was what it was, and that is the family you had. If you marry and you and your spouse don’t have any children, be sure that when someone who doesn’t know you asks where you and your immediate family are going for Thanksgiving, be sure you’ll answer with the plans you have with your spouse. You’re a nuclear tribe, a unit of day-to-day around-the-clock connection, whether near or far, and to most people, that is a family. The only people who say “I had no family” are those who have no one who made it part of the fabric of their life to be the particular parent or sibling or partner to that person.

As for whether some particular family is functional or not, well, I am fond of the psychologists’ definition of a dysfunctional family: A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

That does not mean that I think all models for the family ought to be treated as if they are the same. They’re not. It takes a man and a woman to produce a child, and in the ideal world those two people have a commitment to each other and to their children, so that the child’s connections to their parents of origin are stout and secure. That is a model worth encouraging and giving a particular pre-eminence. That doesn’t mean no other arrangement deserves any help or concern, but that particular model, the one that puts a civil structure in place to support the biological foundation of the propagation of the race, one that encourages a lifelong connection between a child and their parents of origin, that deserves a special place, even from a secular perspective. (Truly, I think that any couple who commit to each other for the sake of that foundational relationship of man and woman also deserve a place of pre-eminence for their union, even though obviously other adults can give each other a relationship to call “home.”)

 

[on_the_hill]

Thank you for asking for the clarification. I am not saying that a family that is founded on a morally problematic premise is not a family. If you grow up in a family of bigamists, that’s a family. If you grow up in an organized crime family, that’s a family. If you had a guardian who took you on as a personal ward and made you a part of his or her or their life in a personal way, rather than as an employee of an institution, that is your family. Whether it is you and one person, unrelated to you but who freely took you on, or you and every living person who is your blood relative living in harmony under one roof, both are a family. It is a family because it is your family.

There is no way you are going to let anyone else come along and say that you didn’t have a family. Even if you yourself say you had a* hideous* family, it was what it was, and that is the family you had. If you marry and you and your spouse don’t have any children, be sure that when someone who doesn’t know you asks where you and your immediate family are going for Thanksgiving, be sure you’ll answer with the plans you have with your spouse. You’re a nuclear tribe, a unit of day-to-day around-the-clock connection, whether near or far, and to most people, that is a family. The only people who say “I had no family” are those who have no one who made it part of the fabric of their life to be the particular parent or sibling or partner to that person.

As for whether some particular family is functional or not, well, I am fond of the psychologists’ definition of a dysfunctional family: A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

That does not mean that I think all models for the family ought to be treated as if they are the same. They’re not. It takes a man and a woman to produce a child, and in the ideal world those two people have a commitment to each other and to their children, so that the child’s connections to their parents of origin are stout and secure. That is a model worth encouraging and giving a particular pre-eminence. That doesn’t mean no other arrangement deserves any help or concern, but that particular model, the one that puts a civil structure in place to support the biological foundation of the propagation of the race, one that encourages a lifelong connection between a child and their parents of origin, that deserves a special place, even from a secular perspective. (Truly, I think that any couple who commit to each other for the sake of that foundational relationship of man and woman also deserve a place of pre-eminence for their union, even though obviously other adults can give each other a relationship to call “home.”)

And I think that, ladies and gentlemen, ought to be the final word.

 

[LisaA]

That does not mean that I think all models for the family ought to be treated as if they are the same. They’re not. It takes a man and a woman to produce a child, and in the ideal world those two people have a commitment to each other and to their children, so that the child’s connections to their parents of origin are stout and secure.*** That is a model worth encouraging and giving a particular pre-eminence. ***That doesn’t mean no other arrangement deserves any help or concern, but that particular model, the one that puts a civil structure in place to support the biological foundation of the propagation of the race, one that encourages a lifelong connection between a child and their parents of origin, that deserves a special place, even from a secular perspective. (Truly, I think that any couple who commit to each other for the sake of that foundational relationship of man and woman also deserve a place of pre-eminence for their union, even though obviously other adults can give each other a relationship to call “home.”)

This is precisely my point and you’ve said it so well. There is some weird obsession with being “fair” or “treating people equally” that seems to transcend rational thought, history and even biology. So we have state adoption agencies passing over a married couple who have provided loving care to a foster child in order to place the child with a single gay male whose application arrived earlier.

One of the blessings and benefits of religious organizations providing adoption services is that they were not constrained by fears of lawsuits or compliance with various regulations and were able to make the best possible placement for the child. Unfortunately because of these probably well intentioned theories, many religious organizations are no longer able to place children. I think it’s a shame.

 

[Birdpreacher]

YES THEY ARE A FAMILY

I’ve worked with kids who were placed in amazing foster to adopt homes headed by same sex couples. Lots of love and attention for kids who desperately needed it.

I really would love people who argue against same-sex headed households to share their experiences with same sex families, and why those experiences apparently force them to come to the conclusion that ALL same sex households are bad for kids

 

[LisaA]

YES THEY ARE A FAMILY

I’ve worked with kids who were placed in amazing foster to adopt homes headed by same sex couples. Lots of love and attention for kids who desperately needed it.

I really would love people who argue against same-sex headed households to share their experiences with same sex families, and why those experiences apparently force them to come to the conclusion that ALL same sex households are bad for kids

Really…I’m dying to know where you saw someone claim that ALL same sex households are bad. No one has said that and in fact the whole discussion is that single parents, divorced parents have challenges not faced by a married couple who parent their own child. From poverty to higher incidence of drug use, crime, violence, promiscuity and failure to perform well in school, children who are not in a home with their parents have a tougher road. Why would someone then deliberately set up such a situation?

As to your challenge I can also tell you about a group of boys placed as foster children with a gay man who was an officer for the state Youth Authority…he was considered a spectacular foster parent and wasn’t it so wonderful that he was taking on all of these troubled youth. After one committed suicide and left a note saying “foster daddy” abused him and all of the other boys placed in his care the truth came out. He’d been doing it for decades. You see anecdotes are not particularly representative.

There are probably great gay and Lesbian parents and great single parents but none of them can give children an optimal situation.

I think the point has been made that the ideal situation for a child is to be with his biological married parents. All other structures deprive the child of a mommy or a daddy. If you haven’t been a mommy or a daddy you probably had them and ask any child which of his parents could be disposed of?

 

[on_the_hill]

So we have state adoption agencies passing over a married couple who have provided loving care to a foster child in order to place the child with a single gay male whose application arrived earlier.

I understand your feelings but is this really the case? My brother and his wife went through the adoption process, and if that sort of thing happens it’s because of rogue, corrupt people working the system. The adoption agencies use a “fine toothed comb” approach that is long and arduous.

 

[Book_Worm]

Here is a question: If someone were to adopt a child and bring him up with money earned by committing a crime, would there be anything that isn’t “loving” about that? What if this person brings the child up well in all things, save teaching the child that this is a morally permissible way to make a living? If one were to say what the adoptive parent really needs to do is to figure out how to clean up his or her life in order to be a more virtuous model for the adopted child, is that attacking the charity that moved the person to adopt? Or is that instead attacking the idea that if someone adopts a child and loves the child, then nothing else about the way they live their life can possibly harm the child in any way?

I’m rushing out to Mass, but I will pause long enough to comment on this aspect of your post. It is extremely offensive to constantly compare homosexuality to crimes like theft. All societies consider theft a crime. It harms an innocent party. Not all people consider homosexuality a sin, let alone a crime. It is considered living in accordance with the nature God gave them and does not harm an innocent person. Raising a child in conformance with your moral standards, which are not illegal, is not teaching them to break the law.

 

[PaulinVA]

I’m rushing out to Mass, but I will pause long enough to comment on this aspect of your post. It is extremely offensive to constantly compare homosexuality to crimes like theft. All societies consider theft a crime. It harms an innocent party. Not all people consider homosexuality a sin, let alone a crime. It is considered living in accordance with the nature God gave them and does not harm an innocent person. Raising a child in conformance with your moral standards, which are not illegal, is not teaching them to break the law.

I think you missed the point of the post, which was thought provoking.

 

[Book_Worm]

I think you missed the point of the post, which was thought provoking.

I didn’t miss the point. I simply didn’t have time to address anything other than the fact that we, as Catholics, need to stop comparing homosexuality to crimes like theft and rape. A less offensive, but also less effective analogy would have been the parents’ right to raise the child as a vegetarian n

The other points in the post deserve their own response, which I still don’t have time to provide.

ETA. It is not just homosexual couples who teach their children that homosexuality is not wrong, so the analogy is also flawed in that respect.

 

[EasterJoy]

I’m rushing out to Mass, but I will pause long enough to comment on this aspect of your post. It is extremely offensive to constantly compare homosexuality to crimes like theft. All societies consider theft a crime. It harms an innocent party. Not all people consider homosexuality a sin, let alone a crime. It is considered living in accordance with the nature God gave them and does not harm an innocent person. Raising a child in conformance with your moral standards, which are not illegal, is not teaching them to break the law.

Well, we do consider homosexual acts to be gravely disordered, and many societies have. Until the extremely recent past, Christianity has always held this, and the Roman Catholic Church still does. We do not consider God’s moral law, the law taught by the Church, to be “elective” and the civil law to be the one that is binding, but the other way around.

How is it that you, someone who ought to hold the Church as a greater authority on moral law than the US government, have gotten it the other way? Are you going to also find it “offensive” to oppose overturning the bigamy laws? Is it “offensive” to oppose legal abortion and physician-assisted suicide?* Where does this compelled capitulation to the moral norms of the lowest common denominator end?* Who exactly is concerning themselves with offending our moral standards? Nobody!! We’re in a pluralistic society–why do you give everyone else but us permission to get"offended" because other people don’t go along with their moral code? More to the point, why do you defend the preposterous pretense that homosexuality and heterosexuality are the same thing? Can you really honestly not see any difference? If you can, then why have you been silenced?

Certainly very few, if any, societies have ever dreamed of finding it offensive to see the plain truth that homosexuality and heterosexuality are not at all two variants of the same thing. They would be floored that anybody, even a homosexual, could actually believe such a thing! They’re not at all the same thing, and there is a very big “Emperor’s New Clothes” aspect to the current push to pretend that it is somehow backward and bigoted to recognize this. This is not the truth we are hearing. It is the current political climate, the work of the fashioners of opinion. It is happening not because homosexuals want to be left alone to believe what they believe, but because homosexuals covet the status of the married.

 

[kozlosap]

It can’t be the same ount of love of a biological intact family because in a homosexual couple raising children at least one biological parent is missing or has given up the child, so the child will be missing the love and care of at least one biological parent. Because if that no homosexual couple can ever give the same amount of love of a healthy biological intact family.

Are you for real? How insulting to adoptive children and their parents.

 

[agnes_therese]

Are you for real? How insulting to adoptive children and their parents.

Truly.

 

[marymary1975]

Are you for real? How insulting to adoptive children and their parents.

Did you even read what I said in its entirety? Because you didn’t I am going to repeat what I said. Adoptive children are in a different situation than children from gay couples. One adoptive parents (not talking about gays in here) have a mother and father in which each person is provind the love that a mother or father would provide. This does not happen in gay. Couples. Two men cannot love like a mother no matter how much they try so a gay couple will never be able to give the same amount of love because they are missing one parent from one sex. Second adoptive children are usually not intentionally deprived by the adoptive parent from the biological parent. Unless we are talking about kidnapping adoptive couples take children who have been abandoned. Is not intentional. Gay couples are intentionally severing the bind with one parent so that is a second reason you cannot compare them.

 

[marymary1975]

Why is the connection of a biological parent so important? A lot of the time, when children are not raised by their biological parents, it’s because they cannot support them with love and life in the same way that another loving couple can. My friend is adopted (no connection to her biological category). With your defense, she is in the same situation and it seems, in your opinion, that she has been deprived of this love that MUST be provided by biological parents.

There were tons of cases back in the day when adoption was at closed doors of children looking for bio parents, in fact there was a big entire movement of adoptive children who fought the adoption laws at the time, and took it to Court to request the right to be given information about their bio parents. If there would be no connection at all with bio parents then why so many adoptive children fighting adoption laws so they could find their bio parents? Of course not every adoptive child is going to feel the same but evidence exists that the vast majority do. With heterosexual couples is true that usually they are raising a child that the bio parent could not take care etc but usually that is not the case of the gay couple.
Second ideally speaking yes all biological parents should and must take care of their own kids. People should be responsible when having kids. There are unfortunate circumstances but ideally speaking biological parents must be responsible for their own kids. Adoption is a charitable act to help the child but still an adopted child will have to deal with emotional issues that a child from an intact family won’t.

 

[LisaA]

Are you for real? How insulting to adoptive children and their parents.

It is not insulting to speak the truth. MaryMary is correct that in cases of gay adoptions or more frequently use of surrogates or sperm donors, the child is deprived of either a mommy or a daddy. We all lament the numerous pathologies resulting from the increasingly high percentage of single mothers…poverty, crime, drug abuse, promiscuity, lack of education…and are supposed to accept that as long as the child receives financial support and “love” it doesn’t matter if he or she never had a mommy or daddy? Two men or two women do not equate to a husband and wife…whether or not the children are biological there is a benefit from the influence of a same sex as well as opposite sex parent. Further the child that lives with his parents also benefits from the interaction between husband and wife, learning how such relationships are lived out. Again, we all lament when a child loses one or the other parent, why would we want to set out to deliberately deprive the child?

Further gay/Lesbian couples who wish to have a biological child must obtain this child through using the same technology as is used by livestock breeders. Again the child is deliberately deprived of his biological mother or father. It makes children into a commodity to be purchased in effect.

Why does anyone think we’re all so deluded by political correctness and demands not to “offend” anyone that the reality that men and women are different and children need both parents, preferably married to each other, is deemed insulting?