Gay adoption

[cait]

Try looking at the narth website. They are the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, an organization of psychiatrists and psychologists who have no connections with any religion and who provide good evidence that homosexual behavior is psychologically disordered. In many cases, motivated patients can “re-orient” themselves.
Another helpful resource on this issue is the Alliance for Marriage, which also has an excellent website.

 

[gardenswithkids]

I’m too late to edit, but my post #40 was off topic. This statement quoted below did not refer to my opinions on adoption. I simply wished to point out that those with SSA are not always promoting an agenda as someone wrote earlier (which hurt another poster.) But I was off topic and didn’t make that clear.Goodness, it’s hard to stay on the thread topic.

We really must distinguish between those whose who struggle with SSA yet desire to live a chaste life, verses those who promote the agenda that claims homosexual acts are acceptible.

 

[HoppityRedux]

By way of full disclosure, I am Hoppity. I couldn’t remember my old password, so I just dreamed up a new identity.

Has anyone wondered how children were raised through history? How many women died in childbirth? How many fathers succumbed to disease before the kids were raised? Was the typical family unit a mother, father, and the kids?

For how long have we even thought of a family as being limited to a mother, father and the creepers? Most societies had basic living units that were larger than what we now think of as the nuclear family. Were agricultural living unts limited to a mother, father, and kids living in their own separate dwelling and earning their own separate living?

And adoption? For how long has there been a formal institution of adoption? When the parents died, did the kid go to an orphanage, or was he absorbed into the extended family?

And lets not forget all the single parents today who are raising their kids without the parent of the opposite gender in the house. And all the other kids being raised in blended families. I wonder what percentage of all kids live to 18 with the same two parents of opposite gender? From the comments here, we would have to conclude that most kids today are seriously deprived.

I suggest the ideal being put forth is far from ideal, and is not typical of what was found in our history. We are far more resilient than many think, and have a history of far more varied living patterns than what is today considered the ideal nuclear family.

 

[Riley259]

BryPGuy89,

Yes i have a friend in college who was raised by two gay men. He too is now gay, and planning on marrying a 45 year old man and he is only 21. He is not at all ashamed of how he was raised and is an avid fighter of homosexual marraiges as well.

I just think that by feeding this type of behavior by permiting gay adoption we are going to increase the amount of people who will take part in this sort of behavior due to nurture NOT nature which explicitly shows that smtg is different biologically in the mind of a homosexual individual.

Peace Be with you all,

Regis University Student

Oh, how sad. Yes, being raised by two gay parents is not ideal as is obvious from nature. EWTN’s show “Life on the Rock” had a guest (first name Dana) who was raised by her gay dad (and his many partners) and she has plently of evidence against having this kind of arrangement (she cites many stats to back it up).

 

[boppaid]

Have you ever met a child raised by gay parents, they tend to resent them and their lifestyle.

Yes, I have, and no they didn’t.

 

[St_John]

Once again, I don’t think gay parents are the ideal, but interviewing one person who had a bad experience growing up with gay parents is hardly a scientific study. I know lots of people who grew up in crummy straight homes. I know people whose divorced parents had multiple boyfriends or girlfriends. I know peoples whose parents were devout Catholics and were abusive or neglectful. There are some gays who have stable relationships that mimic marraige, and they live otherwise upright lives as contributing members of society.

 

[cait]

The difference between children raised by gay parents and those raised by one parent or relatives when the parent dies is that the gay parent relationship is saying that one or the other gender is irrelevant and unnecessary. You don’t even have to be religious to wonder why nature creates two genders. If two people of the same sex are equivalent to two pople of opposite sexes, why does nature require two sexes to produce the child in the first place?

 

[HoppityRedux]

I doubt relationships say anything at all, whether they are gay or some other orientation. But, if one does hold that gay relationships say something, then we can also say all relationships say something.

In that case gays, divorced parents, widowed paents, and never married parents are all saying that one gender is unnecessary.

And to whom are all these relationships speaking their message? Is the kid being told everyday about the superfluous nature of one gender or the other? I doubt it. But if one holds the mere absence of one gender in the house speaks the message, then lets recognize all those households that lack a gender. Let’s give credit where credit is due. It’s unfair to let gays hog the spotlight when their meager message is being overwhelmed by the 25% of American kids born to unmarried women, and the 50% of marriages that end in divorce.

I wonder if the real danger in this message is that it might be true. If well adjusted, productive, and contributing members of society are coming out of family units lacking one gender, it might warrant taking a second look at that message. Maybe something besides gender is involved in raising kids.

 

[gardenswithkids]

I suggest the ideal being put forth is far from ideal, and is not typical of what was found in our history.

I have no false delusions that the nuclear family of mom, dad and their 2.2 children compiled human history.

The Bible reminds that widows and orphans deserve protection. If only one parent died, frequently widows remarried widowers and they raised their step-families together. Several saints devoted their lives to caring for orphans—St. Don Bosco comes to mind as I write this. While many picture “Oliver Twist” when we think of orphanages, I knew an elderly man who shared fond memories of his time at an orphanage run by a Catholic priest. Catholic priests, sisters, and brothers often provided children in such situations with strong, loving male and female role models.

Orphanages were only for when extended family didn’t provide the care. Usually aunts and uncles, older siblings or grandparents stepped in. That’s why I wrote this in post #21:

If it was a single family member, (ie parents die and an aunt offers to raise the children) I can see adoption. Generally speaking, I think adoption agencies should look for a stable home with both mother and father.

Aware that some families face death of both parents, I take interest in this subject. If no extended family takes in children upon their untimely death, adoption by strangers becomes a possibility. The state (or adoption agencies) should not place children who just endured the death of their biological parents under the care of homosexual adoptive parents.

We are far more resilient than many think, and have a history of far more varied living patterns than what is today considered the ideal nuclear family.

You bring up a great point about the resilience of the human person. That makes the studies on homosexual parenting flawed from the get-go. Humans are resilient, and some raised in seriously flawed moral environments will still rise above and live beautiful lives. St. Martin de Porres is a great example of someone who achieved personal holiness despite a less that ideal early family life.

Adoption deals with children who have often already encountered major difficulties in life such as our of wedlock birth, the death of parents or serious abuse. That’s particularly true for those children that some may consider less “adoptable” because of age or emotional difficulty. Yes humans are resilient, but children are also vulnerable. How much moral danger must we expose vulnerable children to simply because humans are also resilient? Will we as a society abandon the most vulnerable, difficult and fragile children to practicing homosexuals for adoption because we don’t want to care for orphans as the Bible tell us we should?

 

[HoppityRedux]

Unfortunately, orphans are not being cared for as the bible instructs. So, we are left to deal with the situation

I suppose we could say any child the court assigns to adoptive parents is being abandoned. They are being abandoned to Mormons, plumbers, Indian chiefs, Catholics, and gourmet cooking instructors.

As a society, we entrust the vetting of these folks to the courts and legal system. There are plumbers who are approved as adoptive parents, and there are those who are not. Hard as it may be to believe, there are even Catholics who are rejected as prospective adoptive parents. And, yes, gays are also rejected. But, many Catholics and gays are approved. It’s an individual decision based on the person involved.

So, we are faced with a sitation where the vetting organizations say a person is perfectly OK as an adoptive parent. But then there is a chorus of objections from a minority who often rely on their personal religious beliefs. This is a classic conflict of values.

We can probably also find a minority who would object to placing a child with “papists whose fealty is to the anti-Christ in Rome.”

So, when the vetting organizations find someone acceptable, I’d say it is up to the objectors to tell us why, with no personal knowledge of the individual, they object to their approval as adoptive parents.

I wouldn’t disqualify Catholics as adoptive parents because someone objects to abandoning kids to papists unless they could show some powerful reason why Catholics should be excluded from the eligible prospective pool. Nor can I see any reason to reject gays as a class when the nly trational given is that they are homosexual.

Perhaps the most rational course would be to see how the kids do. And another question would be , how do we deal with objections to prospective parents from any quarter?

 

[cait]

There is ample research to support that childen suffer significant psychological and social consequences when they are reared without both a mother and a father. See alliance for marriage.org.
This is not to say that some children may do better than others in such a situation but statistically children are at much greater risk without a married male and female couple rearing them. Gay partners choose from the child’s birth to exclude the other gender from the relationship. Parents who are widowed, divorced or have children out of wedlock are rarely making such a choice. To the extent that they do, their parenting is also unhealthy. Relationships do speak volumes to children. That’s how children learn to relate to others. And when gay parents deliberately deprive a child of a mother or a father the message is that the other gender is not important. Finally, the fact that our culture has created serious problems through divorce and out of wedlock births over the past two generations is no reason to further injure children by adding yet another and more extreme form of family disfunction in gay adoption.

 

[HoppityRedux]

Could you cite some of that research for us? Are they peer reviewed longitudinal studies?

If a woman has a kid out of wedlock, is she not choosing to exclude the other gender from the ensuing rearing of the child?

Divorce is a choice. How is one who chooses divorce not also choosing to exclude one gender from the rearing of the child?

If gay parents are delberately excluding a gender, then so are the single mothers and the divorced.

What makes a family disfunctonal? What makes a gay family dsfunctional? Are all families headed by single women disfunctional? How about the ones headed by a widowed parent? Disfunctinal? They lack a gender. And how about the 50% of marriages that end in divorce? Are those families disfunctional?

Let’s not forget married spouses where one is alcoholic, on drugs, abusive, or philandering. Are they disfunctional, too?

So, what percentage of American families are functional? Is it sufficiently large to call the two parent, opposite gendered family normal?

 

[nydas]

So, what percentage of American families are functional? Is it sufficiently large to call the two parent, opposite gendered family normal?

Id say about 2%.

 

[setter]

Once again, I don’t think gay parents are the ideal, but interviewing one person who had a bad experience growing up with gay parents is hardly a scientific study. I know lots of people who grew up in crummy straight homes. I know people whose divorced parents had multiple boyfriends or girlfriends. I know peoples whose parents were devout Catholics and were abusive or neglectful. There are some gays who have stable relationships that mimic marraige, and they live otherwise upright lives as contributing members of society.

I find it outrageous that any person wanting to be taken seriously as a Catholic would ever consider legitimizing (or rationalizing) the placement in adoption of an innocent, vulnerable, all impressionable child (assuming infant/toddler adoption) with a co-habitating “couple” of the same sex. What am I missing here? Has Catholic common sense been totally lost on those who consider themselves “Catholic”? A mere 20 years ago, this would have been refuted out of hand as a ludicrous betrayal of the basic tenants of the Catholic faith and the welfare of the whole person (mind, body, soul).

I am reminded of the frog placed in a pot of water, and degree by gradual degree the water temperature was turned up, until it was too late for the frog to jump out before he was cooked alive …it would appear such is the situation today when self-identified Catholics are found advocating for the placement of innocent children with two people aping a legitimate union in a gravely immoral, intrinsically disordered, sexually-based living arrangement.

 

[setter]

They are not being sarcastic. They are being very serious. They believe a supernatural entity, the source of all evil, animates the will of gay men…

This is true in cases of demonic possession, which are very rare.

“devil’s playmates, i.e., those person’s so indoctrinated and committed to freely embracing and actively promoting a gravely sinful lifestyle”

 

[fix]

Once again, I don’t think gay parents are the ideal, but interviewing one person who had a bad experience growing up with gay parents is hardly a scientific study. I know lots of people who grew up in crummy straight homes. I know people whose divorced parents had multiple boyfriends or girlfriends. I know peoples whose parents were devout Catholics and were abusive or neglectful. There are some gays who have stable relationships that mimic marraige, and they live otherwise upright lives as contributing members of society.

That the normal heterosexual marriages produce pathology does not mean nascent pathological unions automatically become morally acceptable.

 

[perez639]

So it seems we all agree that there is not much data to support the kinds of effects gay adoption has on the children…

But what I can’t come to terms with is why we would subject the children of future generations to be the ginnie pigs, so to speak, of such a dysfunctional relationship. Here is the difference with a homosexual relationship verse any other dysfunctional relationship… its not in the best interest of the children. We are experimenting on them.

Teaching virtue and any sort of moral standard to kids in the future is going to become extremely difficult. If everything becomes “okay” there is no longer a need for any moral Truth with a capital T because everyone will have their own truths. We will become so scattered and as a result drift further away from God. The only truth we should follow is that of God’s. Our teachings explicitly state that the union of homosexuals is WRONG. If we turn our backs on that, we are turning our backs on God.

Just with my generation as a 20-year-old female. I like to think my parents instilled morals in me, yet at times it seems near impossible to fight for what I, as a Catholic Christian was raised to fight for. I mean come on…gay adoption!!! Its obsurd to open our hearts to such an intrinsic evil.

Peace Be with you all,

Regis University Student

 

[fix]

So it seems we all agree that there is not much data to support the kinds of effects gay adoption has on the children…

But what I can’t come to terms with is why we would subject the children of future generations to be the ginnie pigs, so to speak, of such a dysfunctional relationship. Here is the difference with a homosexual relationship verse any other dysfunctional relationship… its not in the best interest of the children. We are experimenting on them.

Teaching virtue and any sort of moral standard to kids in the future is going to become extremely difficult. If everything becomes “okay” there is no longer a need for any moral Truth with a capital T because everyone will have their own truths. We will become so scattered and as a result drift further away from God. The only truth we should follow is that of God’s. Our teachings explicitly state that the union of homosexuals is WRONG. If we turn our backs on that, we are turning our backs on God.

Just with my generation as a 20-year-old female. I like to think my parents instilled morals in me, yet at times it seems near impossible to fight for what I, as a Catholic Christian was raised to fight for. I mean come on…gay adoption!!! Its obsurd to open our hearts to such an intrinsic evil.

Peace Be with you all,

Regis University Student

I can never follow the reasoning that says because pathology results, at times, from normal things we ought to enshrine a pathological subset and make it equal to the normal.

We do not need an experiment to know that vice is always wrong. No amount of psychological experimentation or study can ever prove vice is virtue? That mechanism for study is not suited to these issues.

It would be like conducting a scientific study to prove friendship is morally good.

 

[St_John]

I find it outrageous that any person wanting to be taken seriously as a Catholic would ever consider legitimizing (or rationalizing) the placement in adoption of an innocent, vulnerable, all impressionable child (assuming infant/toddler adoption) with a co-habitating “couple” of the same sex. What am I missing here? Has Catholic common sense been totally lost on those who consider themselves “Catholic”? A mere 20 years ago, this would have been refuted out of hand as a ludicrous betrayal of the basic tenants of the Catholic faith and the welfare of the whole person (mind, body, soul).

I am reminded of the frog placed in a pot of water, and degree by gradual degree the water temperature was turned up, until it was too late for the frog to jump out before he was cooked alive …it would appear such is the situation today when self-identified Catholics are found advocating for the placement of innocent children with two people aping a legitimate union in a gravely immoral, intrinsically disordered, sexually-based living arrangement.

Hi Setter,
Your post quoting me, and infering that I’m not a real “Catholic” is highly insulting. I’m not sure if it violates a specific rule here to infer such a thing, but it certainly does nothing to advance your argument with my point of view. If you research my posts, by the way, you’ll see that I’m no advocate of gay adoption, except in cases where the child has otherwise bleak alternatives.

Calling someone a “self identified Catholic”, or putting “Catholic” in quotes such as you did, is an insult. I happen to be a faily devout Catholic. praying daily, attending daily Mass when possible, following the Church’s moral code as taught in the Catechism, and using the confessional relatively frequently.

I happen to have the opinion that there are some terrible situations in this world for children, and that adoption by homosexuals might be better than no home at all. Please go back and thoroughly read my previous posts before casting stones my way. Yes, I am of the opinion that practising homosexuals aren’t totally worthless people with nothing at all valuable to contribute to the world. This does not mean that I support the homosexual political agenda. But I try and look at the good in people, not just at their faults.

 

[fix]

I happen to have the opinion that there are some terrible situations in this world for children, and that adoption by homosexuals might be better than no home at all. Please go back and thoroughly read my previous posts before casting stones my way. Yes, I am of the opinion that practising homosexuals aren’t totally worthless people with nothing at all valuable to contribute to the world. This does not mean that I support the homosexual political agenda. But I try and look at the good in people, not just at their faults.

John,
this is what the Church as told us on the matter:

…As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral …

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html