Subscribe to Breaking News
Loading ...Corvino: The truth about gay adoption
I don’t have children, I don’t want children, and I don’t “get” children.
Some of my friends have children. I like their children best at two stages of their lives:
(1) When they’re small enough that they come in their own special carrying cases and stay put in them.(2) When they’re big enough that they don’t visit at all, but instead do their own thing while their parents do grownup stuff.
In between those stages, children tend to run amok, which makes me nervous. My house is full of sharp and heavy objects. I did not put them there to deter children—honest!—but I am more comfortable when children (or their parents) are thus deterred. It’s safer for everyone involved.
Having said that, I admire people who have children. I have a flourishing life largely because I was raised by terrific parents. When others choose to make similar sacrifices, I find it immensely praiseworthy.
Which may be why opposition to gay adoption makes me so angry.
Mind you, I am not by nature an angry person. Regular readers of this column know that I go out of my way to understand my opponents. Rick Warren compares homosexuality to incest? Well, what did he mean by the comparison? What was the context? What’s motivating him?
Attack gay parents, however, and my first impulse is to pick up one of the aforementioned sharp and heavy objects and hurl it across the room.
That’s partly because these attacks criticize adults who are doing a morally praiseworthy thing. And it’s partly because the attacks hurt innocent children, toward whom I feel oddly protective, despite my general aversion.
Back in November, a Miami Dade circuit judge ruled that Florida’s law banning gays from adopting is unconstitutional. This is very good news.
The Florida ban took effect in 1977, the era of Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell. We’ve come a long way since then—or so I’d like to think.
Yet the Florida religious right is trotting out the same old arguments, repeatedly insisting that having both a mother and father is “what’s best for children.”
Let’s put down our sharp and heavy objects for a moment and try addressing this calmly.
Every mainstream child health and welfare organization has challenged this premise. The American Academy of Pediatrics. The Child Welfare League of America. The National Association of Social Workers. The American Academy of Family Physicians—you name it.
These are not gay-rights organizations. These are mainstream child-welfare organizations. And they all say that children of gay parents do just as well as children of straight parents.
But let’s suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that they’re all wrong. Let us grant—just for argument’s sake—that what’s best for children is having both a mother and a father.
Even with that major concession, our opponents’ conclusion doesn’t follow. The problem is that their position makes the hypothetical “best” the enemy of the actual “good”.
Indeed, when discussing adoption, it’s a bit misleading to ask what’s “best” for children.
In the abstract, what’s “best” for children—given our opponents’ own premises—is to not need adoption in the first place, but instead to be born to loving heterosexual parents who are able and willing to raise them.
So what we’re really seeking is not the “best”—that option’s already off the table—but the “best available.”
What the 1977 Florida law entails is that gay persons are NEVER the best available. And that’s a difficult position for even a die-hard homophobe to maintain.
It’s difficult to maintain in the face of thousands of children awaiting permanent homes.
It’s difficult to maintain in the face of gay individuals and couples who have selflessly served as foster parents (which they’re permitted to do even in Florida).
It’s difficult to maintain in light of all the other factors that affect children’s well-being, such as parental income, education, stability, relationships with extended family, neighborhood of residence, and the like—not to mention their willingness and preparedness to take on dependents.
What the Florida ban does is to single out parental sexual orientation and make it an absolute bar to adoption, yet leave all of the other factors to be considered on a “case-by-case,” “best available” basis.
Meanwhile, thousands of children languish in state care.
For the sake of those children, I resist my urge to hurl heavy objects at the Florida “family values” crowd. Instead, I ask them sharply and repeatedly:
Do you really believe that it is better for children to languish in state care than to be adopted by loving gay people?
Those are the real-world alternatives. Those are the stakes. And our opponents’ unwillingness to confront them is an abysmal moral failure.
John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.
For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.
Catch John as he travels to speak and to debate same-sex marriage with Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family:
Feb. 03 Saginaw Valley State Univ. (debate) 7 pm Malcolm Field Theater
Feb. 10 Missouri State Univ. (debate) 7 pm Plaster Student Union Theater
Feb. 11 Missouri Southern State Univ. (debate) 7 pm Webster Auditorium
Feb. 12 Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence (lecture) 7 pm venue TBD
Trace, giving children to Homosexuals is a form of child abuse, no matter how well intentioned the idea may be. It will hurt the child in one way or another, the effects of such mental confusion may not show during their developing years since it is then when they’re absorbing these wrong ideas but they will surface during adulthood and society will pay the consequences. The answer is so simple, we should encourage the natural process for building adults with character and moral principles that will serve in a beneficial way our society. That natural process can only come through the traditional family. Homosexual couples have nothing to do with this process no matter how amazing in their personal lives they’re. I’m surprised they would allow someone like you to be involved in taking such decisions and at the same time I’m relieved you’re no longer doing so.
I know I will continue to support the efforts in my state from keeping children from such abuses and I see more care needs to be taken also with who the agencies are employing.
Ana you are a real piece of work.
If there is no shortage of people to adopt children, then why are there so many children in welfare homes.
I have known many people that in their younger years spent time in state welfare homes.
Most will tell you that it was a nightmare
They were treated like slaves and some were beaten.
Not all I’m sure, but most of the folks that keep state dependant children, do it for the money they receive.
I have heard very few stories where their treatment was of love and caring.
The hetro folks that want to adopt children, want perfect blond hair blue eyed perfection.
Once a child is past 5 years and older, or are of a minority parents, it is very difficult to place them to adoptive parents.
Ana, you really need to do your home.work.
Ana, you are absolutely incorrect.
There are thousands of children throughout the United States that are waiting families to adopt them. How do I know this? I worked a a Children’s Services Social Worker for 7 years. I saw many, many, many family types. Once thing for certain is that I never had to remove children from a gay household. Weekly, I would have to remove kids from heterosexual households.
You simply are not educated on this matter.
And by the way, the best foster parents I ever worked with were a lesbian couple. They were simply amazing.
Displays of promiscuous behavior or gender bending by two adults are not the best for children to be exposed to.
Mother and Father are the members of the family unit through which procreation comes into fruition, when the biological parents are no longer available then heterosexual couples who seek to adopt should take priority before any single person so that they’re able to provide that child with the proper example of behavior that will lead them into a -healthy and productive life. Homosexual couples even with the best of intentions and even if they were to refrain from their impulses in front of the child could never be able to provide a child with the examples a mother and a father would. There is no real shortage of married men and women seeking to adopt, I know it from personal experience. The only thing I agree with is that there should be more funding and programs to help married couples and men and women who are in the process of forming a family to see the blessings of raising a child who’s in need of parental care.
The solution to this problem is to provide children with a parental unit man-woman who will be a real healthy substitution for their biological loss. The wrong and detrimental answer would be to put them in a household with two people of the same gender who by nature are not intended to form a family by themselves. I don’t understand why if Corvino knows that as a homosexual he is not properly capacitated to provide for a child with a stable home he is urging others like him to do so. It shows a – poor lack of concern on his part for the children in such situations and it seems he’s more concerned with that of -homosexuals like him. Life is a gift from our creator I urge homosexuals to not cheapen it by personal agendas. If there is a need in your life to provide care for another living being go take and have a look in your nearest dog -pound. You might also discover true love through a pet for the first time in your lives, Pets can be of great comfort for people who are going through what most of you are in this confusing and troubling period of your lives.
Please also read what the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Agency, America’s leading experts on adoption say about same-gender parents. It’s good!
I thought you were referring to UK incident where a mother wanted the grandparents to adopt the kids but they were too old. Thus social worker stuck the kids with a gay couple. Which set off a nerve.
Oh I think you would make a great father.
so children need both a mother and a father? What about the father who shot his five children, their mother, and himself. Were they better off?
Dr. Corvino. Thanks so much for coming to Texas Tech University to speak. It was so nice to meet you and see your presentation in person.
You’re “frenemie”, Mr. Staton, needs to bone-up (pun intended) on his social sciences, if he continues to take that route in his argument. It lacked major credibility and I was hoping he would have had a more compelling argument than, “Barack Obama thinks he needs his daddy.”
Thank you. All the points that make gay adoption bans the strangest form of cruelty to children are touched upon. I’m totally on the fence about whether or not raising kids is to be part of my future. One thing is for sure, though: I feel that getting kids out of the state’s hands is a priority. I don’t care who gave birth to the child, I’d only hope to provide a child with a MUCH better option than what the state provides. The US’ legislative resistance to such ideas is absolutely repulsive, especially when non-gay groups who specialize in child care come out firmly against such bans. But of course, they base their findings on things like “science” and “research”, two areas that the rabidly religious right apparently thinks are part of the “homosexual agenda”. Hopefully, science and research are indeed part of our so-called agenda. Otherwise, we’re as lost as our foes.
One strong argument in favor of gay adoptions is to ask a straight person that if a straight, married couple wanted to name their gay brother the godfather of their children, would you want to take the right of that decision away from the biological parents? Almost always the answer is no.
As a father of a 10-month old I also will not be stoping by your home anytime soon. That said, the hypocrisay is really striking. What “family values” do these bigots represent? What they are arguing for directly hurts my child and that makes me really, really angry!
As a gay dad with three preschool kids, I guess I won’t be visiting your house anytime soon.
I’ll have to settle for reading your article, which was great. It did exactly what it was supposed to do – zero in on the children and drive home the fact that they are the ones ultimately hurt by these people. Thank God we live in a state where we could grow our family, hopefully all states will have the same opportunities soon.
Great column, John. I’d add to your description of “best available” by saying what we’re really seeking is what is “best for the individual child/children in question”. Is it better for a child to languish in foster care, or to find a permanent loving home with one parent or two gay parents? I am sure we all agree that those latter options are “best” for the children in question when it applies to them.
Not only do I totally concur with your aversion to children, but all and every point and idea you put forth in this article. Honestly, I think I love you, which is ridiculous because I don’t even know you. Yet, every one of you post is poignant and well written. The LGBT community needs more people like you that can calmly and sanely rationalize our point of view to a, at times, woefully ignorant and indignant opposition. Bravo and Kudos!
You forgot to mention Arkansas and thier NEWEST ban for gay & str8 cohabitors..but targeted Gays exclusively (they mush as said so)….glad u can control yourself…cause at 48..I have NO time for bigots/haters/and I have NO qualms about telling someone off to thier face…FUCK’m..I’m sick of it!