These Children are Disadvantaged When Parents Don't Have Same Rights
There appears to be a common misconception that all lesbian and gay couples are childless; and that the discussion about gay and lesbian couples raising children is a debate about theorhetical families. The reality, however, is quite different. According to the 2000 Census, one-third of lesbian couples and one-fifth of male couples are already raising children. The most conservative estimates tell us that there are hundreds of thousands of children in the U.S. being raised by families headed by gay and lesbian couples. Hundreds of thousands of children. These are very real children, in very real families who, in most states in America, struggle day to day without the legal protections many others may take for granted. The fact that their parents are denied access to the rights, protections and benefits of civil marriage puts these children at a tremendous disadvantage.
These families are everywhere. They don't just live in the Bay Area, New York City and Key West, FL. They live in Provo and Topeka, Montgomery and Houston. In cities and towns of every size and political complexion throughout our country. They are our patients, our neighbors, and our families. They look to us for protection and support. The welfare of these children, and the security of their families, matter to pediatricians.
Civil marriage is a legal status that promotes healthy families by conferring over 1,000 rights, benefits and protections that cannot be obtained by other means. Including the right to make medical decisions for a child or on behalf of an incapacitated partner, access to insurance and social security benefits, the right to jointly adopt children, or the right to inherit property at the death of a spouse.
Without civil marriage, these families struggle to be recognized. The law sees only individuals. Never couples. Never families. Again and again, in state after state, we see examples of how the lack of access to gender neutral civil marriage has had adverse effects for children and families.
It is the duty of pediatricians to make sure all children they care for have safe and secure homes. Access to civil marriage is critical to same gender couples raising children, just as it is to opposite gender couples raising children. That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics passed a resolution in 2007 in support of the right of same gender couples to marry. Speaking out to ensure that gay and lesbian families are as safe and protected as possible, and speaking out to ensure that heterosexual families are as safe and protected as possible, are not mutually exclusive enterprises.
Gay and lesbian people have been raising children for many years and will continue to do so in the future. The need for the legal protections that civil marriage affords these couples and their children is not merely some interesting intellectual topic of debate. It is a very real roadblock to the security of hundreds of thousands of the children we care for.
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The lifestyle compromises morals, health , mental security and sound thinking, it compromises wise choices, and it ultimately compromises the children as well. To put children into these situations is to bring a compromised state of being onto them as well. I read this story and I thought it quite moving and tragic and if for no other reason than this we should do all we can to prevent ss couples from adopting children if just to prevent them from enduring this kind of consequence from sexual lifestyle choices that compromise them.
In 1992, while I was serving as the chief spokesman for a high-profile anti- homosexuality ballot measure in Oregon, my family took in an ex-homosexual man who was dying of AIDS . I was somewhat fearful of the disease (I never really trusted the assurances of the public health services) yet I felt very strongly that God wanted us to care for Sonny. My feelings were confirmed when God miraculously provided a uniquely suitable house for us all to live in (the only rental we could afford in the only school district we had chosen), complete with a separate daylight basement apartment for him. Sonny lived with our family for the last year of his life.
Sonny had suffered the ravages, both spiritual and physical, of the homosexual life, beginning when he was raped at the age of seven in the men’s room of a YMCA. He confessed to me his involvement in twenty years of activities too defiling and sordid to describe here. Yet when faced with his own imminent death, Sonny invited Jesus Christ into his life, renounced homosexuality, and was born again. God blessed his decision by providing him, during the final months of his life, with friends, a Christian family, and the love he had never previously known.
I was privileged to share Sonny’s last moments of consciousness in the hospital on the night that he died. Four of his closest Christian friends, two former Satanists, an ex-lesbian and myself (a recovered alcoholic and drug addict) showed up unexpectedly in his hospital room (one had even brought her guitar) and sang Sonny’s favorite worship songs with him. Then the four of us laid hands upon him and asked the Lord in His mercy to take him home. It was one of the sweetest experiences of my Christian life. Sonny drifted off to sleep and died later that night. He was unafraid and at peace. Part of the Scott Lively story.You can google his name and read it in full.
Anecdotal?
"The lifestyle compromises morals, health , mental security and sound thinking, it compromises wise choices, and it ultimately compromises the children as well. "
I've seen no evidence supporting this statement, either in my own interaction with homosexuals or (more importantly) in the literature regarding homosexual relationships.
Your 'Sonny' story is nothing more then an anecdote... and while tragic is no more applicable to the homosexual population then a story about a heterosexual dying of aids is applicable to the heterosexual population.
Equal Civil Rights are the most pressing issue. NO gay-parented family in this nation has the same rights as a straight, married couple and their children. Even those legally married in MA, CA or CT do not have any of the more than 1000 rights, protections and privileges granted by federal law to married couples.
But worse than this is the fact that many, many gay people live in one of the 30 states which do not have even the most basic of Civil Rights protections for gays, such as the right to not be fired from a job or refused employment because one is gay, or the right not to be denied the purchase or rental of a home because one is gay.
These Civil Rights (or the denial thereof) affect gay-parented families even more than they do gay individuals, because an individual might be presumed to be straight, but a couple with children become extremely obvious to prospective landlords, home sellers or real estate agents. And employers are not in most places compelled to offer equal access to employer-paid health insurance to the spouses of gay employees. And if they DO offer such benefits, it is generally not of much benefit, anyway, since gay couples have to pay income taxes on benefits paid for gay spouses as though they were part of the employee's taxable income, making such benefits often as costly or more costly than purchasing health insurance privately.
Since many gay parents cannot form a legal relationship to children adopted by or born to their spouse, they also cannot cover these children as dependents on their employer health insurance. The children will not be eligible to receive Social Security payments if that parent dies. And if the biological or adoptive parent dies, the children may lose both parents simultaneously, because they may be taken away from the remaining parent to be placed in foster care with strangers.
There are far too many ways in which gay-parented families are disadvantaged by being denied equal civil rights which are granted as a part of civil marriage to list them all here, or even a tiny fraction of them. But suffice to say that THESE are the ways in which children of same-gender parents are disadvantaged as compared to children of opposite-gender parents -- not because their parents love them any less or cannot parent them as well as opposite-gender parents.
And what do these gay's teach their adoptees about sex education? I'm sure they do not bring up how is an unatural sexual arrangement, an sin in most the the religious communities.
I sure hope they dono't try and discuss it on a intellectual level with 10-13 year old boys and girls.
I was going to start with a sarcastic comment, but I'm just not sure they play on this forum. Anyway, "unnatural" is a subjective term. What you think is unnatural someone else thinks is natural. Who's right? NOBODY. It does not matter what we consider "natural," because it has no bearing on anything. We do plenty of things that are "unnatural" but seemingly positive, for example, synthetic treatments for deadly diseases: totally unnatural.
Anyway, as far as religious communities go, I am heterosexual man, and also an atheist. I do not have any interest in the opinions of religious communities on sin or most other matters. I'm not saying religious communities have nothing to offer, just that their ideas of right and wrong aren't an overriding factor.
Finally, your last comment about intellectual discussion. While I don't have any readily available research, I think most professionals in fields relating to childhood psychology and education would agree that treating children as capable thinking beings is a good thing. Difficult issues are not made better, in general, by lying or oversimplifying to a child. Obviously, we cannot over-intellectualize with children (which I have to constantly remember when posting to this site), but treating kids like they are stupid or ignorant about issues that they are dealing with in their lives is a method of parenting which ignores children as people.
We teach our children the same things any parent teaches his or her children. That seems rather obvious to me.
First they learn about their own bodies. They ask questions and a parent answers those questions honestly, but at the level of detail appropriate to the age of the child. Then they notice differences about the other gender (in our case, our daughters observed that the family dogs were built a little differently). The parent again explains what the child has observed, at a level appropriate to the child's age and questions.
There is nothing particularly difficult, here.
You right, there is nothing difficult because you and the good doctor avoid the real issue. Describing the physical differences between a male and a female is not the issue. Its about two same sex adults not being capable of giving emotional and experience laden guidence to maturing children of the opposite sex. This being the case it's obvious that the children are at a disadvantage from the situation.
A female cannot possiblely give guidence a male parent can to a boy about a boy growing up and visa-versa. It would be exactly the same as having no male influence in the family.
First of all, I have to say that I am highly insulted by your comment. To say that a mother cannot give her male child guidance (or father to daughter) is ludicrous and inflammatory. I have been a single parent to a son for most of his 16 years and he is very well-adjusted, well-informed and open-minded (if I do say so myself ; ) ).
Secondly, while I have no studies to support my claim, I have lots of personal experience. I am raising my son with my same-sex partner, and as I've already stated, he is doing exceptionally well. I know several same-sex couples who have adopted and I can't think of one instance where these children are "disadvantaged". Can there be challenges in these circumstances? Of course. But what child doesn't provide a challenge to their parent(s) at some point.
If anything, I would say that these adopted children are better off than many children. They were given to families who wanted them with all of their hearts, and who had to fight every step of the way to bring them home. Once there, they are showered with love and affection. The only thing that might make their lives easier would be if they were not stared at with contempt by the bigots of this country.
My response didn't get thru so I'll try again.
I really don't care if your insulted by the truth or not, that's your problem. How can you really think a female can give a male perspective? Thre are experiences in life that are sex oriented and no matter hom much you want it not to be, some things are impossible.
Please explain how a male can possibly explain the mother instinct to a male adolescent? Please comment on the relationship a mother has with a son, if your a male?
We are our experiences and nothing can change that.
Please explaine "well adjusted" and "open minded". Is one inclusive of the other? Who says so, you? The neighbor?. The only thing same sex parenets cannot give a child is the same as an only parent.
The emotional and experience of the opposite sexual parent. A family experienced of a father and mother.
Your perspective that all's a child need is love and affection is rather limited in itself. Love an affection have nothing to do with the focus of discussion so why mention it?
Most adopted kids want to know who their biological parents are. There is a bond that is undeniable and has nothing to do with the love and kindness of another.
You talk about bigots like straights have a corner on the market. Waht about the gay's threatening the lives of christians? I suppsoe that's OK since they promote you agenda. Or pedophiles wanting to become parents haveing close access same sex children, schools, and friends.
Or do you say that this doesn't exist?
The only thing that is relevant is what the child and or cannot get from same sex parents.
"Please explain how a male can possibly explain the mother instinct to a male adolescent? Please comment on the relationship a mother has with a son, if your a male?"
I agree that some experiences in life are gender-specific. But there are resources available. If you are that father trying to explain a mother-son relationship, could you not use your experience as a son as an example? Hmmmmm...
"Please explaine "well adjusted" and "open minded". Is one inclusive of the other? Who says so, you? The neighbor? "
Yes, one is inclusive of the other. Who says so? I do. This is my forum, my opinions, so I decide.
I agree that children of same sex parents or single parents lack a parent of one gender. I just don't believe that necessarily makes them "disadvantaged". There are other family members, friends, loved ones, etc. that a parent can turn to if the need arises. For myself, I can't think of a time when my gender hindered my parenting. But that's just me.
"Your perspective that all's a child need is love and affection is rather limited in itself. Love an affection have nothing to do with the focus of discussion so why mention it?"
I certainly never stated that ALL a child needs is love and affection. Wouldn't that make this an easier world? I was simply using this as an example to illustrate that children with same-sex parents are not at a disadvantage. And I have to disagree that these things have "nothing to do with the focus of this discussion". I find as a parent, that things like love, affection, understanding, etc. help get us through a lot of life's rough parts. Don't you agree? These things are the foundation of ANY solid parent-child relationship.
"Most adopted kids want to know who their biological parents are. There is a bond that is undeniable and has nothing to do with the love and kindness of another."
I agree. Not sure of the relevance to this discussion, however. Seems like that is true whether the child was adapted my moms, dad, or one of each...
"You talk about bigots like straights have a corner on the market."
I never said any such thing. Bigots come in all shapes, sizes, and sexualities.
"Waht about the gay's threatening the lives of christians? I suppsoe that's OK since they promote you agenda."
I haven't heard of any gay people threatening the lives of Christians. Can you please direct me to that news story? If it has happened, I would say it's NOT okay. When's the last time you say a protest sign that said "God Hates Church-Goers" or "Kill all Baptists"??? I didn't think so.
My only "agenda" is to live my life the best I can.
"Or pedophiles wanting to become parents haveing close access same sex children, schools, and friends. Or do you say that this doesn't exist?"
I'm not sure what your point is here. What does this have to do with bigotry? Of course pedophiles exist, and of course I don't agree with them.
Just because my genitalia might be different from my child's does not mean I'm incapable of giving him or her guidance about sexual issues, feelings, experiences, fears or misunderstandings. And if an issue comes up in which input from a person of the opposite gender seems necessary or important, there are other family members and trusted friends to turn to for additional help and guidance. To declare this as a reason why same-gender parents are inadequate to parent children is simply ridiculous. It's equivalent to claiming that a black child cannot be adequately parented by white parents because they will not be able to give the child guidance with regard to his/her race. Good, loving parents meet challenges as they come up and use the resources available to them to care for their children.
Prejudice is what puts children at a disadvantage, not loving parents.