From Robert Oscar Lopez, who, by the way, was raised by lesbians:
After doing a panel discussion on al-Jazeera last night, and coming across countless more articles about same-sex parenting today, I’m a little tired of being diplomatic. Maybe there are moments when a bit of bluntness is appropriate.
In a best case scenario, there is a widow who comes out of the closet after her husband dies, and then gets help from a lesbian lover while raising her children. She makes sure not to trample on their father’s memory, and doesn’t force them to call her new lover “Mom.” In that one rare, specific, unintentional case, yes, same-sex parenting is okay.
Every other scenario involving a same-sex couple with exclusive custody of small children is adult misconduct at best or a crime against humanity at worst. If it happened because of divorce, then the gay parent and a former heterosexual lover failed to resolve their differences and didn’t stay together for the children. The gay parent, who’s now a single parent because the opposite-sex partner left, has no business moving in a homosexual lover not related to the children and forcing them to deal with that new presence.
If the gay couple adopted, they did a disservice to the child, even if the adoptee turns out okay and seems, on the surface, not to object to what happened. Children in the adoption system landed there because of a tragedy and need to be placed in a home with as few complications as possible. A same-sex couple brings moral controversy and also lacks either a father or a mother, to which every child has a right.
There are long waiting lists for heterosexual couples who want to adopt. If the list runs dry, the adoption agency’s job is to recruit appropriate homes, not scout for available children to satisfy gay couples. Adoption professionals need to get off their rumps and look for functional heterosexual homes for children in need–in other words, do their job – rather than sit in their office collecting bribes from gay couples impatient to find available babies to take home.
If we’re talking about lesbians who went to a sperm bank, that’s wrong. The child has no father in the home. If the child knows who donated the sperm, there’s a third party destabilizing the home and often confusing the child’s identity and emotional connections. If the child doesn’t even know who the sperm donor was, that’s a haunting origin mystery that no person should have to carry for their whole life. Lesbians who do this are selfish.
If we’re talking about gay men who hired a surrogate mother, that’s unconscionable. It is illegal after the abolition of slavery to buy, sell, or traffic human beings, so the entire business of surrogacy represents a massive lapse in the moral judgment of twenty-first-century civilized societies. In the case of this gay male couple, they are denying the child a mother, plus forcing the child to imagine the primal trauma of having been sold.
But I’ve commented on all these things a million times. I’d like to add something new here: the six most offensive things about same-sex parenting advocates…
Read more: BarbWire.com
