malamute wrote:I agree that the child's rights should be Paramount but how can you ask a baby about their rights and imagine the trouble the social workers would get in if they turned down a gay couple?
I have friends who adopted a baby girl four months ago and she's just had her first birthday. They've been waiting nearly 10 years to adopt a baby.
I imagine if you asked any primary school aged child what kind of family they would like to adopt them most would say they would like a mother and a father.
When my son was at primary school he was friends with a lovely little lad. His father was a pig though and took his fancy woman into their house and made his wife sleep in the spare room. Typing this I can still feel the distress and embarrassment that the little boy went through at school for many years when other kids found out. It's not normal and kids just want to feel "normal".
Of course, some gay couples will be able to provide a 'loving home' - which is the angle those with pro gay rights approach the subject from. They often compare a 'loving gay couple' with an abusive straight couple, and point out the child would have been better off with the gay couple in a specific case. Which is true.
However, a gay couple are just as likely to be worse parents than a straight couple, as this case in question proves. So it's swings and roundabouts as to who can provide the 'loving home', and not gender-related.
Putting aside 'loving home' top trumps, which without the cherry picking, can go either way, there are big negatives
about gay adoption. The two obvious ones being the stigma and amount of bullying the child is likely to suffer (pro gays will play this down), plus lack of both a male and female influence (pro gays will often cite an aunt or female family friend who will provide that - an unnecessary requirement for a straight couple though).
Meanwhile, there doesn't appear to be any positives at all specifically associated with having homosexual parents. Could any of the pro-gays out there let us know what these might be? Because from where I'm sitting, there aren't any.