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WillowOne's Positions

Gay Adoption

My Positions

  1. Gay people should have the right to adopt, on the same terms as anyone else.
  2. The only question an adoption agency should ask is whether the applicants can provide a safe, stable, and loving home. The sex of the applicants, and whether they are the same sex as each other, is not relevant to that question.
  3. Religious adoption agencies that refuse to place children with same-sex couples should not receive public funding, and should not be exempt from equality law. A child's interests are not served by narrowing the pool of suitable parents to satisfy an agency's doctrine.

Notes

  1. The empirical question, whether children raised by same-sex parents do as well as children raised by opposite-sex parents, has been studied extensively for over thirty years and the answer is yes. Reviews by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Australian Institute of Family Studies, among others, find no difference in outcomes attributable to parental sexual orientation. What matters is the quality of the parenting, the stability of the home, and the resources available, none of which depends on the parents' sex.
  2. The alternative to adoption by a same-sex couple is not, in general, adoption by an opposite-sex couple. It is the care system. There are always more children waiting for adoption than there are approved adopters, and any policy that excludes suitable applicants leaves children in care for longer.
  3. The objection that a child "needs a mother and a father" is an Appeal to Tradition and an Appeal to Nature, and it proves too much: it would also disqualify single parents, widowed parents, and the many children raised successfully by grandparents.
  4. In England and Wales, same-sex couples have been able to adopt jointly since the Adoption and Children Act 2002 came into force in 2005. The sky has not fallen.

Personal Context

  • I have gay friends who are married.
  • I am a heterosexual man.

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