This comes from a grown daughter who loves her mother and the lesbian partner who helped raise her:
There is no difference between the value and worth of heterosexual and homosexual persons. We all deserve equal protection and opportunity in academe, housing, employment, and medical care, because we are all humans created in the image of God.
However, when it comes to procreation and child-rearing, same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are wholly unequal and should be treated differently for the sake of the children.
… Each child is conceived by a mother and a father to whom that child has a natural right. When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. … the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents.
Making policy that intentionally deprives children of their fundamental rights is something that we should not endorse, incentivize, or promote. (emphasis mine)
The fear is raised that an argument so focused on biological parents could be framed as anti-adoption. That fear is unreasonable because if people are reasonable they understand that we don’t live in an ideal world and there are less than ideal circumstances that we have to deal with. We are, and should be, happy to have people make the best of their own less than ideal individual circumstances – whatever they may be.
Adoption is a less ideal circumstance for a child than being raised by married, loving, committed, biological parents. On the other hand, adoption is a far superior circumstance for a child than abortion and usually substantially superior to being raised by a single parent for their formative years. Similarly, being raised by loving, committed, homosexual parents is better than some alternative situations but it isn’t better than the other alternatives to the ideal of married, loving, committed, biological parents that it may reasonably be compared with.
It is one thing to say legally that homosexuals should be free to pursue the lives they desire. It is another to say that legally we don’t recognize any difference between a union that can potentially create children independently and one that is absolutely incapable of doing so. I’ll reconsider my position after a homosexual couple conceives a child without the help of sperm donors, surrogate mothers, or any scientific intervention.