Every child is conceived with a male parent and a female parent. In vitro fertilization has not changed this fact. Every woman must still obtain the help of a man in order to become pregnant, whether she acknowledges the man as the father of the child or not does not change this simple fact. Every man must have the aide of a woman in order to become a father. Surrogacy and egg donations do not change that fact. It is an absolute point of truth that every single child ever born on this planet, including Jesus Christ, had a mother and a father.
Because we all begin as a combination of male and female, we need both a male parent and a female parent to help us unpack the mystery of ourselves and learn to relate to others. Simply put, a man cannot teach a girl how to be a woman anymore than a woman can teach a boy how to be a man. Only a woman can teach a boy how to respectfully relate to women on a non-sexual level just as only a man can teach a girl how to respectfully relate to a man on a non-sexual level. Only a heterosexual couple living in a healthy marriage can teach a child how to live out a healthy, heterosexual marriage. Gay parents simply do not have the ability, no matter how well-intentioned or caring they might be, to provide a child with what they need emotionally for proper social development.
Those who read what I am writing may leap, quite logically, to the conclusion that this means that single parenting is inadequate for a child's proper social development. It is. Most of the prisons are filled with the children of single parents. Single children struggle far more than children from two parent homes to form lasting relationships with the opposite sex. This is true even if the child was abandoned before birth and has no recollection of the missing parent. The truth is that no amount of love on the part of gay or lesbian partners can fill in that gap even if the couple in question is entirely monogamous and remains together for a lifetime.
Furthermore, countless studies show that there is a marked increase in suicide rates for people engaged in gay or lesbian lifestyles, in some cases it is three times as high as in the general population. Children of parents who commit suicide are three times as likely as other children to commit suicide as well. Drug abuse and alcoholism are prevalent among those communities as well, and it is a fact that parental drug and alcohol abuse are key risk factors in a child's decision to experiment with drugs or alcohol. Even if the parents themselves do not abuse drugs or alcohol, they are highly likely to socialize with couples who do as it is a natural and human tendency to gather with others of similar beliefs and interests.
Adoption agencies are charged with placing children in safe environments where the child's needs will be met. It is unfair to the child and grossly negligent to knowingly place them in a home where not only will their full needs not be met but where there are so many risk factors for danger present. It is unethical to conduct this kind of social experiment where we take helpless children and place them in these environments because we are testing our hypothesis that placing them in these environments is not harmful to their health. Children should not be treated as lab rats, and children in the foster and adoption systems should not be given less consideration than children from homes where both parents love them.
Your commentary lacks any citations to facts. I found some for you.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.livescience.com/17913-advantages-gay-parents.html
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/are-same-sex-couples-better-parents/
http://www.proudparenting.com/node/2861
http://www.momlogic.com/2009/09/out_of_the_closet_raising_kids_in_gay_families.php
Thank you for pointing out my faillure to include my sources. I have corrected this oversight. I appreciate the time you took to read my blog and hope that you find the new sources useful. God bless.
DeleteConsidering that there are many children who grow up in abusive and neglectful houses that contain married heterosexual couples and that there are many children who grow up with single/widowed/divorced parents who turn out to be well adjusted members of society, I find your claims of "truth" to be lacking.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you fail to realize that one of the reasons that homosexuals have a higher rate of suicide is because of the way society treats them. And you are not saying that children of homosexual parents have high suicide rates, you are saying that homosexuals themselves have high suicide rates which seems to imply that you believe the children rasied by homosexual couples are going to have homosexual relationships as well. There is no evidence to support such claims. I will point out that all homosexuals are born from one male and one female as well. Do you believe Dick Cheney raised his girl to be gay?
A lot of your other conclusions are based off horribly biased websites and not in science. So please, stick to what you know.
Dan, thank you so much for coming to my blog, for taking the time to read and respond. I am a child who grew up in an abusive, neglectful household with a mother and - at least for the first 9 years - a father. You are mistaken if you believe we grow up "well-adjusted". We all end up broken by the experience, to one degree or another. It's how we cope with it that differs. Some of us cope with it by becoming abusers ourselves, some of us cope with it by living our lives in a hopeless quest for perfection. The one thing we are NOT is well-adjusted, no matter how well we may hide that fact. The only way we become well-adjusted after that is to seek help and guidance, to form relationships with people who are healthier than we are, and to learn from other people's good examples what it's supposed to be like.
DeleteYour statement that homosexuals have a higher rate of suicide because of the way society treats them is not based on fact. In countries like the Netherlands, where the lgbt lifestyle experiences very little, if any, discrimination you still see a higher suicide rate (http://www.narth.com/docs/nodefense.html). Also, if it were true, you would see an equal level of suicide rates amongst other minority groups.
I am not claiming that children raised by homosexuals are going to be homosexual, but I do know that studies have shown they have an increased likelihood of those children to identify as homosexual - in part because we often model the behavior we witness as children. It would be a shocking thing if it had absolutely no influence on them. (http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc3=&id=111710)
I do actually suspect that at least a portion of how Dick Cheney's daughter was raised contributed to her same sex attractions. A mother who rejects her own femininity, or a father who expresses extreme disappointment at having a daughter, can all contribute to the daughter rejecting her own femininity and assimilating a masculine persona. It's a lot more complex than most people realize, and is rarely as simple as genetics.
You may disagree with my conclusions, and I accept that some of the sites may be biased, but I believe the overall picture cannot be ignored. Children need a mother and a father - and two of the same gender are not an adequate substitute for the missing gender.
As for me sticking to what I know, I am. I am sticking to writing a blog and expressing my opinions based on the information I have obtained and the experiences I have had. I reflect on the fact that experts built the Titanic, whereas amateurs built the ark. Have a great day :)
I wasn't suggesting that abused people grow up well adjusted. I was saying that just because someone has married parents it doesn't mean they will grow up without issues and just because that someone has a single/divorced/widowed/homosexual parent it doesn't mean they will go up with problems.
DeleteAs to the suicide issue, Teasdale and Bradley-Engen suggest that one of the contributing factors to the higher suicide rate among people who are homosexual is the lack of social support (as seen by suicidal tendencies amonth those surveyed) http://www.unh.edu/sociology/media/pdfs-journal2012/P12_Schaaff.pdf
Also, from the same article: "Meyer suggests that the concealment of sexual orientation has been cited among the leading causes of poorer mental health among homosexual individuals (Bybee et al. 2009:145). “Concealment serves to cut off channels of support…Attendant lies, cover-ups, and hiding secrets can lead to harmful, ongoing feelings of guilt and shame, serving to further undercut mental well-being” (Bybee et al. 2009:145)."
The article also suggests that once the children become adults, that the reliance on the need of approval makes the rates of people who are homosexual return to the norm of everyone else. This means that your assertion that the children they raise would be more likely to be suicidal would be false because the parents, having made it past the danger zone, wouldn't be suicidal. Furthermore, considering the factor that parental rejecting makes the liklihood of suicidal tendencies higher, one would presume that parents who are the same sex and raising a children would be more likely to have children whose sexual orientation would be respected and accepted. This would mean they would have more support at home and as such less likely to commit suicide.
This link fairly well debunks the Schumm study you cite: http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2010/10/17/27400
I would argue that children benefit from having people who love them in their lives and two people who love them is always better than one, but that the love of one.
I also think that by trying to claim that children "need" two is harmful even to heterosexual parents, like those who lose loved ones in the line of duty (military, police, fire) and are left to raise their children by themselves. To me, such statements would pour salt in their wounds.
Children do need two parents, as anyone who has lost a loved one in the line of duty can attest. Those children are definitely negatively impacted by the loss of their parent. Who wouldn't be? Wouldn't it be incredibly odd if it had no impact at all on them? Does it hurt to realize your child has been negatively impacted by that loss? Yes. Does it help the child to ignore the hurt and pretend nothing's the matter? I would say absolutely not! I was absolutely devastated by the loss of my father, even though that loss was through divorce at the time rather than through death. If my mother had just ignored that fact and pretended that things were all okay and that she was enough to meet that need on her own, I would have been put in a situation where I wasn't able to express my grief and my sense of emptiness.
DeleteKids aren't stupid. They are very observant and notice that other kids have a father and a mother and they know when something's off. Trying to pretend like it isn't, or to invalidate how they feel by ignoring the facts isn't helpful to them and can be far more damaging in the long run.
As for the rates of suicide returning to normal once they are adults, this just isn't true. The rates among adults aren't quite as high but they are still significantly higher than the average population - and when they are parenting children that's a serious concern. Those children are going to be directly impacted by that suicide, and I don't care what age you are when it happens. When a parent commits suicide, it's like telling your child there is no hope for the future and you're better off dead. Parents have a much stronger influence, even into adulthood, than you think.
As for the reason for suicide rates being because of denial, again I am telling you that if you look at the studies this simply isn't supported by the facts. The higher rates of suicide are happening even in societies where there is neither need nor encouragement to conceal the sexual preferences. It's intrinsic to the nature of same sex attraction that you are rejecting a portion of yourself - and it is this rejection, not others perceptions of you, that causes the problems. You can't hate or reject a portion of yourself without it impacting everything in your life.