TWO PARENTS VS. MOTHERS AND FATHERS: Elizabeth Marquardt and Mike Pignatello, at MarriageMovement.org

Mike Pignatello writes:

I'd like to explore the issues of adoption and conception a little further because, for those who are fundamentally supportive of equal rights (like Elizabeth, if I may presume!), these issues seem to be the sticking points preventing their support of SSM. I appreciate Elizabeth's comments in support of gay adoption, and I think it's great that many other SSM opponents support gays and lesbians adopting children, particularly when groups like the Family Research Council actively advocate that gays and lesbians should not have the right to be parents at all, for any children whatsoever.

But if gay parents adopting unwanted kids is so great, then there is a tremendous contradiction here in the anti-SSM position: some anti-SSMers support same sex parents who adopt, but don't support same-sex parents who conceive. Opponents seem to prefer that kids be raised in homes with opposite sex parents, yet somehow, with adoption, gay parents will suffice. The contradiction in supporting one process (adopting) and not the other (conceiving) for the same outcome ("family") is usually excused by saying this: an exception to the rule can be made for gay parents, ostensibly because having "some parents" is better than having no parents at all, and because adoption itself is an exceptional circumstance.

So the "requirement" that a child have both a mother and father can presumably be excused in the case of adoption, but not for conception. Which leads us to the interesting implication that same-sex parents who adopt are somehow BETTER THAN same-sex parents who conceive, i.e. the parents with NO biological ties to the child are somehow better suited to parenting, and more acceptable to society as parents, than the family in which one parent does actually have a biological tie to the child. Strange twist.

At its most basic level, opposition to SSM (for some in this blog) comes down to disapproval about how same-sex couples might choose to have children: adoption or conceiving. So for those like Elizabeth who are, at the very least, accepting of the concept of gay families, the sticky issue here is reproduction. But this creates a dilemma for opponents, because they are basing their ideas on the premise that they "suspect" SSM will increase the use of in vitro fertilization, leading to more families that are missing at least one biological parent.

Elizabeth's reply is here.
posted by Eve at 11:47 PM | link

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