Posted on 11/06/2004 11:29:32 PM PST by NYer
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island, NOV. 5, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Adopted children of same-sex parents face the deprivation of either a mother or father and the strain of living in an unstable and unnatural situation, according to a researcher in the field.
Dale O'Leary, a writer and researcher for the Catholic Medical Association , shared with ZENIT how same-sex parents give their children a second-class upbringing by exacerbating normal problems that adopted kids experience.
Part 1 of this interview is here.
Q: What's the difference between a child being adopted by a same-sex couple and by a heterosexual couple?
O'Leary: If children adopted by married couples ask, "Why was I given up for adoption?" what will the children who are given to same-sex couples ask? Will they not wonder why their mother would give them over to a permanently and purposefully mother-less or father-less family?
And how does adoption by a same-sex couple—which gay activists admit can expose the child to social stress—protect a child from the stigma of being raised by a single mother?
Sooner or later the child will ask, "Why was I deserted by my father, given up by my mother and then treated by society as a second-class baby who could be placed in a second-class situation?"
Persons with same-sex attractions who adopt love their children, and the children love their adoptive parents, but because there is love there will also be denial.
The same-sex couples will not be able to admit to themselves the harm they have done to the children they love, and so will blame "society" or "homophobia" for the problems they face. The children will not be able to voice their dissatisfaction and will at the same time feel guilty for not being grateful. The children will be made to feel that there is something wrong with their natural desire for a parent of opposite sexes.
We have already seen an example of this. Rosie O'Donnell, a very public lesbian and advocate for lesbian adoption, was asked what she would do if her adopted son wanted a father. According to O'Donnell, her son had already expressed that desire. When he was 6, he said, "I want to have a daddy."
O'Donnell replied, "If you were to have a daddy, you wouldn't have me as a mommy because I'm the kind of mommy who wants another mommy. This is the way mommy got born." He said, "OK, I'll just keep you."
While O'Donnell undoubtedly sees this as a positive affirmation of same-sex adoption, there is another interpretation: She made her son feel that his natural desire for a father is a rejection of her. That is a terrible burden to place on a little boy.
And it gets worse. In the same interview, O'Donnell recounted how she explained adoption to her son: "... he understands that there are different types of people; that he grew up in another lady's tummy, and that God looked inside and saw there was a mix-up and that God brought him to me."
In other words, in light of this and the previous conversation between O'Donnell and her son, it is wrong for him to want a daddy because God decided that he shouldn't have one.
Q: What other dangers threaten children who are adopted by same-sex couples?
O'Leary: Children surrendered for adoption have been separated from their biological mothers and often from transitional caregivers. This can lead to attachment disorders. Attachment to a single maternal figure during the first eight months of life is crucial to emotional development. Raising a child with an attachment disorder requires special sensitivity on the part of his or her adoptive parents.
A friend who adopted a child from Eastern Europe discovered that her adopted son had a severe attachment disorder. The specialist told her that his ability to trust was so damaged that she should not leave him for any extended period for several years.
Because children surrendered for adoption have already suffered one major loss, it is very important that they be placed in the most stable situation possible. Same-sex couples are the least stable arrangement.
Gay male couples are very likely to break up; even if they remain together, they are rarely sexually faithful to one another. Lesbian couples are more likely to remain together than gay male couples, but they are not nearly as stable as married heterosexual couples.
Because of this, a child placed with a same-sex couple is at greater risk for a second major loss during childhood. The research on the effects of divorce on children is clear and unequivocal—divorce is profoundly damaging. The damage is necessarily greater for the adoptive child.
Michael Reagan—who was adopted by President Ronald Reagan and his first wife, who later divorced—speaks of divorce as two adults going into a child's room, breaking everything of value and then leaving the child to try to put the pieces back together. Michael Reagan in his vulnerability became the victim of a pedophile who took pornographic pictures of him and then used them to blackmail him into silence.
While the press presents a happy picture of same-sex couples adopting babies, there is a different side of the picture: nasty breakups and custody fights.
An article by Barbara Eisold entitled "Recreating Mother" in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry reports on the effects of a mother-less family on one little boy. This boy was conceived for a male couple using a surrogate mother who was paid for her service.
His father, the older member of the couple, hired a nanny to care for the boy. When she became too emotionally involved she was fired; another nanny was hired and then a third. The boy was then sent to nursery school. By the time he was 4 he was suffering from profound psychological problems and a therapist was hired to treat him.
One of his problems was that he wanted to "buy" a mother. The therapist asks "How do we explain why this child, the son of a male couple, seemed to need to construct a woman—'Mother'—with whom he could play the role of loving boy/man? How did such an idea enter his mind? What inspired his intensity on the subject?"
The therapist was hired to convince this little boy that what was done to him was OK and that he must accept it. But the therapist missed the obvious: Children need mothers. This child was artificially deprived of what he needed.
A recent article in the New York Times Magazine on Ry and Cade—sisters now 22 and 24 years old who were born to a female couple—appears designed to present a positive picture of how having two moms is a "big, messy, incredible experiment" that "worked." However, the lengthy article reveals the many ways in which the experiment has not worked.
Their two "mothers" did not provide the girls with clear models of femininity or masculinity. According to the article, "Ry remembers Cade pouring over Seventeen magazine as if it contained a code she needed to crack." Cade apparently didn't find what she was looking for, and at age 18 came out as a lesbian.
One gathers from the article that Ry's "mothers" were part of an active radical feminist community that held extremely negative views about marriage, and those views affected their daughters.
At one point, Ry was "repulsed" by heterosexual relations and afraid of the "sexist soul-losing domain of oppression" she associated with male-female relationships. At 16 she wrote, "I cannot understand or relate to men because I am so immersed in gay culture and unfamiliar with what it is to have a straight relationship." Ry's mothers encouraged her to have sex with her boyfriend, which she did, but at the same time she felt conflicted about having "sex with a man, which meant 'growing up and away from my mothers.'" Since then she has become more confident with men, but still feels as though she is "passing" for straight.
The experiment has clearly placed a burden on the girls. According to the article, "For most of her life, Ry has been both parent and child to her mothers." If this is supposed to be a success story, one can only imagine what the failures are like.
The adoption controversy is growing as courts and agencies favor same-sex couples over heterosexual couples. Social workers and foster parents who protest are sometimes punished.
Laurie Ellinger, a foster mother who protested the adoption of a black little boy by a white gay male couple, was temporarily suspended from sheltering foster children because she made the case public. Two married Christian couples had tried to adopt the boy, but the baby's natural father protested to the social workers, who had control over the adoption.
Q: How will same-sex couples adopting children affect society?
O'Leary: Our first concern should be the welfare of the children turned over to same-sex couples, but this policy also negatively affects our families. By sanctioning adoption by same-sex couples, the government is sanctioning homosexual behavior. It is one thing for the state to tolerate what goes on behind closed doors and quite another to say that it is equal to marriage.
How will the schools, particularly the elementary schools, handle this problem? The question is not theoretical. Schools in Massachusetts and other areas are already teaching elementary school children to accept same-sex relationships as equal to marriage between a man and woman.
This puts religious parents in an untenable position. They have a duty to teach their children the truth, namely that homosexual behavior is always and will always be contrary to God's plan. On the other hand, they do not want to go into the details of homosexuality with a kindergartner. Nor do they want to subject children being raised by same-sex couples to additional pain.
The only answer for many parents is to withdraw their children from public education. When public schools are used as instruments of indoctrination against religion, religious parents are discriminated against.
How so? Marriage is an institution that implicitly requires the union of a male and a female. That is what marriage is. Just because a person says they are a polar bear, doesn't make them one. And the constitution does not require the federal government or any state to regard them as one. There is no constitutional requirement to allow anyone to redefine the meaning of established institutions.
So you believe an individual state has a right to pass segregation laws?
ping
Every one of these arguments was made during the civil rights era and eventually dismissed.
If you would tell somebody 100 years ago that laws legalising homosexual "adoption" would be passed one century later, anyone would be able to realise what that would mean.
Brainwahsed sheeple just aren't able tor realise how important legalising homosexuality (first step) and homosexual "adoption" are, in particular their significance as part of the satanic seal.
Nonsense.
Name one case that applies.
You cannot.
You are spouting radical homosexual agenda talking points, that's all.
Religion aside, I think it takes a tortured reading of the federal constitution to permit a same sex marriage ban. I don't see any difference between this issue or the racial civil rights issue.
People who want to enter into polygamous marriages are also discriminated against, and as you said, discrimination is discrimination. According to what the federal constitution says, do you think the ban on polygamous marriages should continue or has the time come to legalize polygamous marriages and end the discrimination?
It is for this reason, and this reason alone, that I am vehemently opposed to gay marriage or "civil unions". I could personally care less who you sleep with. I think it is an immoral (sinful, if you like) lifestyle; but that is between the homo and God.
It is for this reason, primarily, that the butt bandits "demand" gay marriage. Their primary goal is the "mainstreaming" of their aberrant lifestyle by the indoctrination of succeeding generations; much like the liberals have done with government schools. There are also the groups such as NAMBLA that would like to sexually exploit children.
The GLBT community's other concerns; financial, succession, visitation, etc. can all be handled by joint accounts, legal contracts, and powers-of-attorney.
No, but it is NOT the same thing.
The difference is that the Constitution applies to governmental actions - not the actions of private citizens and their corporate entities.
Well corrected.
3. The analogy that "gay" is to "straight" as "black" is to "white" is completely flawed, because there is no evidence or historical precedent to indicate that a person is, so to speak, ever "born homosexual." Sure, there have always been people (and animals) who desired to copulate with members of the same sex, but prior to the 19th and 20th centuries, no one ever suggested that the desire to copulate anally might be written into a person's genetic code as an integral part of his being.
PMFJI, but couldn't your argument here apply equally as well to discrimination on the basis of religion? There are ex-Christians, ex-Jews, ex-atheists, etc.
"Every one of these arguments was made during the civil rights era and eventually dismissed."
Actually, they weren't "dismissed." They were suppressed at gunpoint.
The fundamental flaw in your argument is that the constitution does not prohibit discrimination against **everything.**
It only prohibits discrimination against *some* things.
Same-sex attraction disorder is not, nor should it be, one of those things.
Constitutionally speaking, it is quite permissible to discriminate against SSAD sufferers in housing, education, employment, and access to public accomodations. And, in fact, that should be done.
If somebody wrongheadedly believes that to be improper, he needs to work for a constitutional amendment.
"PMFJI, but couldn't your argument here apply equally as well to discrimination on the basis of religion? There are ex-Christians, ex-Jews, ex-atheists, etc."
Even if it were, the free exercise of religion is constitutionally protected.
Do Mormons not have the right to have multiple partners?
Then you're both woefully ignorant of constitutional law. This doesn't mean that there aren't SC justices who would strike down the gay marriage bans for that very reason. These are activist judges, hell-bent on making law rather than interpreting law - the mind-set that resulted in abortion (the murder of a human being, remember) being decriminalized under Roe v. Wade. The architects of the Constitution have got to be spinning in their graves because of the way this noble document has been perverted. I dare say, not one of the signers would have put pen to that paper if it had actually, literally, proclaimed that women would be free to kill their babies in-utero, or protect homosexuals from social stigma.
Being gay IS a psycological problem.
Easy.
There's no "right" to marry.
I'm a heterosexual male.
Do I have a right to marry my mother? After all, we love each other. - NO.
Do I have a right to marry any of my sisters? After all, we love each other. - NO.
Do I have a right to marry either of my daughters? After all, we love each other. - NO.
We already accept many restrictions on who may marry. Marriage is not a right.
Abandonment of that claim by the Mormon church was an explicit requirement for statehood.
This is not to say there are no polygamous Mormons, but they're not legal.
(as an aside, they're generally parasites, either forcing their wives to work to feed the kids, or on welfare)
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