Gay Adoption: Social Cons on the Offensive?

In recent weeks a flurry of activity has focused new attention on same-sex adoption, which is being touted as the next battleground in the nation's culture wars.

Some states, including Ohio, are considering legislation to bar gays from adopting. When local church officials ordered Catholic Charities of Boston to stop placing children in same-sex households, the agency decided earlier this month to get out of the adoption business entirely.

Critics of gay adoption say children are damaged by growing up in such households. But many child-welfare advocates disagree, saying that if gay couples are ruled out as adoptive parents, it means children who desperately need homes will have that much longer to wait.

Link.

It basically boils down to the same issue: is active homosexuality a perversion or isn't it? If it is, children shouldn't be placed in an environment that encourages perversion and, indeed, celebrates it. If it isn't a perversion, the waters get much murkier: Do we ban gay adoption on grounds that society doesn't accept gays, and therefore the child is likely to be an outcast? Do we ban gay adoption on grounds that unmarried couples don't provide stability (in which case, I can hear gay advocates who resent laws against gay marriage saying, "How convenient!")?

There's a reason B16 has made moral relativism a proper whipping boy of the first year of his pontificate: it gives rise to all sorts of problems, including the ability to stand up and say, "That's just sick. No."