In reply to:Nothing I wrote was made up, either. But since you keep quoting gay parents as being better than those of foster kids, how about you come up with some stats that show none of the foster kids come from a pair of gay parents?Your credibility is dust. You're worried about all kinds of things, but you have nothing concrete to back up your fears.A group doesn't need to prove its rectitude in order to have civil rights.I wonder how many foster kids come from mixed-race marriages. Maybe mixed-race marriage should be banned, if there are any kids of mixed-race parents in foster care.Should we lock up all Muslims, since some of them destroy airplanes and buildings?
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Gay Marriage - a secular view
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But since you keep quoting gay parents as being better than those of foster kids, how about you come up with some stats that show none of the foster kids come from a pair of gay parents?Steve said it well: “The clear implication is that you saw quite a few kids of gay parents in foster care. What else could you make of that statement? I'd like to know where you found so many gay families.”Plus I never said there perhaps are not kids in foster care that came from Gay parents, I am sure there are. But there are kids in foster care from EVERY walk of life. How does this prove anything of your case? Plain and simple… it doesn’t.But if you want some statistics I did a quick google and I found this site: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/tar/report11.htmInteresting enough there isn’t even a place that has homosexual listed on the Family Structure before Foster Care. So must not be as high as you are trying to make it sound…. Sorry.
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Actual statistics? We don't need no stinkin' statistics.As you must know, there are a lot of gay people who are foster parents. And it's a good thing, too, since there aren't enough heterosexual adults who are willing to take in all the kids who need a home.I wonder if anyone would dispute the idea that a gay foster parent is far better for a kid than an orphanage-type environment.
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>Actual statistics? We don't need no stinkin' statistics.
LoL
>As you must know, there are a lot of gay people who are foster parents. And it's a good thing, too, since there aren't enough heterosexual adults who are willing to take in all the kids who need a home.
Exactly. I am actually thinking of starting off as a foster parent before I actually adopt. Figure it'll help me ease into the parent role as well as help out kids who need a home environment.
>I wonder if anyone would dispute the idea that a gay foster parent is far better for a kid than an orphanage-type environment.
Would be curious to see. They'd be crazy to say an orphanage environment is better than gay foster parents. There are TRUE horror stories about what happens in those types of environment, not to mention kids need one on one attention and love something they cannot get in an orphanage setting.
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I think, you might find this site interesting.
APA:Research Summary on Gay & Lesbian ParentingSomethings I found interesting in it.
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Because many beliefs about lesbian and gay parents and their children are open to empirical test, psychological research can evaluate their accuracy. Systematic research comparing lesbian and gay adults to heterosexual adults only began in the late 1950s, and research comparing children of gay and lesbian parents with those of heterosexual parents is of a more recent vintage. Research on lesbian and gay adults began with Evelyn Hooker's landmark study (1957) and culminated with the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 (Gonsiorek, 1991). Case reports on children of gay and lesbian parents began to appear in the psychiatric literature in the early 1970s (e.g., Osman, 1972; Weeks, Derdeyn, & Langman, 1975) and have continued to appear (e.g., Agbayewa, 1984). Beginning with the pioneering work of Martin and Lyon (1972), first person and fictionalized descriptions of life in lesbian mother families have also become available (e.g., Alpert, 1988; Clausen, 1985; Jullion, 1985; Mager, 1975; Perreault, 1975; Pollock & Vaughn, 1987; Rafkin, 1990). Systematic research on the children of lesbian and gay parents did not, however, begin to appear in major professional journals until 1978, and most of the available research has been published more recently.
As this summary will show, the results of existing research comparing gay and lesbian parents to heterosexual parents and children of gay or lesbian parents to children of heterosexual parents are quite uniform: common sterotypes are not supported by the data.
Without denying the clarity of results to date, it is important also for psychologists and other professionals to be aware that research in this area has presented a variety of methodological challenges, not all of which have been surmounted in every study. As is true in any area of research, questions have been raised with regard to sampling issues, statistical power, and other technical matters (e.g., Belcastro, Gramlich, Nicholson, Price, & Wilson, 1993); no individual study is entirely invincible to such criticism.
One criticism of this body of research (Belcastro et al., 1993) has been that the research lacks external validity because it may not be representative of the larger population of lesbian and gay parents. This criticism is not justified, because nobody knows the actual composition of the entire population of lesbian mothers, gay fathers, or their children (many of whom choose to remain hidden) and hence researchers cannot possible evaluate the degree to which particular samples do or do not represent the population. In the long run, it is not the results obtained from any one specific sample, but the accumulation of findings from many different samples that will be most meaningful.
Research in this area has also been criticized for using poorly matched or no control groups in designs that call for such controls. Particularly notable in this category has been the tendency in some studies to compare development among children of a group of divorced lesbian mothers, many of whom are living with lesbian partners, to that among children of a group of divorced heterosexual mothers who are not currently living with heterosexual partners. It will be important for future research to disentangle maternal sexual orientation from maternal status as partnered or unpartnered.
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One belief that often underlies both judicial decision-making in custody litigation and public policies governing foster care and adoption has been the belief that lesbians and gay men are not fit to be parents. In particular, courts have sometimes assumed that gay men and lesbians are mentally ill, that lesbians are less maternal than heterosexual women, and that lesbians' and gay men's relationships with sexual partners leave little time for ongoing parent-child interactions (Editors of the Harvard Law Review, 1990). Results of research to date have failed to confirm any of these beliefs (Falk, 1989, 1994; Patterson, 1994b, 1995b, 1996).
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Beliefs that gay and lesbian adults are not fit parents likewise have no empirical foundation (Cramer, 1986; Falk, 1989; Gibbs, 1988; Patterson, 1996). Lesbian and heterosexual women have not been found to differ markedly either in their overall mental health or in their approaches to child rearing (Kweskin & Cook, 1982; Lyons, 1983; Miller, Jacobsen, & Bigner, 1981; Mucklow & Phelan, 1979; Pagelow, 1980; Rand, Graham, & Rawlings, 1982; Thompson, McCandless, & Strickland, 1971), nor have lesbians' romantic and sexual relationships with other women been found to detract from their ability to care for their children (Pagelow, 1980). Recent evidence suggests that lesbian couples who are parenting together tend to divide household and family labor relatively evenly (Hand, 1991; Patterson, 1995a) and to report
satisfaction with their couple relationships (Koepke, Hare, & Moran, 1992; Patterson, 1995a). Research on gay fathers has similarly found no reason to believe them unfit as parents (Barret & Robinson, 1990; Bigner and Bozett, 1990; Bozett, 1980, 1989).
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Three aspects of sexual identity are considered in the research: gender identity concerns a person's self-identification as male or female; gender-role behavior concerns the extent to which a person's activities, occupations, and the like are regarded by the culture as masculine, feminine, or both; sexual orientation refers to a person's choice of sexual partners--i.e., heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual (Money & Earhardt, 1972; Stein, 1993). To examine the possibility that children in the custody of lesbian mothers or gay fathers experience disruptions of sexual identity, research relevant to each of these three major areas of concern is summarized below.
Gender identity. In studies of children ranging in age from 5 to 14, results of projective testing and related interview procedures have revealed normal development of gender identity among children of lesbian mothers (Green, 1978; Green, Mandel, Hotvedt, Gray, & Smith, 1986; Kirkpatrick, Smith, & Roy, 1981). More direct assessment techniques to assess gender identity have been used by Golombok, Spencer, and Rutter (1983) with the same result; all children in this study reported that they were happy with their gender, and that they had no wish to be a member of the opposite sex. There was no evidence in any of the studies of gender identity difficulties among children of lesbian mothers. No data have been reported in this area for children of gay fathers.
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Studies assessing potential differences between children of gay and lesbian versus heterosexual parents have sometimes included assessments of children's social relationships. The most common focus of attention has been on peer relations, but some information on children's relationships with adults has also been collected. Research findings that address the likelihood of sexual abuse are also summarized in this section.
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Summary
Overall, then, results of research to date suggest that children of lesbian and gay parents have normal relationships with peers and that their relationships with adults of both sexes are also satisfactory. The picture of lesbian mothers' children that emerges from results of existing research is thus one of general engagement in social life with peers, with fathers, and with mothers' adult friends--both male and female, both heterosexual and homosexual. Studies in this area to date are few, and the data emerging from them are sketchy. On the basis of existing research findings, however, fears about children of lesbians and gay men being sexually abused by adults, ostracized by peers, or isolated in single-sex lesbian or gay communities are unfounded.
I just thought these are some good key points, that is all.
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Good stuff, Champion.Lanky75 and thor, not well the last sentence of the last quote:In reply to:On the basis of existing research findings, however, fears about children of lesbians and gay men being sexually abused by adults, ostracized by peers, or isolated in single-sex lesbian or gay communities are unfounded.The data also points toward the children being normal. From the first quoted section:In reply to:As this summary will show, the results of existing research comparing gay and lesbian parents to heterosexual parents and children of gay or lesbian parents to children of heterosexual parents are quite uniform: common sterotypes are not supported by the data.From the third quoted section:In reply to:Beliefs that gay and lesbian adults are not fit parents likewise have no empirical foundation (Cramer, 1986; Falk, 1989; Gibbs, 1988; Patterson, 1996).Finally, the second section deserves reiteration. Here it is again:In reply to:One belief that often underlies both judicial decision-making in custody litigation and public policies governing foster care and adoption has been the belief that lesbians and gay men are not fit to be parents. In particular, courts have sometimes assumed that gay men and lesbians are mentally ill, that lesbians are less maternal than heterosexual women, and that lesbians' and gay men's relationships with sexual partners leave little time for ongoing parent-child interactions (Editors of the Harvard Law Review, 1990). Results of research to date have failed to confirm any of these beliefs (Falk, 1989, 1994; Patterson, 1994b, 1995b, 1996).Lanky and thor, do you really think you know better? From a secular, empirical view, is depriving gay and lesbian couple of marriage (recognition) and child custody really justified? Do you really think that terrible problems might show up in a hundred years if it's allowed? That view is not supported by any data...and thor, I don't trust your skewed view of the world, at all.
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Article 13 of the Portugese Constitution states:In reply to:Principle of equality1. Every citizen shall possess the same social dignity and shall be equal before the law.2. No one shall be privileged, favoured, prejudiced, deprived of any right or exempted from any duty on the basis of ancestry, sex, race, language, place of origin, religion, political or ideological beliefs, education, economic situation, social circumstances or sexual orientation. Note well the last two words; they were added in 2004, when the constution was amended.Now there's a push for civil marriage rights for same-sex couples, which would seem consistent with article 13, but which the Catholic church actively opposes.
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In reply to:
If you want to be honest, I am sure there are more negative effects on children being shuffled from foster home to foster home or being raised in some "home". I think any young child would prefer to have parents of the same sex than being shuffled around and feeling unloved and unwanted.
I'm going to have to agree with this. In my experience foster children suffer the most, not due to abuse or neglect, but the fact that their home is temporary and they know it.
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In reply to: Exactly. I am actually thinking of starting off as a foster parent before I actually adopt. Figure it’ll help me ease into the parent role as well as help out kids who need a home environment. I know you mean well here and foster parents do serve a needed role in society, but this sounds like experimenting on some kids before you choose one to keep. If you truly intend to adopt, I'd recommend working with kids as a teacher or sports coach before adopting. That way you will learn skills on dealing with children while at the same time not setting some kid up to be your classroom. I know that sounds bad and I don't mean it that way, but I can't really think of a better way to say it. You should learn about dealing with kids in a situation where they have a home to return to when you move on. The best foster parents are the ones who have other children in the home or who have completed raising children already.
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You're Far off base, and yes you came off rude... yet again.I used to teach pre-school, so I know how to deal with children as well as how to nurture and help a child grow. That wasn't my point at all for stating I want to be a foster parent first. There is a difference between knowing how to deal with kids, and being a parent. I know I'll be an awesome parent, that's not even something I worry about. But being a foster parent first will help to develop my skills as well as help a child who needs a stable figure in their life.It has nothing to do with "Experimenting". I take offense to your accusation.
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In reply to: It has nothing to do with "Experimenting". It's good to know you didn't mean it the way it sounded, because that sure is what it sounded like. When I was 13, I spent a year in a home that also served as a foster home for several kids my age. I wasn't a foster child, but with my father in Vietnam, staying with an aunt and uncle was the best option, and they had 4 foster children in the house while I was there (two of their own three children had moved out already). They ended up adopting one of them, a boy. He was the only one whose life turned out well too. The others are surviving but had to deal with problems like poverty, unwed pregnancies, drugs, etc. That isn't my only experience with the foster care system either. Adoption is an excellent idea, but foster care is a last resort, not a learning ground.
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Adoption is an excellent idea, but foster care is a last resort, not a learning ground.I agree but not all children are actually up for adoption when in the foster care program. Some of the children in the foster care program are only there until their parents are stable enough to take custody back. So there for foster care might be a last resort, sometimes it’s the only resort.And I am still not exactly thrilled with your wording trying to state I would be using the foster system as a “learning ground”. I would be using it to help children who need a stable home, but you’re the last person I need to justify myself too.
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In reply to:
I agree but not all children are actually up for adoption when in the foster care program. Some of the children in the foster care program are only there until their parents are stable enough to take custody back. So there for foster care might be a last resort, sometimes it's the only resort.
That was exactly the case with the three girls who were in the household I spent time in. Sadly, things still only marginally turned out for them.
My wife and I have repeatedly spoken about this issue, and I have a co-worker who serves as a foster parent for infants.
Their children are all out of the house as well. To me, serving as a kind of "foster grandparent" rather than a foster parent seems a better idea, more in tune with the relative impermanence of the role. I would be "grandpa" when they are with us, and still "grandpa" during visits after they are gone. That will give them a sort of 'permanence' and stability that "dad" would lack under those circumstances. We will be looking into it when our children are gone. -
If you truly intend to adopt, I'd recommend working with kids as a teacher or sports coach before adopting. That way you will learn skills on dealing with children while at the same time not setting some kid up to be your classroom.I wonder why that wouldn't just as well apply to a heterosexual couple that's planning to have a child.
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In reply to: I wonder why that wouldn't just as well apply to a heterosexual couple that's planning to have a child. What makes you think it doesn't? It's good advice for anyone planning to raise a child. Some babysit, some teach, some coach, and some do it the hard way. I babysat in my teens, taught 10-16 year olds during my last couple of years in college, and volunteered at aviation summer camps, something I still do. I am heterosexual and I took the same advice I am giving now. There's nothing in it that has anything to do with orientation. Kids don't come with instruction manuals, and it's better for them if we learn the easy way.
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There's a woman in a neighboring thread who wants to have a baby (even though her significant other does not). We'd better tell her about the parenting internship thing.In the old, old days, and still in many non-industrialized societies, children are not such a mystery.