Look at these parents
http://www.today.com/news/superdads-couple-adopts-14-kids-foster-care-4B11187918#
and try to tell me that these kids aren't incredibly lucky. These children are unwanted, some are disabled, some are mixed race, some have been abused in the foster care system. And on top of raising their own 15, these parents also foster OTHER unwanted children until a home can be found for them.
And also try to tell me that any of Fred and Rosemary Wests children (a very happily
married couple) wouldn't have been better off with the superdads.
Or this heterosexual married couple
The 28-year-old woman was systematically murdering her infants shortly after giving birth to them, either at home or in the woods, and hiding their bodies because she worried about her husband leaving her if she had any more children.
This is becoming annoying. To deny any children a loving home based on an antiquated set of beliefs fed by a known conman is just crazy.
How you can say that the superdads are not valuable members of society, doing the jobs that their heterosexual parents could or would not do is actually perverse. These are not children that would have been chosen by Mr and Mrs Middle Class White Hetero. These are children that would have spent their days in foster care, and if you don't know how that turns out, you should do your research. Long term foster care is not great for children's outcomes, either financially or educationally. They are more likely to go missing from school and they are more likely to become involved in crime.
As it happens, I know about this stuff having worked as the consultant child psychologist on the adoption and fostering panel here in london. I know how near impossible it is to get these children a decent home, adoption is the best long term solution for unwanted children and here these chaps are doing it.
I may also point out that foster care is prohibitively expensive for councils, I know this because I am also a foster parent. The short term cost is only one thing, however, foster placements often break down, and the economic burden on the tax payer of children who have not been brought up in a loving home rises exponentially if those children become unproductive and potentially criminal adults.
Now, all of these examples are extreme cases, of that I am aware. They illustrate, however, that parents should (and they really should) be judged on their parenting abilities, not on their gender, not on their sexual orientation and not on their race. These things are clearly not markers of successful parents as illustrated above. Otherwise these events would not happen if heterosexuality and married status were RELIABLE indicators of parenting ability.
if you like, I may even concede that it is possible that the best outcomes are gained for children raised in a stable married home. It doesn't really matter as an argument. This is because it may well also be true that the best outcomes for children are when raised in a middle/upper middle class financially viable home, or in a home where they get sent to Eton or Harrow, or where they had a goddammed pony in the back garden and are raised in an English country village, or where they only eat home made food and brown rice and never an e - number passed their lips. These variables, however, are not within our capability to manipulate.
Children are not raised in a utopia as a rule, it is a rare family indeed that can provide the brown rice munching, pony owning, Eton going, tweed wearing trust fund owning environment, and while I may concede that these kids will probably end up running the country (again) and being rather more successful than their peers, it is daft to try to restrict child raising to these families alone, and I'm sure you will agree it's impossible as well. and, quite frankly, a nation of over achieving polititians, does not a utopia make anyway.
So given this, trying to ensure that all children have heterosexual married parents only, is like sticking your finger in the hole in the dyke, looking smug and ignoring the tsunami towering over your head.
if (and this is a big if) I concede that a married and heterosexual couple are best placed to adopt and I look about and try to find only them to adopt or raise the many many children we have on our books, then what happens to the rest of the kids. The mixed race kids, the disabled kids, the older kids, the foetal alcohol kids, the abused and violent kids, the just plain ugly kids. Are they to be treated like so much human detritus, not deemed worthy of a home, OR do we let them go to loving couples (and loving singles) who may or may not fit the LDS definition of pure and appropriate parents. To a life where they get a chance?
It's insanity and it's also abusive. It lets down the children that are in our care as a society.
