Posted: May 07, 2012 5:02 am
Q & A Round
Q. 3
I understand that you initially regarded the welfare of children as irrelevant to the specific and narrowly defined debate topic. But you did subsequently opt in with a reference to children and child abuse in Q.1 and expounded even further in Q. 2 on matters of individual rights, which courts are increasingly extending to children – even unborn children.
So I would like to ask you a question about the degree to which secular legal discrimination against same-sex
“parenthood” – which the gay marriage lobby certainly regards as something that stigmatizes the gay minority – might have some valid, purely secular ethical basis in terms of the child welfare or “rights of the child”.
Specifically, do you think children raised from (birth to adulthood) by their two direct biological (loving) parents in an opposite-gender, mating/matrimonial pairing lasting long enough to raise the child to adulthood, affords them any greater welfare benefit in terms of gender-balanced, mother/father role model education as against a same-sex adoptive parenting arrangement in which one or both (loving) parents are not the directly related and BOTH parents being of the same gender as the child being raised or NEITHER parent being the same gender as the child being raised?
(And no, I’m not talking about gay men who don’t have lactating breasts or their adopted female child asking them about menstruation, pregnancy, intrauterine devices. I’m asking more broadly about the ethics and long-term social outcomes of deliberately depriving one child from birth to puberty to adulthood of the opportunity to have the gender balanced upbringing and role-model education which BOTH a mother and a father can provide.)
Q. 3
I understand that you initially regarded the welfare of children as irrelevant to the specific and narrowly defined debate topic. But you did subsequently opt in with a reference to children and child abuse in Q.1 and expounded even further in Q. 2 on matters of individual rights, which courts are increasingly extending to children – even unborn children.
So I would like to ask you a question about the degree to which secular legal discrimination against same-sex
“parenthood” – which the gay marriage lobby certainly regards as something that stigmatizes the gay minority – might have some valid, purely secular ethical basis in terms of the child welfare or “rights of the child”.
Specifically, do you think children raised from (birth to adulthood) by their two direct biological (loving) parents in an opposite-gender, mating/matrimonial pairing lasting long enough to raise the child to adulthood, affords them any greater welfare benefit in terms of gender-balanced, mother/father role model education as against a same-sex adoptive parenting arrangement in which one or both (loving) parents are not the directly related and BOTH parents being of the same gender as the child being raised or NEITHER parent being the same gender as the child being raised?
(And no, I’m not talking about gay men who don’t have lactating breasts or their adopted female child asking them about menstruation, pregnancy, intrauterine devices. I’m asking more broadly about the ethics and long-term social outcomes of deliberately depriving one child from birth to puberty to adulthood of the opportunity to have the gender balanced upbringing and role-model education which BOTH a mother and a father can provide.)