Gay Adoptjion

In today’s society the concept of family has change dramatically. The idea of a traditional American family is no longer a reality for some households. More children are being raised in single parent households and in household where both biological parents are absent. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of single parent adoptions, but the idea of allowing gay partners to adopt children is still controversial. Should gays and lesbian be granted the right to adopt children? There are logical reasons to allow gays to adopt children; however for some these reasons are not good enough. The main question that needs to be addressed is what impact the adoption will have on that child’s life. The answer is not easily determined because it is hard to weigh the long term effects of being adopted by gay parents versus growing up in foster care. Most children would prefer to grow up in loving household regardless of the sexuality of the parents, but external factors often change their perception. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the ethics behind gay adoptions.

Gays are still fighting for basic rights. Recently, there was huge debate on whether or not gays should be allowed to marry legally in the United States. Some states, such as Hawaii allowed gays to marry legally with the same rights of heterosexual couples. However, there are still a lot of states that will not entertain the idea of allowing gays to marry. Many view the concept of marriage is strictly between a male and female, and spiritually gay marriage are not acceptable in the Christian community. When the Defense of Marriage Act passed, otherwise known DOMA, it completely voids the legality of gay marriages. It states that marriage is defined as one between one man and one woman for all legal purposes (taxes and social security). It also stated that states do not have to pay attention to the Constitution if they do not want to recognize same sex marriage that are legal in other states.

“It is estimated that some four million children are living in household with at least one gay parent” (Lyric 2005). It is very hard to get a true estimate because some gays are not openly honest about their family structure because of fear of recourse from the courts. There has been an increase in the number of Lesbians couples opting for article insemination. Estimates of the number of children being born to lesbians through article insemination is