East Tennessean

Issue date: 11/3/03 Section: ViewPoint

The most important issue that develops if we allow same-sex marriages is not the insurance benefits, the right to keep material goods after the death of a partner or even performing marriages in churches, but the right of the couple to adopt children.
First, adoption is a selfish act. While it may be the most loving act one can do for a child, it is purely self-motivated.
For instance, you must want the responsibility of raising a child before you commit to adopting one for the rest of its natural life. It is in the interest of the couple to adopt, even if the idea is to love another human being and provide a good life for that child.
A couple must want to undertake this responsibility and commit to it for a very long time. A couple must also plan ahead, prepare extra income and learn to educate the child.
Couples adopt children mostly because they cannot have children naturally. It may be the woman who cannot carry the embryo or a man who does not have healthy sperm, but it is not possible for them to conceive. Some resort to artificial insemination, which is a very expensive procedure, while others decide to adopt.
Those against gay adoption argue that same-sex couples cannot produce children naturally so therefore, it is wrong for them to even be together, much less adopt children.
But, if this is your argument, why do you allow heterosexuals that cannot reproduce naturally the right to adopt also?
Another argument is that gays cannot distinguish gender to their children.
For example, a mother is nurturing by nature. She provides the child with the love and emotional support that we do not assign to men. Men provide strength, courage and leadership roles.
This is the idea of a traditional family. But, in fact, men and women don't always assume these traditional roles.
Take for instance, single-parent homes where the mother raises the child in absence of the father, or even a father who raises the children in absence of the mother.
We would never take a child away from a single mom who works two jobs to support her family even if she is never at home because she works all the time. We would never deny a father a right to raise his child just because he does not have enough feminine traits.
We all know men who have more feminine qualities than females and women who have more male qualities.
In a single-parent home where the mother is the leader, she must not only be the bread winner but also provide emotional support. Her lines have been meshed together by being not only the mother but the father.

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