Forum: Same-sex families -- model or immoral homes?

Gay couples can provide loving family support

A child needs a loving parent to supply him or her with food, clothing, shelter and love. If a child can be provided with those needs, then she or he has the means to grow up and be a well adjusted, well prepared youngster.

Parents that have considered providing a child with those necessities have to be sure that they know what the physical, emotional, mental and financial costs are required of them.

Parents, and their capability to raise their children in a loving and nurturing environment, has to do with each person's willingness to take on those responsibilities completely.

The sexual orientation of those who wish to have children has nothing to do with whether a person is psychologically or morally fit to raise a child.

The fact that a person is confident as to who she or he does no harm to the child. In fact, having parents that share, without shame, love and nurturance between the two of them, transfer this love to their children.

There are many myths about gay and lesbian couples who are raising children. One major myth is that having homosexual parents is wrong for children because it will damage them psychologically and confuse them sexually.

In the "Destroy the Myths!" educational program of the Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International, it cites several different studies comparing the sexual orientation of children with homosexual parents and those with heterosexual parents.

Those opposed to gays and lesbians as parents claim that these couples are out to recruit their children into a homosexual lifestyle.

The findings in more than 30 studies showed that there were major differences between how children identified themselves sexually in same sex and opposite sex parenting methods.

According to GLPCI, in the book After the Ball, it contains material which states that "gays are gay because of sin, insanity and seduction. Gays are kinky sex addicts. Gays are unproductive, untrustworthy members of society. Gays are suicidally unhappy."

The GLPCI reports that the American Bar Association estimates that "at least six million children in the United States have lesbian or gay parents."

They are coming out in the courts to defend their rights as parents in divorce and adoption proceedings.

So much of gays' and lesbians' time has been spent hiding in the closet that until recent years, they have been present and raising children but in seclusion.

That creates more of a problem when a parent cannot express themselves. That repression only creates the inability to fully love their children because the person does not truly love themselves.

Neither is a gay or lesbian person being honest when she or he denies that part of hers or his life. How can this person raise their children honestly?

The answer is in allowing parents, all parents, to raise their children in the kind of nurturing environment in which they are ready and able to serve their duty as capable parents.

Conservatives that believe that denying guidance to a child because the parents do not fit into their ideal of what a parent should be are simply denying the child the right to be a part of a nurturing family.

Erica Miller is the Opinion Editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.