Same-Sex Adoption

In the next couple of weeks, NSW parliament will vote on ammendments to the adoption act of 2000. The recommendations being put forward are to allow same-sex adoption.

Not surpsisingly, churches are discussing how to respond. My old church forwarded around some documents about it. There were 6 talking points. I'll include the first sentence of each in the vain hope that you'll get the gist of what the rest of the paragraph must say, and then my brief response. Spoiler alert: at the end of the day, I think in a secular society, I am pro-Same-Sex Adoption.

1. Best interests of the child paramount.
This is very important of course, and is perhaps accidentally neglected at times in the discussions (on the parliamentary level or otherwise). An extremely important point really. We mustn't allow our sympathy for would-be parents sway our decision.

2. Same sex relationships are not marriages.
This is either a legal technicality or a religious distinction. Besides, property law already blurs the boundary, as I believe it should.

3. Recognition of same sex adoption may lead to recognition of same sex marriage.
This is irrelevant.

4. Marriage provides the best environment for raising children - thousands of years of human history demonstrate this
This is not necessarily true: see the next point. Thousands of years of human history are completely irrelevant. Firstly we cannot account for the entirety of human history. Secondly, if Christians are taking the Bible seriously, there are cultural reasons why it is this way, which are irrelevant to a secular nation. Thirdly, from an evolutionary point of view, the particular survival of predominantly heterosexual cultures is plain, and the development of certain prevailing opinions about homosexuality, unavoidable.

5. Fitness of potential parents - Homosexual people have more emotional problems on average.
This may be true but the data is undoubtedly swayed by the effects the prevailing culture has on people who are homosexual. Therefore I don't think one can say this is intrinsically true. So then, people who are homosexual have a higher incidence of particular problems, but many will not. As adoption is treated on a case-by-case basis (as it must always be), then it is simply a matter of considering each same-sex couple individually. If they fulfill the adoption criteria, you cannot possibly make this argument cogently.

6. Precedent in other jurisdictions.
Universal suffrage would never have happened if we actually thought this were a valid point of view.


I can't get past point 5. There are plenty of abusive and unfit heterosexual couples. We must treat each case on it's own merits, and so at the end of the day we are stuck with our own opinions of the 'appropriateness' of same sex parenting, which I just don't have any data against except that God doesn't like it. That's good enough for me, but I can't enforce it on a secular community....

Any thoughts?