Good to see there are many posts in this discussion!
I have compliled scientific data about the subject. Scientific data will of couse not change the minds of people like Fas whos opinions are based on the rules his religion set, but it should change the mind of all who wish to base their opinions on facts and not religion, ideology or personal subjective feelings.
Homosexuality, like many other behaviour patterns that are in minority in society, is often connected to lack of understanding and discrimination. There are many prejudices, misunderstandings and simply lack of knowledge surrounding homosexuality. However, just as society once discriminated against non-white people based on erranous idea, soceity should now cease discrimination against gay people.
Scientific data:
1.
Sexual orientation is not a choice. Development of sexual orientation occurs very early in life, perhaps even
in utero (ie before one is born). There is no data suggesting parents can influence sexual orientation. On the contrary, data from studies comparing straigh and gay parents show that there is
no difference in prevalence of straight and gay sexual orientation respectively in the children. This is consistent with prevalence of homo- and bisexuality across cultures. It does not matter if a society is repressive or liberal concerning homosexuality, in sociological studies where people are allowed to be anonymous, the frequency of homoseuxal people is constant. What of course differs is their behaviour - in Iran, gay couples are not holding hands on the street, as they might do London. Where there is a constant prevalence of a phenomena across cultures and over several generations, this means that the phenomena in question is either determined genetically or biologically (as I described in my post above), not by sociocultural factors since it should vary between cultures if cultural factors had an impact. So what causes homosexuality? Is it chemical events in utero? Is it a genetic mutation that occurs with this frequency? Is is even inheritable in some complex fashion? All or none of these? Nobody knows, but since homosexuality occurs in many other species as well, there is a
2.
Current evolutionary hypothesis about homosexuality
Often you hear arguments such as "Men and women were meant to be together and reproduce" and of course this is so. But what many people overlook, is the fact that
humans were not originally couple-living but a group living species. And we still are, our genes have not changed the slightest since then, but modern society is organised around the core family concept. However, humans originally lived in groups where the group collectively raised offspring and gathered food. Just as some people still today carry a genetic disposition to become obese because in times of scarcity this was selected for (ie the likelihood that you survived was bigger if you were fatter and had a higher ability to store fat in your body) the hypothesis is that homosexuality was selected for because adults who could collect food and take care of offspring but did not burden the group by reproducing themselves, were highly valuable in hard times. This hypothesis must of course be tested, but it is certainly a plausible hypothesis and in support for this hypothesis are observation that in animals, homosexual individuals can be observed rearing other's offpspring when the biological parents have died for instance. And now, look at homoadoption in this perspective, it's exactly this happening in modern society!
3.
Adoption for homosexual parents
Anybody could go to a library and do searches in Medline, Psychlit and Psychinfo and come up with the same results as I. However, for convenience I post some summaries of scientific finding regarding homosexual parents here.
APA (American Psychological Association, but is is very international actually) is the largest body for behavioural science and they are the ones responsible for international diagnosis criterna, golden standard for treatment, etc. In short, they are the most influencial international authority on psychology, and they have a good summary article of the current data here:
http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html
At the bottom of the article are links to the original studies etc.
A review article (a scientific article that goes through current status of a field and is peer-reviewed just as if it was a study) can be found here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/gaylaw/issue6/Mcneill.htm
Data speaks for itself. There is no support for the idea that homosexual parents are in any way less good that heterosexual parents.
Regarding consequences of having homosexual parents, the argument that children may get social problems have been debated. However, this is largely depending on the degree of prejudice in the society they live in. What if we had a socieity where brown haired people were discriminated against, should we therefore think that brown-haired people are not allowed to adopt children? Of course not! The problem is not the existence of brown hair, the problem is the prejudices in society, and efforts should be made to
change such arbitrary and erranous prejudice. A child risk to have social problems if the parents have any features that a particular society discriminate against. In the former days, single parents were discriminated against in Sweden, and people believed it was bad for kids to grow up with single parents. In the 50's, kids could get bullied at school and outfrozen because they lived in single parent households. However, recent studies show that there are no differences in social, psychological and physiological health between children who grew up with 1 or 2 parents.
Scientific studies of childrens health and developement show that it is important that a child has many adult role models and many adults it can trust. One, two or four parents is not important, several adult figures close to the child, is. So, does this mean we should not let lonely people raise kids?
JK of course, but it is important to note that one or two parents is not the issue, and the child's need for role models of both genders does not need to be connected to parenting.
