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Human Futures

Gay Adoption

Brenda Almond on why the gay adoption debate isn’t really about sexual morality.

Politicians and others would reach sounder conclusions if they could bring themselves to see the current debate about gay adoption and discrimination as part of a broader debate about the family. This debate is as much philosophical and sociological as it is religious. It is between those who see the family as a social construction, and those who see it as a biological unit. For what the same-sex couple cannot be for a child is both a mother (female parent) and a father (male parent). To say that it is discriminatory to recognise that there is a difference between a couple that can do this and a couple that cannot is to imply, essentially, that mothers do not matter, or fathers do not matter.

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