Lynn D. Wardle
Professor of Law, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University,
Provo, UT 84602.
Planned lesbigay parenthood offers a veritable 'social laboratory' of family
diversity in which scholars could fruitfully examine not only the acquisition of
sexual and gender identity, but the relative effects on children of the gender
and number of their parents as well as the implications of diverse biosocial
routes to parenthood.
I. INTRODUCTION-THE NEED FOR INFORMATION, ANALYSIS, AND
DIALOGUE
The need for serious, extensive, and thoroughly-informed
consideration of the potential effects upon children and society of
parenting by persons involved in ongoing homosexual relationships has never been greater. The number of persons opting to live together as
homosexual couples is increasing, and the number of children being raised by same-sex couples is growing significantly.
At the same time,
legal policies regarding parenting in all of its forms (including adoption,
the use of ART, childbearing out of wedlock, custody, and visitation)
are being challenged and revised to deal with these social phenomena
and with the demand to accommodate and give homosexual parenting
legal status and rights equivalent to the established parental status and
rights of married heterosexual couples.
Policy decisions of such
profound significance for society, parents, and future generations should
be informed not only by complete factual information and policy
analysis, but also by the fullest discussion of all dimensions of all of the
normative issues and from persons from all responsible disciplines, life experiences,
social perspectives, and policy viewpoints.
The growing movement to give legal recognition and endorsement
to parenting by same-sex couples has at least three dimensions.
First, it
is political, part of the growing gay rights movement which since
Stonewall has become of significant social and political force to give
full and equal legal rights to homosexual lifestyles. Second, it is partly
social, reflecting changes in our society concerning family living
arrangements in which children are being raised. Third, it is, at least in
part, a logical extension of broadening of legal recognition of parenting arrangements that are "alternative" to the historic ideal of a mother and
father married to each other. Thus, in the area of adoption, which is the
"gold standard" of parenting (and which is the subject of most of my
research and writing about this issue, including in this piece), we have
seen the law first grant adoption to married couples, then to single adults
who were related to the child, then to unrelated single adults, and to
unmarried couples, so extending adoption to include same-sex couples
may seem like a logical extension of the permissive trend.
Read entire article at: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/prebuilt/pdf/SchoolLaw/LawReviewLibrary/27_23QLR541(2004-2005).pdf
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