CNSNews.com is reporting that the brief, filed in the case of Hollingsworth v. Perry, which challenges the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage, argues that children need neither a father nor a mother and that having two parents of the same sex is just as good as having one of each.
“As an initial matter, no sound basis exists for concluding that same-sex couples who have committed to marriage are anything other than fully capable of responsible parenting and child-rearing,” said the brief submitted to the court by Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. on behalf of the Obama administration.
“To the contrary, many leading medical, psychological, and social-welfare organizations have issued policy statements opposing restrictions on gay and lesbian parenting based on their conclusion, supported by numerous scientific studies, that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents.”
“The weight of the scientific literature strongly supports the view that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents,” says the administration.
As support for this argument, they cite a policy statement from the highly political American Psychological Association which claims that some studies say same-sex parents may actually be "superior" to parents of the opposite sex.
“Members of gay and lesbian couples with children have been found to divide the work involved in childcare evenly, and to be satisfied with their relationships with their partners,” says the APA statement. “The results of some studies suggest that lesbian mothers' and gay fathers' parenting skills may be superior to those of matched heterosexual parents. There is no scientific basis for concluding that lesbian mothers or gay fathers are unfit parents on the basis of their sexual orientation.”
The brief goes on to say that because California already allows same-sex couples the right to adopt children along with all the other "incidents" of marriage in their domestic partnership laws, the state has already conceded the point that children don't need a mother and a father.
“In light of California’s conferral of full rights of parenting and child-rearing on same-sex couples, Proposition 8’s denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry bears no cognizable relation, let alone a substantial one, to any interest in responsible procreation and child-rearing (however defined),” says the brief. “Indeed, because a substantial number of California children are raised in households headed by same-sex couples.”
CNS' Terence P. Jeffrey writes: "So far in the history of the human race, no child has ever been born without a biological father and mother. Now, in the Supreme Court of the United States, the Executive Branch of the federal government is arguing that, regardless of the biological facts of parenthood, states have no legitimate and defensible interest in ensuring that children conceived by a mother and a father are in fact raised by mothers and fathers."
He goes to say that the DOJ's brief discussed children "only as items controlled by others, not as individual human beings who have God-given rights of their own. It simply assumes that a child has no inherent right to a mother or father and that the only right truly in question is whether two people of the same-sex have a right to marry one another and that that right encompasses a right to adopt and foster-raise children."
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