In March of 2016, Mississippi had ruled that its ban on gay adoption was unconstitutional and now, in all 50 states, LGBTQ+ couples can legally adopt. Unfortunately, there are still people around the world who say that gay adoption shouldn’t be a thing, however, the evidence they used against gay adoption isn’t exactly proven nor accurate. 

Whenever I hear people argue against allowing gay adoption, most people claim that by having same-sex parenting, it will cause the child to become gay. For instance, NCBI wrote an article about it. However, this argument could be easily broken apart as lots of children who are gay were raised by straight parents too. Another thing is that people cannot be converted from straight to gay, and vice versa. 

On frc.org, a study was conducted by Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur in the experiment labeled: Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. The experiment was conducted in 1994, and they gave 10 science-based reasons of same-sex marriages and gay adoption and why people should be against it, however, when researching this, this evidence seems to be incredibly out-dated and based on stereotypes.

For one reason, they claim that children from same-sex parenting are likely to develop gender disorders and problems, where the conclusion was that, “…lesbian parenting may free daughters and sons from a broad but the uneven range of traditional gender prescriptions. Her conclusion here is based on studies that show that sons of lesbians are less masculine and that daughters of lesbians are more masculine,” Sandefur wrote. 

However, is this truly something that someone can identify as a disorder? For a girl to portray more masculine characteristics and a boy to act more feminine can hardly classify as such a negative thing, and children who were parented by a straight couple can grow into these traits as well, contradicting the evidence that this study claims. So here’s the question: what is the problem with a same-sex couple wanting to give a child a happy, supportive childhood? Absolutely nothing!

As a person who is a part of the LGBTQ+ community, I certainly wouldn’t want to have any problems if I ever wanted to adopt for the future. I believe when the time comes, I would be certified and could provide for a child just like any other straight couple. The claims against gay adoption have no scientific or real evidence proving that having a same-sex couple is detrimental to a child’s life. 

In the end, we are all humans who want to give love to the children of the future and have the right to do so without any roadblock obstructing the way to our happiness.