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Comment by siscia | Hacker News Reader

Love the story.

When we talk about gay marriage and adoption I always need to query a little more, especially about the kids.

What's about Kevin ? His life is "perfectly normal" (how stupid is this expression) ? He is happy ? Does he have problem with his sexuality ?

Do anybody have any experience to share ? Please to be obvious, in neither way...

(Why this is on HN ? Well, because I believe that HN is one of the best community on the internet, it is normal that people want to share stories and ask opinion to other they respect/admire)

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The child is better off than he would have been had he been left in the subway. Kids need most of all someone who will go out of their way to keep them safe and healthy.

He had parents who were presumably a man and a woman. They left him in a bundle in a subway.

He had parents who were a man and a man. They dropped everything in their life and rearranged it so they could save a stranger's baby who only needed to be taken care of.

What's the point of even questioning his sexuality? He's prepubescent, he's not got a problem with his sexuality because he doesn't even have a sexuality.

I do know he will have grown up with parents who were not 'normal', but who were tolerant enough to sacrifice their whole quality of life for the baby of a stranger, of another race, of whom they knew absolutely no history. He could have had fetal alcohol syndrome, he could have been a crack baby, he could have been broken in many imaginable ways. Instead, they took this baby, they stood by it even when the 911 operator didn't believe their story, they made sure it was looked after, and when asked they agreed to raise it without hesitation.

These are upstanding people. Nothing indicates that homosexuality is contagious, but even if the kid does end up gay due to his upbringing, then what of it? It didn't stop his parent's from being upstanding people. Being straight didn't make his birth parents paragons of virtue.

> He's prepubescent, he's not got a problem with his sexuality because he doesn't even have a sexuality.

I agree with the rest of your comment, but that specific sentence... It has been known for at least a century that children, and even babies, have a sexuality (which does not mean they have sexual intercourse).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosexual_development

That article is mostly based on Freud who had little to no scientific basis for his theories. I do not recommend reading it without also reading up on the current theories first.

> Does he have problem with his sexuality ?

I find it hard to understand what you mean by this question.

Are you asking whether Kevin is gay? Most children raised by gay couples are straight, but if Kevin was gay, would you consider that to be a problem with his sexuality?

If that's not what you meant, then what did you mean? Can you give a concrete example of something that you'd consider a problem with his sexuality that might be caused by his parents being gay?

I do think this is an interesting question however unpolitically-correct it will be. A lot of our notions about sexuality seem to be at least somewhat cultural considering how drastically they've changed from ancient times until now, so it seems plausible that it would change your view of sexuality. It's unfortunate that investigating this sort of thing is dog whistling for homophobia.

One of my friends in college considered herself to be a lesbian, had a long term girlfriend, and had been raised by lesbian parents. She's now happily married to a man and considers herself bisexual. I wouldn't be surprised if someone more to the middle of the sexual spectrum were more likely to act on same sex desires if they have parents as an example.

Perceptions of sexuality are deeply cultural. In general the evolution there seems to be towards the more restrictive/puritan.

>Does he have problem with his sexuality ?

You may not be aware of this, but this question will likely get you downvoted as it will be perceived as homophobia (or at least heteronormativity).

I was aware, and I really don't care, it is a very interesting question and nobody is in the position to judge curiosity. The whole point of comment on HN is to discuss, share ideas and opinion, caring about down votes is not helping :-) I only wish somebody to answer such question without caring of the reaction of other people

Which is a shame really. Someone's open-minded curiosity shouldn't be cast aside because of a hypothesis that is politically incorrect.

This. My own uninformed prejudices are towards "parents > no parents", but I'd prefer to actually know rather than guessing.

I consider "political correctness" to be the sort of back-bending linguistic contortionism typical of politicians and PR departments terrified of offending anyone. That's not what's going on here. I'm gay, and while I don't have children, the idea that, were I to adopt one, I'd risk sexually damaging said child with my gayness is offensive. Can you imagine the reaction there would be to someone asking a parallel question about race ("Does the white child adopted by black parents have problems with his racial identity?").

I consider your hypothetical question to be a legitimate one.

The problem is that these sorts of questions are often the precursor to banning unconventional families until someone proves that no harm is done. That sort of thinking is harmful, but I don't think asking the questions is harmful.

I agree that there are potentially-interesting sociological questions to be asked, but it's possible to ask them in a way that's not loaded. The parent poster asks about whether the kid has "problems with his sexuality," which I take to be asking either whether as a result of having gay parents, the kid is gay (implying that gayness is a "problem"), or alternatively, whether the gay parents have caused some problem other than gayness... like what, one wonders? Is the implication that being around gay people makes one asexual, or that gay people abuse children such that they grow up sexually stunted, or something? I have difficulty envisioning an implication that isn't based on an underlying assumption that gayness is bad. Had the poster instead asked, "did having gay parents make the child gay?", that question would have ended up in the "good-natured but misguided" category, and I would have felt more comfortable just answering the question instead of complaining about it.

Likewise with the race question: if a poster had asked "does the white child raised by black parents identify more strongly with black culture than other white children?" that might be a legitimate sociological question, but the implication that that's a problem is what makes the question problematic.

Maybe he thought the parents are Catholic which would mean Kevin would have guilt over his sexuality regardless of him being gay or straight?

(kidding!)

There is nothing wrong with the question you asked. Absolutely nothing. We are intelligent, educated people - if we ask these questions, it's not because we want to ridicule people or offend them,but because we are genuinely curious. The other option would be to remain ignorant and not ask in the fear that this question might offend someone, which in my brain is just sick and wrong.

But these are not randomly selected questions. To illustrate, consider if someone posted a story asking whether Jews were genetically disposed to be greedy. This could be dressed up quite a bit, and it's not impossible that this would very rarely be asked by someone without any social awareness. But there's a smart prior which says that someone asking such a question has a strong agenda and that the "just asking questions" bit is a smoke screen.

Racial social identity in inter-racial families is a hugely important issue, and ignoring it is deeply harmful to a child, who faces harassment from peers and strangers, internal confusion, etc.

And is present in this case. But the OP decided to ask about gay parents instead...

It's not the question that's wrong, but what you do with the answer that's important.

It's like asking - is it true that black people have statistically larger lips than people of other colours - then is that really racist? I don't think it is. But if you take the answer to that question,and somehow infer from it that because of it your "race" is better than others, then it only means that you are racist,not the question.

My point is - scientists need different kind of statistics to understand how the world works. If they ask if a child raised by two gay people is more likely to have problems with its own sexuality, then I don't see that as homophobic or aggressive - it's not personal after all.

Some people refuse to adopt interracially for exactly that reason, though.

I believe it will be more offensive if I don't ask any question and I will just keep my opinion. Honestly most of the people in this planet believes that there is something wrong in gay marriage and gay adopting kids, (there are more country where gay don't have the right they deserve, than country where they do have rights) investigation, and asking question -I believe- is the only way to change things.

I am sorry if you felt offended by my question, but you should realized that in some country (mine as example) being gay, gay marriage, gay adopting kids, are big issues, and there is a lot of questioning and discussion about.

Supposing that people are recruited into homosexuality by gay parents is not precisely described as "open-minded curiosity".

If we are going to be open-mindedly curious, then let's ask questions like what is the basis for imagining that being gay is a choice?

Its possible to have a mistaken idea and still be open to finding out the truth.

Parents are parents. Straight parents are parents. Gay parents are parents. There's no fundamental difference.

One of the implications of this "question" relies on the common belief that gay men are pedophiles and/or will teach gay sex to the children. In some people's heads, it's a matter of wicked, unclean gays corrupting the innocent children.

If nobody had such beliefs, then it is virtually impossible to understand why we would suppose that gay people are unfit as parents.

No, there are arguments (I'm not saying good ones) for why gay parents are different. Traditionally fathers and mothers have had different roles, this is cultural, so what happens if a gay couple adopt and don't adapt to cover the traditional role of the other gender. To use an out-dated (very) and somewhat sexist example, how will the son of lesbians learn to hunt animals, how will the daughter of gay men learn to make clothes?

While I don't agree with these arguments (for the record, I'm gay), it would be possible to make them without being homophobic. Would they be made in nobody had the beliefs you describe? Perhaps not, but they could be.

Trqditional roles are really quite a weak notion. There is huge variance among parenting styles across the population.

Just no being a drug-addicted and not having a debilitating mental disorder is enough to be an above-average parent.

I think you may be wrong. To be parents as a gay couple (particularly if male) there often has to be considerably more effort to get there. This would generally mean that the parents really strongly wanted to be parents. This fact alone surely makes for a better environment for kids than one where the child could be an accident.

Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_parenting#Sexual_orientati...

However, there's lots of studies with lots of results and generally often very small sample groups. I would say from the article it sounds like he's well adjusted and happy, if he's gay he's gay, if he's straight he's straight.

I would assume he would have less problems than a normal child in accepting his own sexual identity but more problems in acting on it if he was straight. Gay parents would probably be accepting of any sexuality and supportive which would free a child with a non-normal sexual identity from judgement and provide more support. If however the child was straight while the parents would probably be supportive he wouldn't necessarily know what his traditional gender role in a relationship would be from observation of his family. (Which could be a help or a hindrance in the dating world) however I'm sure that could be easily counter-balanced by the accessibility of straight role models in normal society who could give advice and guidance.

You may want to read both The Kid and The Commitment by Dan Savage. They might give you some personal insights into family life as a gay couple with a baby.

> Does he have problem with his sexuality?

What do you mean by problem? Like he feels guilty for being straight or something?

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