The Daily Campus

Issue date: 4/30/09 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Jim Anderson Nicholas Arnsten gives his lecture entitled Gay Parenthood & the Evolution of the Modern Family in the Rainbow Center on Wednesday.

Students at the Rainbow Center Wednesday afternoon were first asked to close their eyes and picture the ideal family. Who were they? Was everybody of one race? Were they all smiling? Were there two parents? Were they a man and a woman?

And would it really make a difference if they were not?

In his lecture, "Gay Parenthood and the Revolution of the Modern Family: An Examination of the Unique Barriers Confronting Gay Adoptive Parents," speaker Nicholas Arnsten discussed the harmful myths plaguing gay adoptive parents and their relation to the ever-shifting conventions of the nuclear family.

Arnsten began by outlining the social hardships faced daily by gay parents, and how those hardships are brought about by baseless misconceptions maintained by opponents of homosexuality.

In addition to using data, historical investigation and simple common sense to pick apart the fallacies governing anti-gay-parenthood logic, Arnsten interviewed eleven gay adoptive couples in Connecticut about their experiences raising children. He found nothing to indicate that their sexual preferences impacted their capability as parents.

Some myths, like the claim that children with gay parents are at greater risk for becoming gay, could be refuted with simple logic: "If that's true, why aren't gay men and women who were raised by heterosexual parents heterosexual themselves?" Arnsten asked the crowd.

Some of the interviewed parents stated that children of gay couples are raised to be open-minded about sexual preference, and not closet their feelings on the subject if they discover their own homosexual identity.

Arnsten was especially adamant about dispelling prejudices that labeled gays as deviant or immoral, such as the false notions that gays are not spiritual (every couple Arnsten interviewed was active in their religious community) or that they are more likely to engage in pedophilia than straight parents.

"Many who perpetuate this myth focus mostly on gays," Arnsten said, "These things do not increase in frequency because of sexual identity."

Arnsten explained that social and cultural myths, like the ones perpetuating prejudices against gays, have a strong impact on the legal environment, and vice versa, and that the societal labels of "normal" and "abnormal" had a strong bearing on which rights were granted to whom.

The crowd was reminded, however, that the ethical landscape of the United States is always changing, and with the proper action, it can be changed for the better.

Arnsten went on to assert that the best way to alleviate much of the tension placed upon gay parents is to legalize gay marriage at the Supreme Court level, which would result in a trickle-down effect, cleansing the biases from other discriminatory policies affecting gay adoptive couples.

"Gay marriage is key to the factor of validity," Arnsten stated, adding that many public policies could be amended under the same principle.

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