At least apparently. I accidentally discovered this when I negatively remarked on my website that Rep. Paul Ryan now supports gay couples being allowed to adopt children. It amazed me how many conservatives came to Ryan’s defense. And not just that, but how many did not even try to hide behind the illusion of mere excuse-making for Ryan, but expressed openly their explicit agreement with him.

One of the arguments made—again, these are conservatives—was that if you are pro-life, you must absolutely support gays adopting (“[A]nyone who is pro-life had better be pro-adoption [source]”; “[I]f you’re pro-life, you need to be pro-adoption [source]”). (Note the sleight-of-hand: being pro-gay-adoption has now become simply “pro-adoption.” Again, these are conservatives.)

Since abortion helps the pro-life cause, they argue, we should support anybody’s desire to adopt. Using this very same argument, it is not hard to arrive at the position that since “anybody” includes everybody, pro-lifers should support adoption even by ex-convicts and the criminally insane. Somehow, to be anti-adoption for certain people is to be anti-life for all.

These conservative backers of homosexual adoption are hypocrites. They’re young, mostly, and have been tainted by the pervasive liberalism in everyday culture, but that does not excuse their lack of consistency. If gay adoption is good for the pro-life cause, then so is gay “marriage.” Households led by married couples generally raise much more emotionally stable children than those led by unmarried couples. To remain intellectually consistent, these conservatives who back gay adoption must also back gay “marriage.”

And surely these conservative gay-adoption supporters believe birth control should be taxpayer-funded. After all, wouldn’t they rather a woman not get pregnant if she doesn’t want to, rather than the woman becoming a mother and then terminating the life of her unborn baby?

Another argument I’ve been given: “[P]ro-life people should support babies being adopted by those who can provide loving and stable homes, and gay couples certainly fall into that category [source].”

Gays can be loving, certainly, and most of them do lead financially stable lives, being that many earn a high income, but there is nothing stable emotionally in a gay household. Gays are gay because of a mental instability that they themselves have or had at one point. The default emotional state in a gay household is that of instability. This is not to dehumanize gays or to say they are all bad people, but to state a general fact.

And we do not have to rely only on logic to conclude that a father and a mother, or more precisely a mom and a dad, can more ably and consistently rear well-balanced children, for this can be observed in the natural world. Or do we believe that it was only happenstance that God (or Nature, if you prefer) ordained that children may be born only from a male-female couple?

A study published in the journal Social Science Research found that “When compared with outcomes for children raised by an ‘intact biological family’ (with a married, biological mother and father), the children of homosexuals did worse (or, in the case of their own sexual orientation, were more likely to deviate from the societal norm) on 77 out of 80 outcome measures. (The only exceptions: children of ‘gay fathers’ were more likely to vote; children of lesbians used alcohol less frequently; and children of ‘gay fathers’ used alcohol at the same rate as those in intact biological families.”

Among the study’s other findings:

Compared with children raised by their married biological parents…, children of homosexual parents…:

• Are much more likely to have received welfare…
• Have lower educational attainment
• Report less safety and security in their family of origin
• Report more ongoing “negative impact” from their family of origin
• Are more likely to suffer from depression
• Have been arrested more often
• If they are female, have had more sexual partners—both male and female

Furthermore,

[C]hildren of homosexual fathers are nearly 3 times as likely, and children of lesbian mothers are nearly 4 times as likely, to identify as something other than entirely heterosexual. Children of lesbian mothers are 75% more likely, and children of homosexual fathers are 3 times more likely, to be currently in a same-sex romantic relationship….Both males and females who were raised by both lesbian mothers and homosexual fathers have more opposite-sex (heterosexual) partners than children of married biological parents (daughters of homosexual fathers had twice as many). But the differences in homosexual conduct are even greater. The daughters of lesbians have 4 times as many female (that is, same-sex) sexual partners than the daughters of married biological parents, and the daughters of homosexual fathers have 6 times as many. Meanwhile, the sons of both lesbian mothers and homosexual fathers have 7 times as many male (same-sex) sexual partners as sons of married biological parents.

And, most disturbingly,

Children raised by a lesbian mother were 10 times more likely to have been “touched sexually by a parent or other adult caregiver” (23% reported this, vs. only 2% for children of married biological parents), while those raised by a homosexual father were 3 times more likely (reported by 6%).

One of my readers noted that Paul Ryan’s support of gay adoption puts him in closer alignment with the general public. This is true. Our society, as all others of the past, is ever drifting leftward. It’s just disheartening to know that my fellow young conservatives are drifting with it.