A Loving Family Has Everything a Child Needs

That's the conclusion reached by Peggy Drexler, a gender scholar at Stanford University who has studied the issue of same-sex parent adoptions in great depth. She writes about it in this Huffington Post column:

It's the family, stupid!

Of all the political statements in the current surge of political statements, my favorite has to be from New York's Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer on his plans to introduce legislation that would legalize same sex marriage."We will not ask whether this proposition of legalizing same-sex marriage is popular or unpopular," he said.

"We will not ask if it's hard or easy. We will simply ask if it is right or wrong."

That's exactly the right question.

When you are part of the thicket of legalities and political calculations, what you find is a family. And when that family has taken full responsibility for a child's sense of well being and belonging, lawyerly debate and political maneuvering seem absurdly beside the point.

The U.S. Census shows that almost 30 percent of same-sex couples in this nation have a child under 18 living with them in their home. You'll find same-sex couples raising children in 96 percent of all of the 3,141 counties in the U.S.

All evidence from studies of these families points clearly to the same conclusion: good parents and the kids they produce have nothing to do with being straight or gay. It has everything to do with care, affection and involvement.

For the children of same-sex marriages, that sense of their place in the world is greatly influenced by the current laws that say: There are real families. And then there is your family."

Ms. Drexler gets it. Families are put together by love, not blood.