Q&A: Raising Children in Same-Sex Families
Raising Children in Same-Sex Families
Question
Do you support LGBT rights to adopt children / have children from their own sperm through a surrogate mother? Do you see this as something normative?
Answer
Absolutely yes, and I’ve written this more than once. I didn’t understand the second question. What does “something normative” mean?
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand. Please, no riddles.
Isn’t there a moral problem with this? In my opinion, a child by nature needs a father figure and a mother figure; this child will lack that. Are we bringing children into the world only for ourselves, treating the child as an object? At what point does the Rabbi disagree with me? Does the Rabbi think that the child is being treated as an object and not as a subject? Or perhaps, even though the child is a subject, he will not lack anything substantial, and therefore LGBT people should be given access to sperm?
I’m not aware of evidence that two male parents or two female parents harms a child, especially not in a society that accepts it. People cite many studies saying the opposite (though of course they’re all biased here).
I know quite a few families that I wouldn’t let raise children, and nobody even considers preventing them from doing so. Therefore prevention is relevant only where there is a clear presumption that there will be a problem, and in my assessment that is not the case here.
Talking about treating the child as an object is demagoguery. Parents bring children into the world to a large extent for their own sake. So you can’t accuse homosexuals in particular of that. True, the child’s welfare is also a consideration, but as I wrote, only when there is a clear presumption that this is against the child’s welfare is there room to prevent parents from having the child.
By the way, in the Talmud and in the halakhic decisors too, the child is also an object brought for the benefit of the parents and their rights: “a staff for one’s hand and a hoe for burial” (Yevamot 65b). See an overview here:
He points out that in the case of a single mother there is a similar consideration, and that is exactly like our case.
Regarding a single mother, absolutely right: anyone who forbids LGBT people from having a child should all the more so also forbid a single mother. That is obvious to any reasonable person.
As for families that you wouldn’t let raise a child, that’s no proof. It’s technically impossible to conduct such a check on every single person who wants to get married, unlike LGBT people or a single mother, where if one concludes that an overwhelming majority of such children are endangered and would have been better off not being born.
As for the discussion about objecthood, obviously we also bring children into the world for ourselves; the question is whether we bring them into the world only for ourselves. (And the Talmud too spoke about there being benefit in him as an object; that is no proof that the Talmud and the halakhic decisors related to him only as an object—at least not the Talmud in Yevamot. It would be interesting if you could prove a purely object-like treatment from the Talmud.) It sounds like even you agree that if there were proof that the child is harmed, we would not permit them to have children. So you too agree that the child is treated as a subject.
I understand that the Rabbi himself did not do the research, and that the Rabbi is relying on studies that are apparently biased.
If so, then even by your own words, there may be a clear presumption; you are just claiming that you don’t know whether it exists.
Do you think it is moral to publicly support something that may not be proper? Or is it simply your reasoning that there is no inherent difficulty for a child who is orphaned from birth and the like, and therefore as long as no one has proven otherwise to you, you publicly support it?
I also haven’t investigated this scientifically, and therefore I don’t publicly oppose it. It is not as simple to me as it is to you, because I have met quite a few people orphaned in the womb who felt a substantial difficulty about it. True, I have no scientific proof, but I have not gotten beyond doubt, and passive omission is preferable. Or else, act and investigate.
I explained everything I had to explain, and I see no point in repeating myself again. Everything has been answered.
You are drawing baseless conclusions (to the best of my knowledge) regarding children of such parents. You assume without basis that there are no ways to check parents who are unfit to raise children.
You’re dodging without answering; there’s no point ending the discussion when you aren’t answering. I’m claiming that there is logic to the approach that says a child who has no father or mother has a substantial difficulty—what are you, naive? When we see a child orphaned from birth of a father or a mother (whom he never knew), don’t we feel pity for him? Isn’t that your initial intuition?! It’s naive to say you don’t pity him. And don’t answer with evasive philosophical arguments that we pity the fact that his mother died but not him. A reasonable person (at least from the society I live in—I don’t know what goes on in Bar-Ilan or in Lod) who sees a child without a father or mother feels pity for the child for not having had a father or mother (even if the child never got to know his parents). In addition, I know several such cases. I know the son of a lesbian couple who every time latches onto men who play with him and refuses to leave them until his mothers take him away, and his mothers openly say that he lacks a male figure! I know a friend who in his childhood and adolescence lived without a father and openly says that the father figure was missing for him in various ways, and more examples. So I also have examples and also good intuition—answer that! Don’t dodge. I stress: I am not claiming that on this basis I would forbid a single mother or a same-sex couple to have children, because my evidence is not solid, and on that basis you do not build general conclusions. I am only saying that I would not publicly support childbearing for a same-sex couple or for a single mother because of this intuition and these examples. And that is my question: how do you express support as long as you have no solid evidence, when your support may cause miserable lives for some children? You can answer philosophically that you see no problem with publicly supporting such a thing. But you didn’t claim that. You dodged. You can also do research and find out, and then publicly support it—but just like that? There are consequences to our actions! Sorry for the harsh language and the brazenness; these things were written out of passion over the fact that you dodged. I assume it doesn’t offend you, and therefore I see no need to correct it. The words are also written out of great appreciation for you.
And I claim that there is logic, and that your words are baseless, and also that everything has been explained ad nauseam. You keep recycling the same arguments, and I see no point in recycling the answers. A person does not need to conduct research on everything he writes; certainly the obligation is no more on me than on the opponents. The burden of proof is on them.
I have no problem at all with harms, and I also haven’t seen that there were any here. Everything is excellent.
You’re ignoring it again. Where did you answer the question, “When you see a child missing a father or mother, do you feel pity for him?” You didn’t answer that, and therefore I allow myself to assume that you do feel pity. Now I ask: doesn’t that give you the intuition that a child lacking a father and mother is something that harms the child? And in addition, I base my words on two examples, and there are more. So I understand that despite the evidence from the feeling of pity and these examples, you don’t have such an intuition. Fine, that’s strange. But accepted.
Second point: you claimed that my words are baseless—they are not, as stated. This is demagoguery, ignoring the arguments.
One last thing: you claim that the burden of proof is on them. That is only if your view is obvious to you. If you are in doubt, then passive omission is preferable, since you may harm the child being born. So I understand that not only do you lack an intuition in favor of the position that this harms the child, but you have a strong intuition toward the other side, because otherwise you would have had to prefer passive omission. That is already very strange.
Now I’d be glad if, instead of dodging for the two-hundredth time by saying you already answered the questions—even though you didn’t—you would answer each of the three points I raised here. Am I right in my assessments? Then all in all, in my opinion, you have a strange intuition (regarding the first and third points; regarding the second, that doesn’t apply). Or am I mistaken in the arguments?
Sorry for the overlong digging, but after you answer these three now, I’ll stop digging.
It’s just that I, in my lowliness, have not managed to draw an answer to my questions from what you wrote ad nauseam above. “Those who hope in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not grow weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
Signed with the blessing of the One “who gives strength to the weary and increases power to the powerless.”
I have mounted up with wings like eagles, and I will write again what I’ve already written several times.
I do not feel pity for him if he has two other parents (especially if this is a norm in the society in which he lives). That’s it. I will answer no more.
In the context of “castrating nature.”