Expert says real focus in debate over homosexuals being lost

Madrid, Spain, Jun 26, 2005 / 22:00 pm

An expert in family issues from the University of Arkansas said last week Spaniards should be concerned about respecting the right of children to have a father and a mother instead of looking for a social consensus on homosexual conduct.

Professor Hillary Wilson said the attacks against Spanish Professor Aquilino Polaino, who addressed the Spanish Senate on the “psyco-pathological profile” of homosexuals, were to be expected.  “When was the last time it went well for somebody who suggested that homosexuality was more than just ‘a healthy and admirable lifestyle’ of mature, free and autonomous individuals?” Wilson asked.  “Polaino himself knew that his comments to the Senate meant the ‘public execution’ of his person and his professional reputation,” she noted.

According to Wilson, the pathology of homosexuality or its eventual spread through education, “are important issues in this debate, but they are not, nor should they be, the only deciding issues.”

Amidst the rush to “excuse” and “reaffirm” the positive nature of homosexuality, “it seems the original issue that gave rise to this controversy has been lost from sight:  Should the right to adoption be granted to same-sex couples or not?” Wilson maintained.

“To deny a same-sex couple the possibility of adopting is not discrimination against persons with homosexual tendencies,” she explained.  “The problem is not one of sexual orientation, but of the nature and purpose of adoption itself: adoption does not mean giving a child to any couple who wants one, but rather the seeking out a family for a child who needs one.”

“A child in need of being adopted is a child who is an extraordinary and abnormal situation: he or she is a child without parents.  From a juridical and social point of view, the purpose of adoption is to ‘create’ a family relationship similar to one that is natural.  Not, for example, like two fathers and one mother, or three friends, or a single person, because these do not exist as a natural biological relationship,” Wilson explained.

She went on to state that “the simple attention and affection of one, two or five people is not sufficient.  In order for a child to have a balanced development and reach full maturity as a human person, she needs the presence of father and mother.  If we are going to talk about adoption as a right, the rights of the child are above other rights because children are innocent and defenseless.  It is the child who should be benefited by the adoption, not the couple.”