Madrid, Spain, Nov 18, 2004 / 22:00 pm
The association Professionals for Ethics will send a letter on Saturday to Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero signed by 1000 professionals who are calling on the government to turn back from its plans to authorize adoption by homosexual couples.
Fabian Fernandez, president of the group that brings together teachers, lawyers, psychiatrists and psychologists, said the signatures will be sent on the worldwide Day of the Rights of the Child.
The group says adoption by homosexuals is harmful to minors and is an attempt to substitute the biological father and mother of a child. Children “have the right to have masculine and feminine role models.” “When the father or the mother is absent, the child should be given an explanation of the circumstances, without confusing him by allowing persons of different sexes to assume roles that are not theirs,” the statement says.
Likewise, the group says “children have the right to be part of a family similar to the traditional family, to grow up in an atmosphere that allows them to develop their physical, intellectual and moral personality” and “to not be discriminated against or subjected to traumatic experiences.”
Lastly, members of the group call on the government “to withdraw the proposal which, based on our professional experience, we consider to be harmful to the physical and psychological development of children.”
Ana Martín Ancel, one of the signers of the letter and member of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics, referred to a 1997 study by “Developmental Psychology,” which reported the existence of “a significantly greater incidence of homosexual relationships among those who had been raised by lesbian mothers (24%) compared to those who were raised by heterosexual mothers.”
Antonio del Moral, a Supreme Court lawyer, asked “why two fathers or two mothers can adopt and not a group of individuals or two brothers.”