The Morality of Gay Rights: An Exploration in Political Philosophy by Carlos A. Ball

Author:Carlos A. Ball [Ball, Carlos A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBTQ+ Studies, Gay Studies, Social Science, Civil Rights, Political Science, Lesbian Studies, General
ISBN: 9780415931410
Google: C_RRAwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 7393374
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2002-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

THE VALUE OF PARENTING BY LESBIANS AND GAY MEN

The interplay between human needs and capabilities is perhaps more evident in the parent-child relationship than in any other. Children at first have only needs, needs that must be satisfied if they are to have the opportunity to flourish as adults. What makes the satisfaction of children’s needs possible is the capability of adults to provide for those needs. Parenting (like marriage), therefore, raises fundamental questions about our needs and capabilities as human beings to participate in relationships of care. There is arguably no more important need than that of a child to be cared for by an adult nor a more important capability than that of an adult to care for a child. The capability to provide for others, including children, is an integral part of our humanity. I am not suggesting, of course, that one has to have children in order to be fully human. What I am suggesting is that the capability to care for others is a constitutive human capability that we all share, one that is especially evident in the way in which adults nurture, protect, guide, and love children. These are the premises with which I believe a moral discussion relating to who should be entitled and encouraged to parent should begin.

Opponents of gay rights question whether the values and goodness usually associated with parenting are consistent with permitting or encouraging lesbians and gay men to become parents. In a long law review article, for example, Lynn Wardle attempts to make a comprehensive case against parenting by lesbians and gay men.132 Wardle suggests that many lesbians and gay men seek to become parents for the wrong reasons, namely, to advance a political agenda and to earn recognition of parental rights that are meant more to benefit the adults than the children.133 Like many opponents of gay rights who write in this area, Wardle glosses over the human attributes, in terms of needs and capabilities, that are implicated whenever individuals make the life-changing and life-affirming decision to become parents. When Wardle suggests that lesbians and gay men are thinking more of themselves than of their children when they decide to become parents, he suggests that they are selfishly putting their needs and desires ahead of their children. Such an accusation, however, is unfair because it simplifies and trivializes the human needs and capabilities that are implicated when adults rear children. It is only when the human needs and capabilities associated with caring for others are invoked by lesbians and gay men that conservative commentators such as Wardle treat them with skepticism, as if the love and commitment on the part of lesbians and gay men (for their partners and for their children) were really some sort of a ruse to hide political or self-serving motivations.

It may be that in the end, commentators who oppose parenting by lesbians and gay men and who perhaps know from personal experience how having and raising children can be an expression of

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