God chose it for himself. Jesus could have been born from an olive tree, floated down from heaven or simply appeared on the public scene at the age of 30 and skipped the formality of being raised in a family with both a mom and a dad. God is all wise, he knows all the options and he always chooses the best one. God chose family life with Mary as his mother and Joseph as his father.
Personally, I learned the “law of exchange” (justice) from my dad and the “law of love” (mercy) from my mom. My dad helped me understand the need to chip in by doing housework, fairness in dealing with my brothers, curfews and rules that needed to be followed and punishments that corresponded to infractions.(He was always there at the door at 1130 pm on week-ends to give the sobriety test and make sure I made it back in time). My mom taught me selflessness by often putting on the vaporizer in my room at 3 am, smiling even though her head was about to crack with a bad headache, uniting my brothers after a nasty fight with her good sense of humor, and showing us the power of prayer and faith, especially in the darker moments. This list barely touches the surface and I am sure all of you could fill many paragraphs with your own personal examples.
“In this reputable and newly-released study, Sociologist Mark Regnerus reveals how children fare better across measurable indicators when they are raised in a stable intact home with their mother and their fathers, as opposed to same-sex families. The study has received notable acclaim from the New York Times, the Washington Times, Slate, Patheos and others. Some have called it “the gold standard” of research, while others might speculate the significance it has for the same-sex marriage debate.
Ross Douthat said: “..a growing body of research indicates that no other parental arrangement, from single motherhood to cohabitation to shared custody, affords as many social, economic and emotional advantages as being raised by two biological parents joined in a lifelong commitment.”
Dr. Patrick Fagan said the study will “raise the bar for research on gay parenting, especially since it is does not rely on “snowball samples,” in which gay parents are recruited in the same places as their gay friends and colleagues.”
To quote an excerpt from the NYTimes:
Young adults from broken homes in which a parent had had a same-sex relationship reported modestly more psychological and social problems in their current lives than peers from other families that had experienced divorce and other disruptions, a new study has found, stirring bitter debate among partisans on gay marriage.
The study counted parents as gay or lesbian by asking participants whether their parents had ever had a same-sex relationship; the parents may not have identified themselves as gay or lesbian. Gay-rights groups attacked the study, financed by conservative foundations, as biased and poorly done even before its publication on Sunday in the journal Social Science Research.
But outside experts, by and large, said the research was rigorous, providing some of the best data yet comparing outcomes for adult children with a gay parent with those with heterosexual parents….” (http://www.loveandfidelity.org/online_journal/new-study-shows-children-fare-better-in-traditional-mother-father-families/)
Gay marriage, for the most part, has become legal and accepted in our society. The focus has been on the rights of the gay couple who love each other…but what about the rights of the kids who may be adopted into that family structure? Pope Francis stated, “Children have the right to be raised by a mother and a father. Complementarity will take many forms as each man and woman brings his or her distinctive contributions to their marriage and to the formation of their children – his or her personal richness, personal charisma.” Jesus chose it for himself; can’t we offer the vast treasures of complementarity to all our children as well?