The Peer Counselor and Peer Ambassador Program with the Holmes Diversity Center hosted a discussion in the Colvard Student Union Dawg House Tuesday on adoption rights for gay couples.
With the larger issue of gay rights as a backdrop, the center posed questions to a panel of students representing different viewpoints on the subject.
Representatives were present from the College Republicans, College Democrats, Spectrum, a lesbian, gay, transgender, bi-sexual and straight allies group on campus, and students with communication and political science majors.
Deborah Omoyege, a peer counselor for the Holmes Diversity Center, said it was difficult to get these diverse groups together.
“I believe it really is an issue that needs to be talked about,” she said. “The whole thing is a very touchy subject. We contacted many campus ministries, and none of those wanted to come either.”
Campus religious groups were markedly absent from the discussion, although many of the arguments from those against the issue had a religious undertone.
Spectrum’s representative on the panel, Elizabeth Pellegrine said defining the debate in terms of religion only limits the discussion.
“For some it may be an issue of right and wrong. There are over 500,000 children who need to be adopted in the United States,” she said. “Adoption is a government-run institution, and religious definitions shouldn’t be applied to it.”
Virginia Wegener, a College Republicans representative, said the issue is not entirely religious but of how the child is going to be raised.
“If [the prospective gay couple] cannot naturally have a child, how are they going to be able to raise one?” she asked. “There are certain things a child learns from his/her mother and other things it learns from their father.”
Other arguments against gay adoption boiled down to apprehension over whether or not a gay couple could feasibly raise a child, and whether or not the child would undergo any undue teasing.
Political science major Marjani Aladin said the assumption only heterosexual couples could properly raise a child is unfounded.
“That is nonsense. There are people who can make babies, but can’t raise them,” Aladin said.
Ware weighed in on the issue of teasing the child might undergo.
“Children in society get teased for all sorts of things. You can’t say a child shouldn’t be a adopted because it could possibly be teased,” Ware said. “Mixed children are teased all the time. Should we not allow black and white people to have kids?”
Aladin said most of the debate seemed to be in favor of gay couples’ rights to adopt, but the opposition was staunch against their opinions.