Should homosexual couples be allowed to adopt?
That question is unavoidably charged—because it isn’t abstract. It’s a conversation about children, about families, and about what society and its government will bless and protect.
Laws can’t avoid moral judgments; they formalize them. The question is whose moral vision we will enshrine when children’s lives are at stake. For Christians, moral truth is not invented by society; it is given by God. Therefore, the state should legislate according to God’s moral order, prioritizing what is good and fitting—including the welfare and dignity of adopted children—because God is the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty. Thus,the government exists to uphold justice rather than ratify private desires.
As such, this article seeks to answer this question in two ways: Biblically and sociologically. First, we’ll address the question sociologically.
A Sociological Critique
You may have heard it said, “There is no difference between a child raised by homosexual parents and heterosexual parents.” In other words, the children derived from these two homes are indistinguishable. The intended consequence of this claim is that homosexual and heterosexual couples should be treated identically because their children are supposedly indistinguishable.
That conclusion is frequently tied to a 2015 review associated with Cornell’s “What We Know” project, which surveyed 79 case studies and reported that 75 of them concluded that children raised by gay or lesbian parents “fare no worse than other children.” Plainly stated, the headline takeaway is this: About 95% of the studies show no disadvantage.[1] It’s a bold claim—but is it true, or at least as indisputable as it sounds?
Is Their Confidence Overstated?
Katy Faust, founder of the pro-child non-profit Them Before Us, says this claim is demonstrably false. Further, the data rely on methodological flaws that would disqualify the studies for use in standardized social science research. How can she say this? Her rebuttal is founded on four observations[2] regarding Cornell’s data:
- Response Bias: Many participants knew the research was investigating same-sex parenting, which may have shaped answers toward socially desirable responses.
- Sampling Bias: Participants were often recruited through networks of friends or advocacy organizations, producing samples that were wealthier, more educated, and more socially stable than the broader population.
- Small Sample Sizes: Average sample sizes of fewer than 40 children made statistically significant differences unlikely to appear.
- Weak Outcome Measures: Few studies measured concrete child outcomes (e.g., medical records, report cards, or children’s own reports in adulthood). Most relied primarily on parental self-reporting.
A Reanalysis: Rechecking the Data
The data in the Cornell studies were manipulated to prove underlying assumptions. Consequently, their studies reveal themselves as propaganda, not scholarly research. That begs the question: What measurable outcomes differentiate children of homosexual and heterosexual couples? Are they as indistinguishable as Cornell (and others) claim?
One frequently cited challenge comes from sociologist D. Paul Sullins, who reanalyzed the data and argued that the “indistinguishable” conclusion is overstated. In his reanalysis, he reports the following:[3]
- Compared to opposite-sex households, adolescents with same-sex couple households show higher anxiety and lower autonomy, but better school performance.
- Within same-sex couple households (unmarried vs self-identifying as “married”), he reports worse outcomes in the “married” subgroup:
- Above-average depressive symptoms: 50% → 88%
- Daily fearfulness/crying: 5% → 32%
- GPA: 3.6 → 3.4
- Child sexual abuse by parent: 0% → 38%
What’s the bottom line? Sullins concludes that the longer a child has been in a same-sex couple household, “the greater the harm.”[4]
Why This Shouldn’t Surprise Us
Now, we should ask ourselves: Should this come as a surprise to us? Should these findings be shocking? If we stop to think for a moment, they shouldn’t be. At the level of basic human experience, much of this is predictable.
In an adoption placement with two men or two women, a child is necessarily raised without either a mother or a father in the home. That means the child is missing a dimension of maternal or paternal presence that, in ordinary life, contributes something distinct to a child’s development. And because a child cannot be biologically related to two men or two women, at least one—and often both—adults in the home will be unrelated to the child. That is not a moral indictment of every non-biological caregiver; many adoptive parents love sacrificially.
But child-welfare research has repeatedly found that households with unrelated adults present a higher risk for abuse, especially for young children. [5] [6] Studies of step-parent households show similar patterns: abuse rates are higher when a child is living with a non-biological parental figure. [7] Further, when a home is built on assumptions about gender and sexuality that contradict moral and biological realities, that framework can shape a child’s self-understanding—and may introduce confusion, especially as questions of identity emerge.
The sociological discussion matters because children are not abstractions. But Christians do not build ethics on sociology alone. We build them on revelation–both natural and special revelation. Scripture gives us categories the modern debate often tries to erase–male and female, mother and father, marriage and sexual purity. With those categories in place, we can finally answer the adoption question without guessing. So, we begin with Genesis 1-2, where God calls his design “good.”
A Biblical Critique
When God instituted the family, he did so through a complementary pair—male and female. Genesis 2:18, 21-22 says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ …So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.”
The familiar phrase “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” can sound crude. Nevertheless, it points toward a true theological instinct: Scripture begins by presenting marriage and family as the union of man and woman. If we want to know what is “good and proper,” we start where God starts. The biblical pattern is not interchangeable or endlessly adaptable; it is grounded in creation itself. And because adoption places children within a household, the question is whether we are being asked to affirm a family structure that departs from the created design.
God introduces what is “good and proper” in marriage—namely, the union between a man and woman—but He also intensely condemns homosexual unions in both word and deed. The most notable physical condemnation is that of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Two angels came to Sodom to rescue Lot from the impending judgment, whom Scripture calls “righteous” (Genesis 18:32; 2 Peter 2:7). Upon their arrival, Lot showed hospitality by welcoming them into his home. Then, Genesis 19:4-5 says, “But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.’”
What was the primary sin of the men? Many wrongly state that their primary sin was their desire to molest the angels. While this is undoubtedly a sin, it is not the primary sin. Jude 7 brings more clarity: “…just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” Jude, in the previous verse, sets up a comparison of Sodom’s sin to the angels’ sin in Genesis 6, where they slept with human women. What’s wrong with that? It’s an unnatural desire. The primary sin of Sodom is that their desire was unnatural (i.e., men desiring to sleep with men) and, for their sin, they were destroyed with great magnitude.
Why Scripture Treats Sexual Sin as Uniquely Serious
You may still be thinking, “Why is this sin being treated as far worse than others?” While it is true that all have fallen short of the glory of God, and all sins separate us from God, and Christ is the only remedy for our sin, not all sins are equally sinful. If you chew on this for a while, it becomes obvious. Jesus says that tempting his children (or “little ones”) to sin deserves the penalty of “a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). Sins do not have equal consequences.
Even still, Holy Scripture treats sexual sin as uniquely serious because it directly violates the one-flesh design and dishonors the body. In 1 Corinthians 6:18, Paul says, “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”
So why should we oppose same-sex adoption?
Because adoption exists for the good of the child, not the fulfillment of adult desires. The question is not whether a same-sex couple may be loving, stable, or sincere. The question is what kind of home the state should privilege when placing a vulnerable child.
Wherever possible, children should receive a mother and a father. Men and women are not interchangeable, and mothers and fathers do not offer identical gifts. A same-sex adoption, therefore, places a child in a home where either the mother or father is permanently absent from the beginning.
That absence matters. It is not a tragic circumstance that the law is merely forced to manage. It is a deprivation that the state intentionally builds into the placement itself. In that sense, same-sex adoption asks society to call a loss a good. Rather than restoring what has been broken, it formalizes the child’s deprivation in law.
The harm is not only private, but public. We are social creatures maintaining a common culture. When the state treats same-sex households as equivalent to mother-father homes for adoption, it teaches that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that family structure is morally irrelevant. Over time, that weakens the public meaning of marriage, parenthood, and the family itself. It tells society that the desires of adults may define the home, rather than the needs of children.
Adoption law should do the opposite. It should reinforce the norm that children deserve a mother and a father whenever possible. For that reason, Christians should oppose same-sex adoption, not out of animus, but out of love for children, fidelity to creation, and concern for the common good.
[1] What We Know Project, Cornell University, “What Does the Scholarly Research Say about the Well-Being of Children with Gay or Lesbian Parents?” (online literature review, 2015), accessed December 10, 2025, https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-wellbeing-of-children-with-gay-or-lesbian-parents/.
[2] Katy Faust, “Exposing the Rigged Research of the Same-Sex Parenting Movement,” Them Before Us (Substack), December 4, 2025, accessed December 14, 2025, https://thembeforeus.substack.com/p/75-to-1-how-we-exposed-the-rigged.
[3] D. Paul Sullins, “The Unexpected Harm of Same-sex Marriage: A Critical Appraisal, Replication and Re-analysis of Wainright and Patterson’s Studies of Adolescents with Same-sex Parents,” Journal of Education, Society and Behavioral Science 11, no. 2 (2015): 1–22, https://doi.org/10.9734/BJESBS/2015/19337.
[5] Michael N. Stiffman, Patricia G. Schnitzer, Patricia Adam, Robin L. Kruse, and Bernard G. Ewigman, “Household Composition and Risk of Fatal Child Maltreatment,” Pediatrics 109, no. 4 (April 2002): 615–621, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.109.4.615.
[6] Patricia G. Schnitzer and Bernard G. Ewigman, “Child Deaths Resulting From Inflicted Injuries: Household Risk Factors and Perpetrator Characteristics,” Pediatrics 116, no. 5 (November 2005): e687–e693, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2005-0296.
[7] Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, “Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with Both Parents,” Ethology and Sociobiology 6, no. 4 (1985): 197–210, https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(85)90012-3.
