This topic infuriates me. I'll be the first to admit that the Bible makes it clear that God does not bless same sex marriages, but there's a lot of marriages that God doesn't bless, and they just aren't just issues to Christians. If I had my druthers, someone who their spouse for someone else would not be allowed to legally marry or collect cohabitation benefits. Christians don't agree whether or not God blesses a marriage when one or both have been divorced, but I don't think any Christian can say that God blesses a marriage where the relationship began when one or both were married to someone else. And therefore why Christians are ok with such marriages being legal is just beyond me. Go to either the family forum or the prayer request forum and you'll find plenty of laments of people who's spouse left them for someone else. That is what I see is the biggest threat to marriage. It's heterosexual divorce that's the major problem, not gay marriage.
First of all, statistically, a child raised by gay parents are only 2% more likely to go on to become gay themselves, and, well, statistics are good to gay parents. That's because gay parents tend to fit the description of parents who tend to be good parents. Statistically, parents who's children do well are children from smaller families, who's parents are older and have higher socio-economic status, a description that often fits gay couples. You can flood me with anecdotal evidence, but when you look at the big picture, that's what you see. However, there isn't any evidence (that i know of) that would say that gay parents are better parents than straight parents who have the same characteristics.
Basically, gays can adopt for one of two reasons, either they are adopting a child because they are unable to have a child as a couple because there isn't a womb between them, or they are adopting the biological child of their partner. The later happens with straight couples too. My aunt's first husband was abusive and she got sole custody of her daughter in the divorce. When she remarried her new husband adopted my cousin for legal reasons. Although, since my aunt and uncle were legally married, if anything happened to my aunt, my uncle would likely gain custody of her anyway, since her biological father lost custody as well as all contact, but I guess they didn't want to take that chance. Now, if a lesbian couple has a baby (or has a child from a previous relationship) the non-biological parent has to adopt the child so they'll have rights to it should anything happen to the biological parent. I suppose that can happen with gay men too because if they have enough money they make a baby using donor eggs and a surrogate. If the couple is legally married (where allowed) then the non-biological parent may already have rights to the child, I don't know.
Anyway, but lets say a gay couple (as in two men) can't afford to make a baby using reproductive technology (which I think has price tag of about 100 grand) wants to raise a child together, they have three options that I know of. They can try to adopt a domestic newborn, but the line for that is very, very, very, very long and is getting longer all the time. From what I've heard, fewer babies are going up for adoption in places like Canada and the US, and the infertility rate is going way up (in fact, some scientists are worried that the male sperm count is descending at such a rate that if the trend continues we could become extinct in another hundred years). Furthermore, I think (but I'm not sure) that the trend for adoption is for the birth mother to choose the couple to give the baby to rather than letting an agency choose the parents. If that's the case, I imagine that both the agency and the birth mother would favour a heterosexual couple over two men. So, that means the gay couple could either turn to international adoption or a domestic older child. Now here's the problem. A baby up for adoption needs to leave the hospital with the adoptive parents or they'll run the risk of developing reactive attachment disorder, which is where a baby fails to develop a consistent bond with a parent. Well, maybe it's not that bad, I think most of the baby girls who are adopted from China turn out to develop typically. But I had a prof who, with his wife, adopted a baby. When she was born her mother couldn't decide if she wanted to give her up for adoption so she put her in foster care for a couple of months before she decided to give her up. Well, either the baby bonded with the foster parents and the bond was broken when she was adopted or she was failed to bond altogether, it was enough for her to develop reactive attachment disorder. And kids with that condition are very, very, very difficult to parent. If ANYONE short of a pedophile wants to give a child with reactive attachment disorder a chance, I think they should do it because they're better off in a stable home than in an over crowded foster home or Eastern European orphanage.
There are SO MANY CHILDREN in the USA who are up for adoption and living in foster care. I hate to sound negative but for a kid raised in foster care to do well (I think the current Miss America is such a person) they need to overcome some serious odds. Even if they don't have reactive attachment disorder, so many of them have conditions like oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, fetal alcohol effects or post-traumatic stress disorder. Parenting such children take an overwhelming amount of love, patience and time, and until all such children are adopted into loving Christian homes, I don't think we're in any position to say that they're better off being passed around from foster home to foster home rather than in a permanent home with people (I don't care who provided they're not abusive) who are trying to love them and give them what they need. Dr. Phil did a show on the state of foster homes in the USA and the fact that the majority of Christians are ok with children living that way because there's no homosexuality involved just makes my blood boil.