Adoption is not a "second-best option"
National Organization for Marriage board chair John C. Eastman recently called adoption a “second-best option” for children. He was speaking to the Associated Press about Chief Justice John Robert’s position on the rights of same-sex couples: “Certainly adoption in families headed, like Chief Roberts’ family is, by a heterosexual couple, is by far the second-best option.”
The comment reveals less about adoptive families than about Eastman’s willingness to jettison religious tradition for political gain. He places adoptive children a step below biological offspring in a hierarchy of optimal results for married couples who choose to have children. This denigrates those who form families through adoption.
The Christian tradition, on the other hand, suggests that everyone who belongs to God’s family does so not through birth, not even the well-known “second birth” from the Gospel of John. It’s by adoption.
