Roberts Challenges Ralph Reed on Same-Sex Adoption: You’d Rather Leave Kids in Orphanages?
A comment by Reverend Franklin Graham, in which he alleged gay parents are “recruiting” when they adopt children and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was right to prohibit same-sex adoption, sent a panel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos going, with Cokie Roberts asking Ralph Reed whether he thought leaving children in orphanages was better than moving them into same-sex households.
“The social science on this is clear,” Reed said. “This isn’t about Vladimir Putin, this is about what’s best for children here in the United States. The social science is irrefutable: a child who grows up in a home without the mother and father present, and they both very unique procreative, nurturing, and socializing roles, they’re nine times more likely to end up dropping out of high school; they’re five times more likely to end up in poverty; and they’re three times more likely to end up addicted to drugs and alcohol.”
“But the social science is also irrefutable that a child raised in an orphanage is in much worse shape than a child raised in a home,” Roberts objected. “And the fact that people are willing to take these children and raise them, and raise them in a loving way, is clearly better for these children.”
“Would you agree with that?” host Martha Raddatz asked. “Would you rather have a child sitting in an orphanage than have gay parents?”
“I think the social science is just simply not in yet on same-sex couples,” Reed said, in a notable departure from his comment thirty seconds ago. “I think the law has every right to set an ideal. And the ideal is a mother and a father.”
“It’s also true, if we got better men we would be in better shape,” Roberts said.
By the by, nobody on the panel agreed with Graham’s assessment of Putin.
Watch the clip below, via ABC News:
[Image via screengrab]
