//Are we really going to forbid all family arrangements that are even slightly sub-optimal? Shall we leave children in care because the perfect family is not available to them? There's about 70,000 children in the care system last I checked, and adoption rates are falling. Even if (if!) same-sex parenting is sub-optimal in some way, it seems like bad policy to reduce the number of potential adopters in such circumstances//
A rather tendentious restatement of my position, Kromo. We agree, though, that children are better looked after in a loving family (however we define it) than "in care".
I am wholly for adoption - I was an adopted child myself, as it happens. That doesn't mean I endorse adoption by anybody, and I trust you don't endorse that either. You can think of circumstances in which you would refuse adoption, can't you? Say by suspected paedophiles? Or a rich old woman in her eighties? What you're doing in these cases is asking the question "Why do they want to adopt?". Typically adoptive parents are couples who can't have children and desperately want them. It's pretty easy to to recognise that class of adoptive parent and so know that the child is going to a "good home".
Now this is my problem with gay couples adopting: I think an adopted child, like a formal marriage ceremony, is an obvious symbol of newly acquired gay rights, and, therefore, has become to a certain extent fashionable - "everyone must have one". So in some cases, I think, the adoption is not based on a genuine desire to be a parent with the commitment to accepting the burdens and costs which go with parenthood.
Meanwhile (on your point of falling adoption rates) there's a possible undesirable consequence of gay adoption legislation: the pressure, including legal sanction based on the same "equality" principle, on adoption agencies, many of them church sponsored, to provide their services to gay couples. I think some such agencies in the States have been closed down as a result. Don't know if any in the UK have been affected.