Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
January 2016
Journal
Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights: Ethical and Philosophical Issues, Edited by Michael Cholbi and Jaime Ahlberg. Routledge, 2016.
Abstract
Fundamentally Incompetent: Homophobia, Religion and the Right to Parent . Samantha Brennan, Western University, sbrennan@uwo.caColin Macleod, University of Victoria, cmacleod@uvic.ca What happens when the expression of parental values in child rearing runs contrary to the claim of children to be loved and respected by parents? This chapter asks whether parents who hold, and seek to express, attitudes and beliefs that are contemptuous of sexual minorities are competent parents. We argue that homophobic views held by parents can pose a serious threat to the well-being of children and that adults who harbour such views fall below the threshold of competency requisite to acquiring and maintaining the moral right to parent. We explore this issue by considering whether conservative religious fundamentalists who hold and express strongly homophobic beliefs should be considered competent parents. Some religious fundamentalists seem unwilling to love and respect children who are or might be gay. The systematic denial of love and respect to gay youth by homophobic parents causes a great deal of harm to children and arguably constitutes a form of abuse. The basic structure of the argument we set out is simple: (a) children have a right to affective caring; (b) competent prospective parents must be able to reliably provide affective caring to children; but (c) strongly homophobic parents cannot reliably provide affective to caring to children who are gay; so (d) strongly homophobic adults are not competent parents.