Happy Father’s Day, especially to Gay Dads for they have undergone crucibles of complicated laws, great expenses, and societal prejudices in their quest just to become gay parents. Heterosexual parents, on the other hand, can willy-nilly have children.

Increasing Acceptance

Despite the rigors of surrogacy and adoption for same-sex couples, according to the Williams Institute, a sexual orientation policy think tank at the University of Ca., Los Angeles, as of 2009, an estimated 20,000 same-sex couples are raising nearly 30,000 adopted kids.  In 2015, I’m certain the numbers would be greater.

A more recent poll from Gallup, May 2014, found 63% of respondents believed same-sex couples should have legal rights to adopt a child.  A new study by Pew Research Center suggests that attitudes toward non-traditional families are shifting in some ways. Its nationally representative survey of 2,691 people found that Americans are more accepting of families led by gay and lesbian parents, although many still do not approve of single mothers. In other words, it’s better for children to be raised by two parents, gay or straight.

In my home state of Florida, Republic Governor Rick Scott recently signed HB 7013, an adoption bill that offers financial incentives for qualifying couples.  This bill strikes down the 1977 ban on adoptions by gay parents.

Even television and print reflects these accepting attitudes of the public.  Starting last year, there are commercials featuring gay couples in Dove, Coca-Cola, JC Penney, Cheerios, as well as Honey Grahams and more recently Chobani yogurt that dished up controversy as it showed two lesbians, one eating yogurt, in bed. Hallmark has  sentimental cards for same-sex couples and a Tiffany’s print ad shows a good-looking engaged gay couple.

The people portrayed are your neighbors, co-workers, relatives, reflective of society’s “blended” families.  Yet not everyone is excited by the emerging trend.

Hoping to Backlash

Funded by conservative groups, many churches and family organizations try to convince the public that same-sex marriage and its subsequent adoptions are sinful and not normal.  One such researcher, Mark Regnerus, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, argued before the Supreme Court, that same-sex marriage should not be allowed, based on his 2012 study with flawed methodology. See my blogs on the topic: http://www.straightparentgaykid.blogspot.com/2015/03/19/”Are-Straight-Kids-Hurting-With-Same-Sex Parents?”/ and http://www.straightparentsgaykid.blogspot.com/2014/03/05/”Mark-Regnerus,-Again”/http://straightparentgaykid.blogspot.com/2014/03/05/”Mark-Regnerus,-Again”/

Regnerus’s so-called study surveyed more than 15,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 39.  As researchers at the Williams Institute told Live Science, a more fair comparison would’ve been of children of the same-sex couples who were raised in similar homes, with no divorces, separations or foster care.

Despite the attempt at backlashing, you have only to look at the pictures of gay fatherhood https://twitterhuff.to/1LnCYJy to know that it right.