Trinidad: Evangelical churches appalled at lesbian couple’s ‘Miracle’ baby

(Trinidad Guardian) De­spite some ju­bi­la­tion for Lisa Melville and Shack­i­ba St Louis on the birth of their daugh­ter Mir­a­cle on New Year’s Day, the Coun­cil of Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (TTCEC) says that a nat­ur­al fam­i­ly is the best en­vi­ron­ment for a child’s de­vel­op­ment.

 
With Mir­a­cle’s birth gain­ing na­tion­al at­ten­tion, the coun­cil said it was ap­palled at the news of a les­bian cou­ple hav­ing a child via ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion.

St Louis gave birth to Mir­a­cle at 6.03 am on Jan­u­ary 1, af­ter eight months of preg­nan­cy. She and Melville have been to­geth­er for around two years. In a me­dia re­port, she said the donor was a friend who is al­so gay. Af­ter watch­ing a video on YouTube on ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion, she did the pro­ce­dure her­self. She added that the donor would be part of their life go­ing for­ward.

But the coun­cil said it has been very clear about the word of God on the is­sue of same-sex re­la­tions. The Bible de­scribes it as an abom­i­na­tion. The coun­cil said this was in­dica­tive of a so­ci­ety drift­ing fur­ther away from God and bib­li­cal val­ues. 

“God es­tab­lished mar­riage as a union be­tween a male and a fe­male. That is the nat­ur­al fam­i­ly and the best en­vi­ron­ment in which to raise a child,” the coun­cil said.

But mov­ing away from bib­li­cal rea­son­ing, the coun­cil cit­ed sev­er­al stud­ies, which it said shows that chil­dren are more like­ly to suc­ceed with mar­ried het­ero­sex­u­al par­ents. 

It cit­ed a 2015 study by Dr D Paul Sullins, who found that clin­i­cal stud­ies of fe­male same-sex part­ners con­ceiv­ing through donor in­sem­i­na­tion or oth­er as­sist­ed re­pro­duc­tive tech­niques, more­over have long recog­nised that the lack of con­joined bi­o­log­i­cal ties. This cre­ates unique dif­fi­cul­ties and re­la­tion­al stress­es. It states that the birth and non-birth moth­er (al­so known as the co-moth­er) are sub­ject to com­pe­ti­tion, ri­val­ry and jeal­ousy re­gard­ing con­cep­tion and moth­er­ing roles that are nev­er faced by con­ceiv­ing op­po­site-sex cou­ples, and which, for the chil­dren in­volved, can re­sult in anx­i­ety over their se­cu­ri­ty and iden­ti­ty.

For the coun­cil, this means that the bi­o­log­i­cal ties be­tween a child and his or her fa­ther and moth­er are im­por­tant for the emo­tion­al health of a child.

The coun­cil al­so cit­ed a 2013 study by Dou­glas W Allen on High School Grad­u­a­tion Rates Among Chil­dren of Same-Sex House­holds that was pub­lished in the Re­view of Eco­nom­ics of the House­hold. That study sug­gest­ed that chil­dren liv­ing in both gay and les­bian house­holds strug­gle com­pared to chil­dren from op­po­site-sex mar­ried house­holds.

An­oth­er study done in 1996, by Sotirios Saran­takos, an ad­junct pro­fes­sor in the School of Hu­man­i­ties and So­cial Sci­ences at Charles Sturt Uni­ver­si­ty in Aus­tralia, found that “in the ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es, the most suc­cess­ful are chil­dren of mar­ried cou­ples, fol­lowed by chil­dren of co­hab­it­ing cou­ples and fi­nal­ly by chil­dren of ho­mo­sex­u­al cou­ples. There­fore, homes with mar­ried het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples, pro­vide the best en­vi­ron­ment for child-rear­ing.

The coun­cil said: “For this rea­son, the coun­cil can­not con­done the rais­ing of this child by two par­ents of the same-sex. It goes against the word of God and with good rea­son as shown in the stud­ies cit­ed above.”