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

A 2020 FAMILY: Shaciba St Louis, right, and her girlfriend Lisa Melville hold their daughter Miracle, who was the fourth baby delivered for 2020 at the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital, Mt Hope, yesterday. Miracle, whose weight was five pounds, three ounces, was born at 6.03 a.m.

(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.”