It's not just Proposition 8

California isn't the only place where a discriminatory and harmful initiative passed in November. Arkansas voters also enacted a ban on gays (or actually "cohabiting couples") adopting children or becoming foster parents.

It's important to be clear about what the issue actually is in cases like this. The reactionaries likes to frame the question in terms of whether it's better for children to be raised by heterosexual (or married) couples than by homosexual (or unmarried) ones. But that isn't the choice which exists in practice. Since the number of children needing homes exceeds the supply of available places for them, banning worthy but unpopular people from adopting just means that the children they would otherwise have taken in won't get adopted at all. The question is not whether A is better than B; it's whether B is better than nothing.

Adoption restrictions can also prevent children whose biological parents can't take proper care of them from being placed with close relatives with whom they already have a close relationship but who happen to belong to a group disliked by bigots -- even in cases where that's what the biological parents want.

The reactionaries' rhetorical squid-ink on this issue can best be dispelled by the facts about actual cases of real people whose lives are affected. You can read about several such cases, and prospects for a challenge to the Arkansas law, here.