You can read yesterday's NSW Hansard on this Bill at :


http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/8bd91bc90780f150ca256e630010302c/e64c87e37e1e0082ca2577920006204f?OpenDocument

12.50pm Thursday 2 Sept - Breaking news that this Bill has just been passed by 46 votes to 44 in the Lower House.

"Lower House MPs back same-sex adoption bill" report at :

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/oppostion-leader-barry-ofarrell-backs-same-sex-adoption-bill/story-e6freuy9-1225913215042

I just emailed Mike Baird with the following. I am absolutely appalled that this bill may pass.

Dear Mr Mike Baird

I hope that you will oppose the same-sex adoption bill. It is not appropriate for children, all of whom are born as a result of the sexual union between a man and a woman, to be raised by two homosexual men or two homosexual women. This would result in a significant tear in the moral fabric of our society.

In the 1980s, homosexuality was considered to be deviancy. There is plenty of logical evidence to support that conclusion, which evidence relates to the God-given purpose of various parts of the human anatomy. Homosexual people are not appropriate role models for children and should not legally be able to adopt children.

Above all, it is not appropriate for two homosexual men or two homosexual women, who are physiologically incapable of having children, to raise adopted children.

I hope that you will oppose this same-sex adoption bill. I will be very disappointed and shocked if it passes. I am not easily shocked.


Sincerely

Andrew Mackinnon

A good letter by Polly Seidler:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/big-parties-focused-on-the-city-spurned-regions-20100901-14ngc.html

Why does Verity Firth want to ''expand the pool of potential adoptive parents'' when there are many more heterosexual couples eager to adopt than available children (''Same-sex couples face injustice on adoption'', September 1)? There were only 20 local adoptions in NSW last year.

There has been no long-term research on the effects on children of growing up with same-sex parents, and NSW should not embark on a massive experiment on children in the name of gay rights.

The proponents of gay adoption use only examples of known adoption (where an existing parent has a same-sex partner). Family Court parental responsibility orders and will drafting will deal with their concerns. But what about when the child is to get two new parents? Give them a chance to receive the distinctive roles of a mother and father. Adoption is about the best interests of a child, not adults' wants.

The issue, surely, is how well the adoptive parents will care for the child. I think experienced adoption agents will exercise their best judgements, irrespective of the gender of the adopting parents.

I am not sure how many of the people who express themselves on this issue actually have any "hands-on" experience with adoption as distinct from having strong opinions on a topic outside their personal experience but one that allows them to express their homophobia.

I don't think I could affirm that all adoptive parents are good parents anymore than I could affirm that all natural parents are a success. Indeed, I think we all know parents, adoptive and natural, who are lousy at the job of caring for children.

Given that our society no longer favors adoption as the 'best' approach, I am not sure that this is more than a storm in a teaspoon. Our concern (and wrath) should be directed to helping ensure that we have effective services for overall child protection, an issue that is daily growing more challenging in Australia. In all the huffing and puffing about NSW and Federal politics at the moment, I have yet to hear a single voice raised on behalf of children at risk, not even from those demanding 'ethical' government.

And while we are thinking about government, I think it is high time Australians got really angry about overseas adoptions, a money-making racket every bit as bad as people smuggling and forced prostitution.

Ian, do you want the law to allow two homosexual men or two homosexual women to adopt one or more children?

Looking for someone to pin a label on, Andrew? I don't share your prejudices so I don't need to respond to such a patently loaded question.

Wow Ian, that's really interesting. Next week, about 39 people in the Legislative Council are going to be voting on this bill and answering the question I just asked you. But apparently, despite churning out five paragraphs above, you aren't interested in answering the question yourself.

Since you obviously know so much about me, it would be great if you could brief me on the prejudices that I apparently hold. Maybe you could assist me in raising my level of self-awareness.

Ian's argument was also raised by a friend of mine, who knows a child rescued from an abusive family and raised by a caring lesbian couple. This argument is just sleight of hand. It's like saying the deadly three-wheel Reliant Robin goes faster than a Ferrari that has no wheels.

Ian,

Two points in response:

i. There are different types of adoptions. I'm not sure that the current legislation recognises that fact. The different types are: a) adoption by the partner of a biological parent (for the sake of this argument, the gay partner of a biological parent); and, b) adoption by people not biologically related to the child. I think it would be helpful to distinguish between those two cases. However, even here I think the adoption of a child by a non-biological gay partner could have implications that need to be worked through - ie., is there another living biological parent or family member who is capable of looking after the child? After all, what is of interest is not the "rights" of gay couples (or married heterosexual childless couples for that matter), but the best interests of the child.

ii. In the cases of adoption where there is no biological relation of any prospective parent to the child, then the adoptions laws should have a slightly different criteria, based on the principle that biological parent(s) have the right to bring their children up in the way they wish (within the law, of course) - even if that means adoption by a gay partner, even if I think it regrettable. But where there is no biological relation, surely the best interest of the child is the unique and complementary contribution a loving mother and father in a stable relationship. That unique male-female contribution to parenting is lost with gay couples.

Oh, Ian, and if you want some science on the unique male-female contribution to parenting that a married couple can make, check out Scientific American's May/June 2010 issue on the way the different sexes influence the brain of a growing child. Very interesting reading.

Andrew #8. Your question was about two homosexual men or two homosexual women. The repeated adjective indicates the prejudice. My personal views are not relevant to the Legislative Council vote. The narrowness of the vote in the Assembly suggests that opinion is about equally divided. As I understand it, just 22 children were adopted in NSW last year. Changing the legislation is no more than symbolism that will not result in many, or any, gay adoptions.

Jason's (#11,12) points look good until you actually reflect on the thousands (millions?) of single parents raising children. By Jason's measure, these families are doomed. I don't think that matches fact.

I am disappointed that a reference to child abuse in heterosexual families is ignored despite involving close on 50,000 families in NSW alone where children experience physical and emotional violence and sheer neglect.

I am saddened that overseas adoptions were also ignored. It costs around $US50,000 to buy a child from a Chinese orphanage, and the adopted children are, because of Chinese culture, almost always girls discarded, usually, by heterosexual couples. May I mention the Queensland couple who, quite innocently, adopted a stolen child from India or the corruption around adoptions in Ethiopia reported recently?

Where is the rage about people smuggling and the related issue of forced prostitution, involving many hundreds, if not thousands, of Asian women in Sydney and Australia.

Ian, your grasping at non-existent straws evident in the first two sentences of your post at 12 above leads me to believe that your purpose for posting on this website is to dilute the strength of Christian conviction on this website. You want to talk about everything but the topic at hand.

I was not born yesterday.

Ah Andrew, You seem keen to question the integrity of others. Your ungracious questioning of my Christian values and your 'conspiracy' turn of mind is quite sad. Do you really believe that your personal values are the only possible position for Christians to hold on the specific issue of a change to adoption legislation?

Read the sentence I cited without the adjective homosexual. Would you suggest that two Christian men or two Christian women could not be successful parents? If you are, you are way out of touch with the teachings of the New Testament.

You were the person who introduced the parliamentary issue, so that my comments are entirely relevant.

You have chosen to ignore, or perhaps misunderstood, my two posts both of which sought to point out that being upset over a minor legislative event does not compare in Christian terms, with the wider issues I outlined.

I have no idea when you were born and if anything is 'straw' that must win the prize.

Let me end by saying that I am not a homosexual, I do not favour or endorse a homosexual lifestyle, but I am not prepared to engage in the persecution of or legal discrimination against homosexuals nor to attribute to them the evils that your seem to believe in so passionately. I prefer our Lord's injunctions, unqualified, to love our neighbours as ourselves, to forgive others as we would wish to be forgiven, and very relevantly, let him that is without sin cast the first stone.

Ian, I've said everything that I want to say for the moment. I'm going to leave it to others to tear apart your ridiculous and destructive arguments.

As an adopted person myself, I abhor the idea of same-sex adoption. Part of the issue for me is that, for an adopted person, there is already a "gap" in being raised by two parents who have a different genetic make-up. Being raised by two parents of the opposite sex would only make this worse. The other part of the issue (though not one that is based on my own experience of adoption), is the importance of children having a close / intimate social role model with both a male parent and a female parent, rather than two of one and none of the other.

I agree with Ian that the issue is "how well will the parents care for the child", but I just don't think that it is possible, even with the best will in the world, for a boy to learn "how to be a man" from two women, or for a girl to learn "how to be a woman" from two men. Nor do I think that it possible for a boy to learn" how to relate to women" from two men, or for a girl to learn "how to relate to men" from two women.

The distinction between known adoption and unknown adoption is a really important one for me. In a known adoption, the child (almost by definition) has at least some experience of relating to both biological parents. In an unknown adoption, the child lacks this, which makes compensating for it by at least having one parent of each gender so much more important.

I thank David Ball for his thoughtful note and his frankness about his own experience. My only reservation is the emphasis on nurture as against the equally significant issue of nature but that is too complex to discuss here. In general, I agree with him.

Long before a child is adopted, there is a long and searching process of investigation by the adoption agency. This is done very professionally and every consideration is given to the welfare of each child. References are required and followed up. The prospective parents go through a lengthy interview process, usually more than one meeting. The recommendation of the case-manager is reviewed by others in the adoption agency. The matter then goes before a court of law where the presiding officer also interviews the prospective parents.

Once the child is given to the adoptive parents, there is usually a follow-up period before the adoption is finally approved. The child can, and sometimes is, returned to the court's jurisdiction if concerns arise.

Given the long list of adoption applicants in every Australian jurisdiction, nothing happens quickly. A good deal of work is done matching children to prospective parents. It can extend to such seemingly simple things as colour of eyes and hair to much deeper issues about the child's natural parents and the 'fit' of their profile with that of the adoptive parents.

It is highly unlikely that such caution will not apply to future adoptions.

Thanks Ian. I'm not giving greater weight to nurture over nature - the opposite, in fact. I also don't think that due process, reference checks, character assessment, etc, can overcome the difficulty that it is much, much harder for children to learn proper inter-gender relationship skills if they are raised by two parents of the same gender.

Ian,
I've been hearing arguments like yours all week. It makes no sense whatsoever. It relies on lazy and sloppy analogies. Just to spell it out clearly:
a) Single parents are overwhelmingly biologically related to the children in their care. Most often they are the biological parents of the children. So the issue of biological single parents is irrelevant to adoptions.
b) Unless there are significant cases of *known* abuse, governments have no legal cause or justification to intervene in biological families. Sure, there are idiotic parents. But again they are biological.
c) Adoptions by non-biologically related parents *are* in the scope of government legislation, and government has a significant responsibility in determining the best possible parents for children up for adoption. The same standards CANNOT apply with biological parents, since the government has no place in regulating people's capacity to be biological parents.

So, yes, all the violence and abuse in biological families are devastating. Government has a responsibility where they know about those situations. And even though some biological families are abusive, they may be dysfunctional. That is very sad because it will rise to dysfunctional kids. And yes, those other situations you describe are terrible. BUT none of the situations relate to the government's responsibility to make sure non-biological parents are the best parents for an adopted child.

Ian,
"Our Lord's injunction" is not "unqualified love". If you think that's the case then you have seriously misunderstood the Bible as a whole. There is no such thing as "unqualified love". Love is always qualified by something. In God's case, it is his holiness that is an expression of his love, and his love an expression of his holiness. So, there is no such thing as "unqualified love", and especially so in the sinful human sense. Love, when sinful humans get involved, is rarely free (or "unqualified") from our own assumptions, beliefs about the world, conceptions of morals etc. So it's worth dispensing with such saccharine ideas - once probed, they don't mean much.

Ian,

I am sorry for some of the personally attacking posts that are critical of yours on this site. They are inappropriate, in my view.

You have raised some important issues. You write:

I have yet to hear a single voice raised on behalf of children at risk, not even from those demanding 'ethical' government.

My wife works at a school in a disadvantaged area where she sees the inadequacy of how children at risk are prevented from serious harm. It is at times devastating to know that, despite the best efforts of the staff at the school, children will leave the school gates and potentially suffer abuse.

You also write:

And while we are thinking about government, I think it is high time Australians got really angry about overseas adoptions, a money-making racket every bit as bad as people smuggling and forced prostitution.

I agree.

However, I do think that Peter Kell's arguments against passing legislation permitting same sex couples to adopt children are well founded, as they are based, at least from my reading, entirely on what is best for the child, and not homophobic attitudes.

The Bible makes it clear that same sex unions cannot be condoned; they are one form of sexual immorality. But the question the bill before the NSW parliament is being asked to consider is whether a same sex couple ought to become adoptive parents, and that raises the question as to what is best for the child, and surely that's the issue here

I fully comprehend and understand Mr. Kell's arguments and I agree that the best interests of the child are paramount. I have never questioned that in my previous comments. Nor have I questioned the personal integrity of those who challenged my views.

My concern is with comments that imply a major shift in adoption outcomes in NSW. I noted the very small number of adoptions, the very large number of prospective adoptive parents, outlined the processes by which adoptions are carried out and strongly emphasised the need to maintain the fuller perspective of protecting all children. I observed that a biological relationship to a child does not protect children from abuse and that these risks are massively more significant than the undocumented risks of single-sex parenthood.

It is clear that there is a very strong objection by some Christian people to any relaxation of any law, not just adoption, when homosexual people are involved. I have tried, obviously not successfully in some instances, to identify the prejudice this reflects. I also tried to place my own position in a Christian context although I concede that others do not share that approach.

I decided, reluctantly, in view of a challenge to my Christian integrity, to make clear my personal rejection of homosexuality. I am strongly opposed to relabelling marriage, incidentally.

Hansard

The NSW Hansard debate is worth reading for the differing views expressed. Christian politician Mike Baird ( speech at 8.11pm section ) concluded with :

I am not convinced that the research before us justifies a move to legislate against the time-honoured practice of placing children with both a mother and a father. The best interests of the child cannot be placed at risk because of the unrelated desire to remove discrimination in law and public policy. I have attempted to come to this issue with an open mind and a clear conscience. My position is not some veiled critique of same-sex parenting or an attempt to continue discrimination against homosexual couples. Rather, I believe it is an attempt to honestly investigate the necessary debate on how to best safeguard the interests of children. It is my view that we simply do not have enough evidence to show that a wholesale shift in the legislation is warranted.

It is a speech worthy of consideration - especially with regard to his attempt to point out that there is insufficient depth of research to show that living in a same-sex family does not disadvantage children by giving them parents of only one gender.

Ian, your post at 22 above is very revealing.

"My concern is with comments that imply a major shift in adoption outcomes in NSW. I noted the very small number of adoptions, the very large number of prospective adoptive parents, outlined the processes by which adoptions are carried out"

So you are not interested in the principle at stake which is adoption of children by two homosexual men or two homosexual women. You think that this isn't important because you think that there is a small number of adoptions that would take place by homosexual couples under this amendment.

The reason why there is currently a small number of adoptions in this category is that the law does not currently facilitate this kind of adoption. If this amendment passes, the number of adoptions to homosexual couples will grow significantly.

How anybody can justify inflicting two homosexual men or two homosexual women on a child who is oftentimes not old enough to know what is in their best interests is absolutely beyond me. Frankly, this amendment is a total, utter disgrace. That the parliament is actually seriously considering this amendment is a failure in itself and is a result of two decades of brain-washing by the media (ie. newspapers, television, Hollywood) seeking to normalise homosexuality.


"and strongly emphasised the need to maintain the fuller perspective of protecting all children."

You raise the issue of child protection and overseas adoptions at 5 above.

Continued…

You raise the issue of child abuse in heterosexual families at 12 above. You mention overseas adoptions again at 12 above. You mention people-smuggling and forced prostitution at 12 above.

None of these issues that you have raised have any relevance whatsoever to the topic at hand which is the impending decision by the NSW Parliament on the acceptance or rejection of the amendment to legally allow two homosexual men or two homosexual women to adopt children.


"I observed that a biological relationship to a child does not protect children from abuse and that these risks are massively more significant than the undocumented risks of single-sex parenthood."

Are you serious? Are you really prepared to conclude that because there is no data on the incidence of abuse of children adopted by same-sex couples (on account of the historically low number of such adopted children), this must mean that abuse of adopted children by same-sex couples is less likely to occur than abuse of children parented by one or more biological parents?

In any case, the fact is that this statement by you has no relevance whatsoever to the topic at hand.


"It is clear that there is a very strong objection by some Christian people to any relaxation of any law, not just adoption, when homosexual people are involved."

You have no evidence for this statement. This topic is about one, single relaxation of law where homosexual people are involved.

Continued…

Therefore it is illogical for you to conclude that people posting on this blog in opposition to this amendment object to any relaxation of law when homosexual people are involved.


"I have tried, obviously not successfully in some instances, to identify the prejudice this reflects."

You have not made any attempt to identify this prejudice. You have merely flung this insult at me at 7 above that I have "prejudices" and then declined to respond when I challenged you at 8 above to explain to me what prejudices I hold.


"I am strongly opposed to relabelling marriage, incidentally."

If this amendment passes to allow the legal adoption of children by two homosexual men or two homosexual women, I can absolutely guarantee you that it is simply a matter of a short space of time before the state or federal parliaments are considering a strong push for the legal recognition of marriage between two homosexual men or two homosexual women. The argument will be that if homosexual couples are legally able to adopt children, then they should be able to be legally recognised as married couples if they want to get married.

This same-sex adoption amendment is a gateway amendment which is aiming for the legalisation of homosexual marriage.