Party leaders won’t touch adoption
NSW Premier Kristina Keneally and Opposition leader Barry O’Farrell told an Australian Christian Lobby forum they would not strip back gay adoption to circumstances where a person had a pre-existing relationship with a child.
The Very Rev Fr Tadros El-Bakhoumi of the Coptic Church in Australia asked the leaders if they would consider revisiting the Adoption Act, which he said had the potential to deny some children the experience of motherhood or fatherhood.
“Father, I’m about to disappoint you,” O’Farrell told El-Bakhoumi. “I voted for the [same-sex couples] amendment. It was perhaps the hardest vote I have undertaken in this place.
“I voted for it on the assurance that there would be an amendment that would ensure faith-based agencies like that operated by the Wesley Mission were not going to be forced to engage in a service that offended their beliefs.
“Sometimes what looks like the perfect family unit is sometimes on the inside lethal.
“Having a mother and a father is the best template — it should be the safest place to be raised but it doesn’t always do that.
“My vote recognised the reality that there are something like 1300 children [living] with same-sex couples now… We had a situation in this state where single gay or lesbian people could adopt a child and many of those people were already in same-sex relationships … where a gay or bisexual or lesbian person could foster a child or enter into long-term care arrangements with a child under our laws, and [where] a parent decides to pursue another sexual path and there are children from that relationship.
“For me, it was about ensuring that wherever love and care exists that children have access to it.For me, it was about recognising the reality of our pluralist society.”
However, O’Farrell told the room he had supported Frank Sartor’s motion which would have allowed relinquishing parents to discriminate on grounds including sexuality and culture in the selection of adoptive parents.
Keneally also told El-Bakhoumi she would not revisit the Act, having already used her opening address to explain why she voted for the amendment.
“In Jesus, the law of all else is that we are to love one another, not just any love but an unselfish love, a love that seeks to mirror the love that God has for us,” Keneally told the room.
“I knew as a parliamentarian that there were some children in NSW who were vulnerable to being denied that stability, that love, and that this amendment would address that.
“So when I looked at the issue of children who were vulnerable, of children who had known and would perhaps not know any other love or acceptance and I saw people, regardless of who they were, giving that love to a child it was something that I as a Christian wanted to support.”
Dear David,
Just for your information, last time I checked the persecution in Egpyt involved killing innocent people (be it Christians or what not they are humans first and foremost), burning down churches and looting homes. I don’t see how persecution, by way of being murdered, in anyway shape or form can be correlated to it being “persecution” (as you would have us believe) when people stand up and state that homosexuality was/is wrong. Do you mind answering a simple question? How long would humans last on earth if we were all gay and lesbian? How would we reproduce? I’ll answer it for you, not very long! Even plants are created male and female, and therefore complete each other.
Further, what is your definition of supporting human rights? My definition of supporting human rights is the right of a young child to have a mother and father, or at least to openly have a choice to decide on that him or herself when he is of legal age/mind to do so. By forcing a young child to be put in a situation which is totally unnatural means that we are removing that choice from the child, to me that there is an infringement of human rights.
This is progress and bipartisan progress at that. Pity the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition attended a forum put on by the ACL.
I also note that a Coptic Church representative was part of the anti-gay rabble. Those hypocrites were recently whining about Muslims persecuting Copts in Egypt. Perhaps they’d like to support human rights for others in order to get something back.