Adoption support growing

Almost half of Australia believes same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt.
And support for same-sex adoption rights has risen by over 10 percent in the past decade, according to Australia’s largest consumer poll.
Roy Morgan has tracked Australia’s attitudes to homosexuality and rainbow families for the past 10 years through its National Consumer Poll.
The annual survey, completed by 50,000 people each year, asks people if they agree or disagree that homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children, and whether they believe homosexuality is immoral.
In 1999 32 percent of people believed that gay couples should have adoption rights. That number has now risen to 42.5 percent.
The data on homosexuality and morality have not been tracked in their own right, but have been used to calculate Australian progressiveness, which has risen from 32 to just over 34 percent.
Some gay and lesbian people who have been asked to take part in the survey have expressed concern that the wording of the questions may skew the results.
“According to the question, it guides the participant to point out that the homosexual is immoral exclusively,” survey participant Fred Weisinger told Southern Star.
“It alarmed me that a strictly consumer poll should include such a loaded question. To me, it does not seem a very harmless question.”
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said the wording of the poll had not changed in close to 20 years.
“You always run a little bit of a risk when you ask questions about anything that people might be uncomfortable with. But it gets people excited because they can’t believe that the issue even exists, and why would we even be asking it,” she said.
“We ask about it because it used to be an issue and it’s faded away now, so it’s important to know the issue has died away — and if you don’t ask you don’t know. We’re obviously not trying to upset people.”