History in the making

Despite the uncertainties plaguing the Commonwealth Parliament, NSW Parliament resumes this week. While this may go unnoticed, NSW is preparing to vote on a Bill to allow gay and lesbian couples eligibility to adopt children.

If successful, this historic Bill will remove the final piece of direct legislative discrimination against same-sex couples in NSW.

Clover Moore’s Adoption Amendment (Same-Sex Couples) Bill will amend definitions of ‘de facto partner’, ‘spouse’, ‘couple’, and ‘step-parent’, making them gender-neutral, to permit same-sex couples eligibility to adopt.

Those who oppose the Bill, such as Anglicare, allege that a ‘homosexual agenda’ is being used to ‘claim’ children away from prospective mums and dads everywhere. Why does Anglicare recruit same-sex foster parents, if such parenting ‘offends’ their moral sensibilities?

When Western Australian Anglicare chief Ian Carter spoke about the need for foster carers, he said, “We need to ensure that there is no discrimination on the grounds of issues to do with ethnicity or religion or race or sexuality”.

Same-sex foster carers are actively recruited in Australia, including by religious agencies, for their capacity to parent children from the most vulnerable and displaced backgrounds.

What is concerning, then, is the ease with which these faith-based organisations continue to moralise on the inadequacies of same-sex parenting. It seems disingenuous to challenge the quality of gay and lesbian parenting, and then rely on same-sex couples to provide foster care.

Anglicare argues that this is because foster care is temporary. Such rhetoric, however, obscures the fact that many children in foster care are permanently placed. For children in same-sex families, discriminatory adoption law means that only one of their parents is eligible to adopt them.

Minority rights are not the issue — unfair discrimination affecting children is. This is why the Benevolent Society, Barnardos, Association of Child Welfare Agencies, Council of Social Services NSW, National Children and Youth Law Centre, and even the faith-based agency Uniting Care all support non-discriminatory adoption legislation.

If we claim we are committed to the ‘rights’ of children, then children have the right to be placed with the best possible family, regardless of sexuality of the parent/s.

Contact your local MP and demand adoption equality today.

info: Visit: www.glrl.org.au