Not unexpectedly, the switchboard remained quite negative as the religious, the bigots, the ill-informed and the ignorant made all sorts of claims and accusations about the gay lobby and the best interests of the child.
I posed the following question to Matt Birney during his interview with harvey Deegan:
I am a divorced father of one child. I am also in a same-sex relationship with my partner of 7 years. In the event of some tragedy taking away the mother of my daughter, would Mr Birney and the Liberals object to my partner adopting my daughter or are they only objecting to my partner and I co-adopting a non-related child?
Mr Birney failed to directly answer the question, instead choosing to reiterate the argument that a child should have both a mother and a father. A tired argument that raises the question of whether it is better to be orphaned than to be raised without complementary gendered parents.
The crux of my question was that; in the hypothetical situation my daughter would logically be taken under my full time care. Why then, is it perfectly ok to have my partner in a co-parenting role but not be officially acknowledged as her legal guardian by way of adoption?
The fact is that current laws allow any person or two people, regardless of their relationship (eg: brother and sister, two friends, two grandmothers) or sexuality, the right to be considered for adoption. Even before the major law reforms of 2002 and before the ALP won government it was perfectly legal for single people (regardless of their sexuality) to adopt.
If it is SO important that a child has both a mother and a father then why won't the Liberals and their fellow moralisers campaign to remove the right of single people to adopt.
And while they are at it, why don't they try to legislate that widows and widowers must remarry if they are raising children.
It's not a perfect world, but in my absence I'd rather have my child loved by one good person, than remain alone as an orphan.
[+/-] show/hide this post
No comments:
Post a Comment