Same-sex adoption laws do little for children and punish Catholics
- Details
- Category: Forced Adoptions
- Created: Friday, 23 October 2015 00:59
- Written by Jeremy Sammut and Peter Kurti - The Australian
It is hard to believe that the push by the Andrews government in Victoria to force Catholic adoption agencies to comply with its proposed same-sex adoption reforms is about boosting the number of adoptions.
Adoption is meant to be about forming new families for children who can’t live with their birth parents.
But adoption is rare in Australia, despite large numbers of children in ‘‘out of home’’ care who theoretically could be adopted.
Last year in Australia there were only 89 adoptions from care — 84 of which were in NSW — despite more than 43,000 children living in care across the country. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare does not record whether any of these ‘‘carer adoptions’’ involved same-sex couples.
The reason so few children are placed in new, adoptive families is that state governments across the country consider adoption taboo — a socially unacceptable practice in contemporary society. Bullshit!
So rather than boosting adoptions, it seems the Andrews government is focused on another kind of social engineering.
Its determination to change the Adoption Act 1984 appears to be little more than a stalking horse for the anti-religion agenda of secular progressives.
That’s why the bill before parliament also amends the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 to eliminate protections for religious freedom and freedom of conscience in relation to adoption.
Faced with pleas by Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart that the reforms would place Catholic adoption agencies in an intolerable position where they had to choose between Catholic teaching or breaking the law, Victoria’s Equality Minister Martin Foley simply replied: “Equality is not negotiable.”
Apparently, both the Anglican and Uniting churches in Victoria agree with Foley. Anglicare and Uniting Care are supporting the proposed reforms, thereby leaving their sisters and brothers in the Catholic Church high and dry.
Hart has warned workers at CatholicCare that a refusal to violate their religious conscience is likely to bring the full weight of the law down on their shoulders. The likeliest outcome of all this is that Catholic adoption agencies will close their doors for good.
The Victorian Catholics had been hoping to win the same exemptions granted by the Keneally government in 2010 when NSW changed the law to allow same-sex adoptions.
Linda Burney, former NSW ALP minister for community services, spoke in the debate and fully supported these exemptions, stating that faith-based organisations were “an integral part of our pluralist society and provide stability, security and guidance to many”.
Burney also affirmed the full opportunity for same-sex couples to adopt a child through NSW Community Services and Barnardos, and wanted to avoid the negative outcomes seen in Britain where faith-based organisations were granted no exemptions.
The Andrews government shows no such generous disposition to faith-based organisations.
Yet given the negligible numbers of adoptions in Victoria, it is hard to believe that the government’s real concern is with securing the rights of same-sex couples to adopt through CatholicCare.
If the government were truly concerned about the rights of the adopted child, it would devote its energies to pursuing reform of its overall anti-adoption policies rather than corrupting the longstanding balance between the rule of law and freedom of religion.
As with the same-sex marriage debate, we are told the issue is all about plurality and respecting difference. But that clearly cuts only one way when no dissent from the politically correct consensus is tolerated.
We know how this story usually ends for religious groups.
Hart’s concerns about Catholic organisations being driven out of adoption services are hardly overstated.
In Britain, the Blair Labour government’s 2007 Equality Act banned adoption agencies from discriminating against gay parents. This forced Catholic agencies to close or cut their ties with the church. The Andrews government appears determined to use the power of the state to force religious believers to act against the principles of faith and conscience.
Will lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex organisations and their political sponsors accept any limits to their demands for compliance with ‘‘progressive’’ attitudes towards sexual identity? If not, they should drop the masquerade and stop pretending the anti-discrimination agenda is just all about peace, love and understanding.
Peter Kurti and Jeremy Sammut are research fellows at the Centre for Independent Studies.
Source : http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/samesex-ad
