Shouts from the desert

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Federal Government plans to introduce laws to withhold recognition of overseas adoptions by same-sex couples. It seems homosexuals are going to cop another round of ill-treatment this year in an effort to give the Government a chance to go after the votes of the more bigoted sections of the community.

The Family Law (Same Sex Adoption) Bill 2007 seeks to:

amend the Family Law Act 1975 to indicate that adoptions by same sex couples of children from overseas under either bilateral or multilateral arrangements will not be recognised in Australia

If the country that the child has come from is willing to recognise the adoption, there seems to be no reason other than blind prejudice for Australia to take this step. The detail of the Bill has not yet been revealed, but it is possible that it will either treat the entire adoption as null and void - in which case they would prevent the child from obtaining Australian residency, thereby excluding the family from Australia entirely - or they would somehow pick one of the parents to be the sole recognised parent, which would have no effect on the actual living arrangements of the family. Either way the family arrangement will continue.

While I believe that, all other things being equal, a mother and father is better for a child, the fact remains that all other things are rarely equal. There are heterosexual couples who make appalling parents. There are homosexual couples who make fantastic parents. Some families break up or a parent dies leaving a single parent family. There are a wide variety of family arrangements in a modern society, and the Government has no place passing judgement on those arrangements based on the primitive prejudices that inspire a Bill like this.

I would like to think that as a society we have progressed past the uncivilised way of thinking involved in this - it is certainly high time our Federal politicians did so.