Kiwiblog

Rainbow Wellington asked all the parties their views on various issues. For some reason they asked not just about gay issues but also weird stuff like prisoners having the vote. Anyway I thought the responses from the parties on gay adoption and marriage (both of which I support) was interesting.

Gay Adoption

ACT – ACT supports ending the discrimination same sex couples face when trying to adopt a child. The Adoption Act 1955 is out-dated and the criteria for adoption should focus on how fit a person or people are to be parents, not their sexual orientation.

A very clear statement that states they support ending discrimination and that sexual orientation should not be a criteria, rather how fit people will be as parents.

Labour – Labour believes that the current adoption laws are antiquated and discriminatory, which need to be modernised and updated. The current Act fails to take into account the number of legislative changes introduced over the past decade areas such as assisted reproduction technology, surrogacy and the legal status of de facto relationships and civil unions. A Labour-led government will enact legislation that will require the Law Commission to review and update adoption law to better reflect modern New Zealand. Labour has already drafted and tabled a Bill to give effect to this.

What I find interesting is that Labour’s answer doesn’t in fact answer the question. They say the Act is discriminatory but don’t specifically say they will allow same sex adoptions. They just say it should be modernised and adopted.

Maori Party – If there is a need for children to be cared for we believe strongly that whānau, regardless of sexual orientation, must be encouraged to care for these children within the family.

Again very clear. The Greens to no surprise are also explicit.

Greens – The Green Party’s policy on this is that parenting skills are distinct from sexual orientation or gender identity. We support equal criteria for both ‘rainbow’ and heterosexual couples in their assessment for suitability and eligibility for parenting. Spokesperson Kevin Hague has formed and convenes a cross party group to reform adoption law.

National won’t commit either way:

We are aware of issue with the Adoption Act. It’s an old piece of legislation and has been identified as an area for potential review. We are currently running a very full justice agenda focused on making New Zealand safer, putting more police on our streets, and reducing crime. In the context of the current economic environment reform of adoption laws is not a priority for the Government.

Gay Marriage

Labour – Our initial focus has been to ensure that existing rights under marriage should also extend to civil unions, and we will complete that work. But Labour believes in formal equality before the law for people in any relationship status, including marriage.

Again, no specific commitment at all. Both times they avoid the question.

Greens – The Green Party strongly supports full equality and believes that this will eventually be achieved either through the amendment of the Marriage Act to include us, or through the repeal of the Marriage Act (which would leave civil unions as the method by which the state formally recognises relationships, and marriage as a purely religious institution).

I actually quite like the Green position of having the state registering relationships only, and leaving marriages to the different religions who could adopt their own rules.

ACT – To be clear now, I should have voted in favour of the Bill in all its stages. I admit I don’t understand why, having legalised civil unions between two people, irrespective of their gender, there is still pressure to provide for same sex ‘marriage’. In the English language I have always understood ‘marriage’ to be between a man and a woman.

Interesting to see Don say he should have voted for civil unions. I was disappointed when he didn’t vote for them at the final reading.

National – In the context of the current economic environment and our strong focus on providing stability, reducing debt, and returning to surplus by 2014 the government currently has no plans to amend the Marriage Act.

Of course on an issue such as this, most MPs will have a conscience vote regardless of party.

A reader has pointed out this quote from UK PM David Cameron:

“I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.”

Would be great to hear that from an MP here.

Deborah Coddington writes:

What a mean-spirited bunch of commentators we’ve seen in this country, crawling out from under their rocks to spit upon the news that Sir Elton John became a father on Christmas Day. …

Karl du Fresne, in his aptly named “Curmudgeon” Dominion Post column, curiously finds it abhorrent that a 63-year-old “jaded, ageing but fabulously wealthy pop singer” amuses himself with a surrogate child – “the ultimate gay fashion accessory when the hits stop coming”.

Ouch. Du Fresne hopes Sir Elton doesn’t dump the baby at the SPCA like those who tire of the puppies they get for Christmas.

His colleague, Linley Boniface, has a minor tantrum that Sir Elton, a “shopaholic” at the best of times, goes out and spends about $200,000 on Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John. …

It’s not the father’s sexuality that “sends my alarm bells ringing”, she wails, it’s that Sir Elton “appears to have no clue that raising a child is more of a commitment than buying another mansion, football club or sequinned Edwardian frock coat”.

Coddington points out

My first point is, in all these cruel criticisms, no one has paused to consider someone else of importance in this little family – that is, David Furnish, Elton John’s wife, or husband, or whatever you like to call the spouse of a civil union. Furnish is 48, a former advertising man from Ogilvy and Mather, now film-maker and writer. He has said of their marriage: “We love each other very much and take our relationship very seriously.”

So, Mr and Mrs Elton John, who, as far as we can tell love each other very much, really want a child. If you’ve never experienced the desperate yearning for a child, and the inability to have a child, you have no idea of the heartbreak a person, or a couple, experiences.

In an age when children are abused on a daily basis, shouldn’t we celebrate that some babies are still wanted?

Yep, we need good parents where we can find them.

Furnish is also on record as saying they had delayed having a child until Elton’s international touring days slowed down so they could devote more time to being full-time parents. They didn’t want their child raised by nannies.

I seriously doubt this couple’s family completion would be so criticised if Elton had been with a 48-year-old woman for 18 years. Somehow I can’t see baby Zachary being dismissed as the ultimate heterosexual accessory.

And where is the evidence that two parents, one of whom won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music when he was 11, have no clue about the commitments involved in raising a child?

And here’s something else about Elton John that I admire enormously. When he was 43, he went into rehab and kicked his lifelong addiction to drugs, alcohol and bulimia. If he can do that, he can raise babies all right.

So why shouldn’t two people who love each other be allowed to have a baby?

Indeed. So long as they will be good parents, the sexuality isn’t an issue for me.

The couple on the right are South Florida trade-show executive Vanessa Alenier and her partner, Melanie Leon. They just won custody and the right to adopt a one year old girl who was born to a relative who was unable to provide good care.

So this was keeping the child in the extended family. But the decision got attacked by certain religious groups, including the Florida Family Policy Council.

But the Orlando Sentinel revealed, the photo distributed with their media release condemning the court’s decision used the photo on the left. The actual lesbian couple looked far too nice and wholesome, so they found the most scary lesbian couple photo they could and used that instead.

Isn’t that disgusting?

Hat Tip: unPC Lesbian

The Herald reports:

The acting head judge of the Family Court has called for gay and lesbian couples to be given rights to adopt children, just as a private member’s bill on the issue goes into the ballot for Parliament’s order paper today. …

He said the Adoption Act, which has not been fully reviewed since 1955, was outdated and unjustly discriminatory, breaching the Bill of Rights Act, the Human Rights Act and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Only married couples and individuals can adopt children under the act. …

It is interesting that an individual can adopt, but not a de facto couple.

My position on the issue of gay adoption, is that there should not be a prohibition on it, but that whether or not the prospective parents are of the same or different genders should be a factor in deciding on individual cases.

I do believe that it is important for a child to have both a male and female adult in their lives, and the ideal circumstance is that the prospective parents are a male and female married (or civilly united) to each other.

But that is only one of many factors that should be taken into account when deciding adoptions. Some of the others are length of relationship, job stability, income, criminal record, health, age etc etc.

I’m not sure how adoptions are currently decided but I do know there are many more people wanting to adopt, than there are babies made available for adoption. Hence I assume there is some sort of scoring criteria used to decide who gets priority – perhaps similar to the criteria used to determine eligibility to qualify to immigrate here.

So again I would not have a prohibition, but if two couples were equally “qualified” to adopt a child, I believe the best interests of the child are to grow up with both a father and a mother. Hence I also support a married couple having priority over an individual (note again individuals are not banned).

But there would be situations where a gay couple could well score “higher” on the scale of best able to provide a family to an unwanted child (and many gay couples already are parents). For example a gay couple who have been together for 15 years, are in excellent health, and earning high incomes would be better than a married couple who have been together only 18 months, with one parent not working due to illness and the other earning just $30,000 a year.

Really what it comes down to is treating each applicant for adoption on its merits, and making decisions purely on what is the best interests of the child. A prohibition on sexual orientation actually acts against being able to make a decision based on individual circumstances.