Posted without comment by GS
Children the victims in minefield of same-sex marriage breakdowns
- The Australian
- June 21, 2012
- 26 comments
The chairman, Graham Perrett, and some members of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs have supported the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2012 and the Marriage Amendment Bill 2012; each proposes to change the Marriage Act to recognise homosexual marriage.
Perrett suggests that "marriage is still the best way to protect committed monogamous relationships". And further: "The love between same-sex couples is no different to that of opposite-sex couples, and deserves no less the public recognition which marriage bestows."
He fails to mention children. If it is only about love and recognition of a monogamous relationship, then there is no debate: do what you like to marriage. But if it is about children and the best institutional means of securing their future, then there is a debate.
For the supporters of homosexual marriage, marriage is not about reproduction; it is about delivering equality. Their claim ignores the fact two men or two women cannot as a matter of course, indeed, as a matter of intercourse, conceive children. Barring extraordinary intervention, there is no next generation.
The evidence seems clear: the best conditions for the creation and upbringing of children is a loving, long-term relationship. Whether these conditions are emulated in a homosexual relationship, however loving and stable, is the case in point. Homosexual couples may contrive to have children, but if they do so, a third and sometimes a fourth person enters the relationship.
I take a practical view on the matter, as prescribed by Murphy's law. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.
In considering changes to the Marriage Act, the more people are involved, the likelier is the breakdown of the marriage. Moreover, should breakdown occur, it would be more difficult than it otherwise would be to manage the future of the children.
Placing to one side the ideal -- natural conception within wedlock -- homosexual marriage may work for children.
Heterosexual as well as homosexual marriage where IVF or surrogacy is used, however, carries the potential for donor claims during the marriage, or at its dissolution.
My argument is that, while homosexual marriage may not carry an extra risk per se, if there is an intention to have children, it always starts with a third person, a sleeper in the relationship. This is not true as a matter of course in heterosexual marriage.
Start with the simple case of a failed marriage: one man, one woman and one healthy child. The relationship breaks down. So long as one or both parents are not incompetent, parenting can be shared through the length of the child's life. Even still, there is a great deal of litigation at the Family Law Courts over these matters.
Consider a complex and, incidentally, true case: two women in a relationship conceive babies by artificial means to two men in a relationship. Both relationships break down. Potentially, each child has four people claiming a relationship with the children.
The Family Law Courts and many talented practitioners in Australia work mightily to settle what two parents and more cannot: the continuing shared parenting of children after the dissolution of the marriage. Adding more claimants makes it much more difficult.
Marriage as an institution for child-rearing is not foolproof. Adding complexity to an already increasingly complex world for marriage intensifies as a matter of course, not as a matter of exception, for homosexuals.
In the 1980s, Australian state and territory governments began amending legislation to provide de facto couples with similar rights to married couples, and from the end of the 90s they began to extend these rights to same-sex de facto couples to remove discrimination based on sexual orientation in relationships.
But that is as far as it goes.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has been at its unhelpful best in its submissions to the parliamentary committee, arguing that "the principle of equality requires that any formal relationship recognition available under federal law to opposite-sex couples should also be available to same-sex couples".
Homosexual marriage begins with a vastly different assumption to heterosexual marriage. The assertion of equality cannot overcome this assumption.
The commission also states, "We do hold a very genuine concern that anything that publicly legitimises discrimination of any kind does play to a feeling that these relationships can be treated with less respect." The respect is for the institution of marriage, not a contrived equality.
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