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New South Wales
Relationship Register Moves Homosexual Marriage Closer: The Need to Challenge

The proposed Relationships Register, announced by Mr Hatzistergos in a Media Release on Tuesday 23 February 2010, forms part of an incremental strategy to change the Federal Marriage Act. Despite the Marriage Laws remaining under Federal authority, States that implement Relationship Registers contribute to the political movement to change the laws on marriage. The strategy is well known.  In 2006, the NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service released the report Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Relationships: Briefing Paper No 9/06. In it the authors, Karina Anthony and Talina Drabsch, quote a paragraph on p. 41 from the work of J Millbank, 2005, titled Same-sex Families, and is worth quoting in full: 

“No country anywhere in the world has passed laws going from absolutely no form of same-sex relationship recognition directly to same-sex marriage. Rather, over a period of many years, a series of changes have built incrementally on one another.  Generally progress has gone along the following sequence: decriminalisation of gay sex, implementation of anti-discrimination protections, some limited recognition of relationships either through de facto relationship recognition or limited registration systems, and then through one or more stages a move to broader relationship recognition, then (usually) some parenting recognition, then a status similar to marriage but called something else such as ‘civil union’ or ‘registered partnership’, and then, some years later, marriage.” 

Source: http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/publications.nsf/0/77a5243097257121ca257188001d17d6/$FILE/SameSexFinal&Index.pdf (accessed 26 April 2010)  

David Cole, writing in The New York Review of Books observes: 

In Gay Marriage [2006], Eskridge and Spedale also advocate a strategy focused on civil unions, although on more pragmatic grounds. Citing an article by Professor Kees Waaldjik, who helped develop the strategy behind the Netherlands' recognition of same-sex marriage, Eskridge and Spedale argue that the best way forward is incremental. On this view, states (or nations) are likely to recognize same-sex marriage only after a step-by-step process in which they first eliminate laws criminalizing homosexual sodomy, then amend anti-discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation, then extend some government employment–related benefits to same-sex partners of civil servants, and then enact a domestic partnership or civil union law.  Where advocates press for same-sex marriage without that incremental foundation, they are likely to fail, or worse, to provoke a backlash, as did the pro-same-sex-marriage judicial decisions in Hawaii in the 1990s.  

Source: David Cole, ‘The Same-Sex Future’, in The New York Review of Books, Volume 56, Number 11, July 2, 2009, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22791, (accessed 26 April  2010)  

Therefore, relationship registration is a key strategic step towards ‘homosexual marriage’. 

Should the NSW Government proceed down this path, it will add a crucial piece to establishing relationship registers across all states and territories under Federal sanction and coordination, which is effectively a single platform. 

Challenging the Marriage Act will be from a far greater vantage point than before, as formal relationship recognition and corresponding legal status gains are in place.  The step to the goal of changing the Marriage Act becomes much smaller.  

Those lobbying for the formal alteration of the meaning of marriage are quite open about this approach.  Kellie McDonald, of the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby (GLRL), said

“Last week the NSW government unveiled plans to introduce a "state relationship register". While the concept of a registry is a step towards greater relationship recognition for same-sex couples, it still lacks the symbolic and universal recognition that comes with marriage and is not a substitute for full marriage equality.” 

Source:  Kellie McDonald, “A government out of step”, National Times (The Sun-Herald), 28 February 2010, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/a-government-out-of-step-20100227-pa13.html (accessed 26 April 2010) 

The key words are “step” and “recognition”.  The first represents the incremental strategy and the second identifies relationship registers as a starting level of “recognition”, moving towards the desired level of “recognition”, so called ‘marriage equality’. 

The present Federal, State and Territory governments, with the exception of the ACT, may declare as loudly and as often as possible that their intent is not to change the marriage laws by these actions, but they undermine it politically in a crucial way by blurring the distinction between what is and is not marriage.   

The proposal also devalues and subverts marriage by saying to de facto couples that you needn’t bother marry, because you can share in the same types of benefits conferred by marriage and we will recognise this in a form reflecting marriage. 

No foundation to the claim of “equality” exists for non married couples, simply for the reason that they are not married and the State should not extend formal recognition to them

Note that: 

  • Marriage is the bedrock of the family, the foundational unit of society.  The state has a duty to protect and foster it 

  • A child needs a mother and a father, and the best environment for his/her birth and upbringing is within the family founded on the marriage of their parents

  • Male and female are oriented towards the generation of human life, while the relationship of either two men or two women is intrinsically sterile

No parallel, basis for comparable recognition or for the charge of unfairness exists. Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the

Child, Article 8 of which compels Australian legislators to: “respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations”. Accordingly, legislators should never deliberately legalise: 

  • Creating children, outside consensual heterosexual sexual intercourse, in a way that intentionally alienates children from their biological mother and father; or

  • removing of children from their biological mother and father in a way that denies them knowledge of their parents identity, or

  • creating children in a way that can damage the person’s health; or

  • recording a child’s birth in a way that denies that child the knowledge of their biological mother and father

The Australian Family Association commissioned a poll in November 2009 which showed that 86 per cent of Australians believe – “ideally, wherever possible, children should be raised by their biological mother and father”. The picture could not be clearer. 

The NSW State Government must not take this step.   Our children should not grow up in a country that devalues and destroys marriage, and which publicly asserts its incoherence by being unable to recognise what marriage is in law and culture.   

We must challenge this proposal in the short time available while the Government seeks community consultation.  Though the last challenge was only a short time ago we must meet this challenge, as well as any future challenge in this area, and they will come. If we do nothing, the legislation will pass, but if we act, it may not pass. 

The recent decision of the NSW Government not to pursue changes to the Adoption Act to permit homosexual adoption was due to determined opposition.  If successful, it will considerably set back the campaign to change the laws and culture surrounding marriage across Australia for some time. The goal is to stop the Bill going to the Parliament, but if it does to pressure ministers to vote against it. 

What you can do: 

  • Organise a delegation to see your local State member, the larger the better, explain your opposition and book a time to hear an answer from them back from the Government if they belong to the ALP.  You may organise a separate delegation to NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos and the Premier, Kristina Keneally

  • Organise a petition.  Please find the petition at http://www.family.org.au/uploads/PETITION.doc

  • Write to you local State Member, and cc the NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos and the Premier, Kristina Keneally respectively at:

The Hon. John Hatzistergos, MLC
Parliament House
Macquarie Street SYDNEY NSW 2000 
Phone  (02) 9230 3463 
Fax  (02) 9228 3600 
Email:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   

 

Ms Kristina Keneally, MP
Level 40 Governor Macquarie Tower
1 Farrer Place
SYDNEY NSW 2000 
Phone  (02) 9228 5239 
Fax  (02) 9228 3934 
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   

 

Encourage others to do the same.  You can do all the above and more.

http://www.family.org.au/uploads/PETITION.doc
 
Same Sex Adoption

The AFA(NSW) is concerned about moves in NSW to allow the adoption of children by same-sex couples and urges the NSW Government to confirm its commitment to protecting the state’s children, by acknowledging that it is a child’s fundamental human right to be raised by both a mother and a father.
 
Members are urged to contact NSW MP’s

Useful points to consider when writing to MPs on the issue of same-sex adoption:

  • Calls to allow the adoption of children by same-sex couples ignore and undermine the rights and best interests of the adopted child.

  • Children have a fundamental human right to be raised by both a mother and a father.

  • This is clear when we pose the question: does the state have the right to deprive children of either a mother or a father? The answer is clearly no; no person has the right to deliberately deny any child the opportunity of being raised by both a mother and a father.

  • Our duty to children is to provide for them best possible conditions for growing up. Near enough is not good enough when it comes to children’s rights.

  • Providing prospective adoptees with both a mother and a father most closely resembles the natural circumstances into which children are born.

  • Ordinarily children enjoy the right to know and be raised by their biological mother and father, under the protection of Article 7.1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Appointing an adoptive mother and father in place of a child’s biological parents is the next best thing. We cannot in good conscience deliberately provide children with anything less than the best possible outcome.

  • Same-sex adoption necessarily prevents prospective adoptees from being raised by both a mother and a father. This is unjust.

  • Same-sex adoption runs contrary to the objects and principles of the Adoption Act 2000 (NSW):

    • Section 7(a) of the Act emphasises that “the best interests of the child concerned, both in childhood and later life, must be the paramount consideration in adoption law and practice.”

    • Section 7(b) makes it clear that “adoption is a service for the child concerned.” (Emphasis added. This object is reiterated in s8(b) of the Act.)

    • Section 8(c) states, “…no adult has a right to adopt the child”.

  • Adoption policy must not be in any way concerned with appeasing a couple’s desire to have a child. The rights and interests of the child must always be the first, last and sole concern of adoption policy. To demand the right to adopt is to reduce children to the status of property.

  • When the rights and interests of children are at stake, there is no room for compromise, because compromising on children’s rights undermines their very dignity as human beings.