Which One Is Dad?
The question above could take on an interesting twist in New Brunswick soon. Proposed amendments to the province's adoption laws, announced on Tuesday by Minister of Family and Community Services Carmel Robichaud, would give the same rights as married couples to same-sex partners when it comes to adopting children.
Previously, only one member of the couple could legally adopt a child, and therefore, only that one was considered to be a parent to the child. In July 2004, however, a lesbian couple won the right to be the legal co-parents of a child born to them with reproductive assistance. If anyone can have that state of affairs, then everyone should be entitled to it. Now that the precedent has been set, how could the courts go back on it?
Of course, there will be a chorus of protest raised by the scorched-cat voices of those unable to see past the sexual orientation of the adoptive parents-to-be. You have to wonder where those righteously indignant types are, however, when people like the pedophile father from Toronto are being sentenced. For sexually assaulting his daughter and infecting her with gonorrhea, he was given only three years of incarceration. He was not castrated, so where's the guarantee that he won't create another life and then mistreat it the same horrendous way as he did his daughter? Why don't the nay-sayers lined up against same-sex adoption put their vocal talents to better use and protest the lax sentences given to "straight" parents who abuse their children?
Biological creation of children by heterosexual couples gives no guarantees that the children will be loved or cared for in any better way than they could be a loving set of same-sex parents. It's all a crap shoot. At least same-sex couples who want to adopt have to go through a screening process that might weed out some of those who should not parent a little more effectively than the horizontal mambo does.
Previously, only one member of the couple could legally adopt a child, and therefore, only that one was considered to be a parent to the child. In July 2004, however, a lesbian couple won the right to be the legal co-parents of a child born to them with reproductive assistance. If anyone can have that state of affairs, then everyone should be entitled to it. Now that the precedent has been set, how could the courts go back on it?
Of course, there will be a chorus of protest raised by the scorched-cat voices of those unable to see past the sexual orientation of the adoptive parents-to-be. You have to wonder where those righteously indignant types are, however, when people like the pedophile father from Toronto are being sentenced. For sexually assaulting his daughter and infecting her with gonorrhea, he was given only three years of incarceration. He was not castrated, so where's the guarantee that he won't create another life and then mistreat it the same horrendous way as he did his daughter? Why don't the nay-sayers lined up against same-sex adoption put their vocal talents to better use and protest the lax sentences given to "straight" parents who abuse their children?
Biological creation of children by heterosexual couples gives no guarantees that the children will be loved or cared for in any better way than they could be a loving set of same-sex parents. It's all a crap shoot. At least same-sex couples who want to adopt have to go through a screening process that might weed out some of those who should not parent a little more effectively than the horizontal mambo does.
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