The Equality Authority believes gays and lesbians should be able to adopt children. It also says life can be tough for these groups. Kathryn Holmquist asks the question should babies be born into such 'oppressed' families
The fundamental status quo may not have been knocked by the general election, but the status quo of traditional family life has got its most dramatic challenge yet. Should same-sex couples become parents with all the rights and protections of married, heterosexual couples? The Equality Authority thinks so. And that's the politically correct view. But what about the children of same-sex couples? What will life be like for them? This question isn't addressed in the Equality Authority's report, Implementing Equality for Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals.
Already same-sex couples are becoming co-parents. Male same-sex couples are engaging surrogate mothers outside the State to grow babies for them.
Many of us know about such families. The fathers are charming, their children beautiful. We're less likely to notice same-sex female couples, who can be more discreet. They can become co-parents with the help of insemination or male friends who are willing to donate sperm.
Two mammies. Two Daddies. Does it matter as long as those children are being nurtured and loved? Having two parents of the same sex may be against the natural order of things, but then isn't everything these days? It's an old-fashioned concept that nature needs two parents of opposite sexes to produce a child. Science needs only a fertility lab, funding and one or two people of whatever sex who want to be parents. From an ethical standpoint, many people now believe it is the intention and ability to nurture a child that is important, whatever the shape of the family it is born into.
Women have been having children outside stable, heterosexual relationships for years and nobody bats an eye any more. So why shouldn't men be able to do the same thing? All this sounds marvellously empowering. We tend to think of gay people as being assertive activists for their rights - "gay power" and all that. We may even feel threatened by it. Others want to exploit the "pink pound" and everybody has a "best friend" who is gay. The reality is darker.
Life is oppressive for many lesbians, gays and bisexuals, according to the Equality Authority report. One in three young males who commit suicide have struggled with their sexual orientation. "Hostility, prejudice and systemic exclusions" are all too often the experience of lesbian, gay and bisexual people, says the report, which was informed by the Advisory Committee on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues, established by the Equality Authority under Section 48 of the Employment Equality Act in December 1999.
Members of the advisory committee, which included representatives of lesbian, gay and bisexual non-governmental organisations, academics, social partners and representatives of a number of statutory bodies, concluded that lesbian, gay and bisexual people face systematic prejudice in areas of employment, housing, education, the arts, community involvement and medical treatment.
Read this damning report, and the issue of lesbian, gay and bisexual people becoming parents becomes more challenging. Everybody has empathy with those who long to become parents, but let's look at it from the children's point of view.
What we're talking about is babies being born into families that are part of an oppressed group, victimised by prejudice on a daily basis. What is life like for the child who has two mothers who share the same bed? For the child of two fathers, who boldly reject social rules to assert their rights? Do you want to be this child?
If you were placing a child for adoption, would you place your child with two parents of the same sex? Or would you want life to be conventional for your offspring, with two married parents of opposite sexes?
These are the kinds of questions the Equality Authority is asking us to face. A child who starts life in an unconventional union is disadvantaged, but only if you allow disadvantage to continue in society. If you say that lesbians, gays and bisexuals should not have children in legally recognised family units because they are oppressed, then you might as well say that Travellers shouldn't have children. Or that poor mothers in socially disadvantaged areas shouldn't have children. Or that opiate-addicted mothers should be sterilised, to spare their babies the pains of withdrawal syndrome at birth.
If we were to legislate on who can have children and who cannot, we'd have teams of people armed with long-term contraceptives such as Depo-Provera and Norplant combing the country passing judgment. We'd enforce vasectomies.
That's the kind of world we lived in during the States of Fear era, when the social police went around collecting the children of parents deemed unfit merely because they were poor, or had only one parent, or were born outside marriage.
The solution, as the Equality Authority has indicated, is not to legislate for parenthood, deciding who is fit and who is not. The solution is to support all families, whatever their composition, so the children of those families have the best possible chance to fulfil their potential.
So the question of whether gays and lesbians should be parents is not the real issue. They are parents already. The issue is how do we support family life, and make the world a better place for children no matter who their parents are.