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THE State Government has decided not to allow same-sex couples to adopt, ignoring a parliamentary inquiry that said changing the law would ”ensure the best interests of children”.

The Government said yesterday there was insufficient community support to justify new legislation on the topic.

Groups representing same-sex couples denounced the decision, saying an opportunity to redress discrimination had been missed.

”There are very deeply held, divergent views on this issue and that is why a decision on this matter will not be taken at this stage,” the Minister for Community Services, Linda Burney, said yesterday.

Kellie McDonald, of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, said the decision was ”extremely disappointing”. ”If the NSW Government’s primary concern was the interests of the children, it would rectify the discrimination of the NSW Adoption Act,” she said. ”I’m not sure what more can be done.”

The director of the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre, James McDougall, said his organisation had argued to the committee that children, ”particularly children of families without legal recognition, wanted this change”.

Judy Brown, of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, said ”to suggest that same-sex couples may not adopt is, on the basis of all the evidence available, patently discriminatory and simply highlights ignorance and bigotry”.

[Source: Original Article]

Stephen Page reports on the Australian Gay & Lesbian Law Blog:

The Queensland Government has introduced today the Adoption Bill into the Queensland Parliament, to replace the antiquated Adoption of Children Act 1964. The Minister responsible, Margaret Keech, said about the Bill:

* it was “delivering fair laws to those people affected by adoption”
* it reflected “contemporary community standards”
* “Eligibility to lodge expressions of interest to adopt will be extended from married couples to de facto couples who have been in a relationship for at least two years.”
* was “in line with the Bligh government’s vision for a fairer Queensland”
* by now requiring adoption orders to be made by a court, “provides for this and brings Queensland into line with every other Australian jurisdiction”.
* “The current objective is to identify the best possible prospective adoptive families to meet the needs of the small number of children who require adoptive parents.”
* “Finally, in line with the Bligh Government’s vision for a fairer Queensland,I am proud this Bill is a very progressive piece of new legislation which will bring Queensland’s adoption practice in line with international best practice.” (emphasis added)

The Bill will remove the discrimination that exists in the 1964 Act against heterosexual de facto couples, but not against same sex couples.

Just so that it is clear, the Bill is expressed to override the Anti-Discrimination Act. The only obvious reason for this is so that same sex couples can be discriminated against.
This approach is different to that in places such as Western Australia and the ACT where same sex couples can adopt.

For the full speech by the Minister, click here[PDF] .
For the Bill, click here.

[Link: Original Article]

The NSW Government has promised a parliamentary inquiry into legalising same-sex adoption after making changes to speed up the approval process for heterosexuals.

“The issue of same-sex adoption was not included in the amendments, however, it was agreed the issue would be referred to the Law and Justice Committee,” a spokesman for Community Services Minister Linda Burney said. “We look forward to the committee’s findings and when the report is due we’ll look at the issue.”

The inquiry will hold hearings early in 2009 to coincide with a separate ongoing inquiry into altruistic surrogacy.

This comes more than 10 years after the NSW Law Reform Commission recommended the current ban against same-sex couples be dropped, and more than two years since another review by the Department of Community Services was handed to the Government.

Attempts by Sydney Star Observer to obtain the 2006 DOCS report through freedom of information laws were unsuccessful as it contained recommendations. It is still not confirmed that the report recommended legalising same-sex adoption.

Stranger adoptions are uncommon due to the low number of Australian children available — around 20 per year. Countries allowing overseas adoptions generally do not use same-sex couples.

Most cases where same-sex adoption would apply are in existing foster arrangements with a gay couple.

The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby strongly supported the inquiry into the last piece of NSW law that still discriminates against same-sex couples.

“NSW is in the ludicrous position of allowing individual lesbians and gay men to be assessed for adoption eligibility, but not same-sex couples. This discrimination hurts children by denying legal and social recognition to lesbian and gay parents,” Lobby spokesman Peter Johnson said.

“Adoption reform is essential for long-term foster carers, some step-parents and co-parents. Adoption would give children the economic and emotional stability which comes with the recognition of their families.”

This year co-mothers were given the right to legally adopt the biological children of their partner if they participated in the artificial conception process. But co-fathers were not included.

The inquiry into altruistic surrogacy laws heard in October gay men have
been seeking commercial surrogacy options in the US due to a lack of parenting options in Australia. That inquiry is not expected to report until the second half of 2009. Liberal powerbroker David Clarke is on both inquiries.

[Link: Original Article ]

The Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby are calling for the New South Wales State Government to recognise same-sex families, after Premier Morris Iemma announced last week that his government would amend the Adoption Act to help foster carers, step-parents and other relatives adopt a child in their care.

Emily Gray, GLRL co-convenor, said that the government has shown no intention yet to extend these rights to same-sex parents. “It is an absurd state of affairs …when individual lesbians and gay men are eligible for adoption, but same-sex couples are not,” Gray said, in a statement.

Meanwhile, in Victoria, Premier John Brumby announced a conscience vote on state legislation regarding lesbians’ and single women’s access to artificial reproduction technology (ART) and surrogacy. Recommended by the Victorian Law Reform Commission in June 2007 and accepted by the government in December 2007, the legislation would allow lesbians and gay men greater access to having children.

Felicity Marlowe, spokes-person for Victoria’s Rainbow Families Council, told SX that “we are very confident that the best interests and rights of our children will win over other issues that might get in the way.”

But some politicians have already vetoed the idea. Peter Hall, Nationals MP, told SX: “I’ve never supported that concept before and I don’t expect I will change my mind.”

[Link: Original Article]

Ms Bligh says only about 20 babies are now put up for adoption each year in Queensland.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says same-sex couples will not be allowed to adopt children under proposed new laws.

State Cabinet yesterday approved several changes, including allowing de facto couples in long-term relationships to adopt.

The Government has also released a discussion paper on whether to give children and ‘birth parents’ involved in pre-1991 adoptions more access to information about each other.

Ms Bligh says only about 20 babies are now put up for adoption each year in Queensland.

“In an environment when you have such a small number of babies and such a large number of couples seeking to adopt, the onus is on the state to make a judgement about the best possible placement for a child and the prospect of that being anything other than couples as I have described, we think is very low,” she said.

[Link: Original Article]

Stephen Page from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia is a partner with Harrington Family Lawyers, Brisbane, a long established boutique family law firm. He writes a wonderful blog called “Australian Gay and Lesbian Law Blog“. [Ed - Rodney Cruise]

Stephen Page from the Australian Gay and Lesbian Law Blog is reporting that New South Wales are now considering same sex adoption:

Minister for Women, Verity Firth, during debate on laws to change 55 pieces of legislation including allowing lesbian co-parents to be recognised on the birth certificates, had this to say about adoption:

Currently, gays and lesbians, as individuals, can adopt children, subject to the same process of screening for suitability as heterosexual men and women.

The Minister for Community Services is considering adoption by all New South Wales prospective partners in the context of a broader response to a review of the Adoption Act 2000.

[Link: Original Article]

Children born to lesbian couples through artificial insemination can now have both mothers on their birth certificates after the Iemma Government’s parenting reforms passed 64 votes to 11 last week.

Despite Anglican and fathers’ rights groups campaigning strongly against the changes, only a quarter of Coalition members voted against the bill in the lower house, with a further quarter failing to turn up.

The bill passed the upper house without individual votes being recorded.

Minister for Women Verity Firth acknowledged the reforms did not address all the parenting needs of same-sex couples, but were designed to address the most common circumstances.

“The Minister for Community Services [Kevin Greene] is considering adoption by all prospective partners in the context of a broader response to a review of the Adoption Act 2000,” she said.

“Currently, gays and lesbians, as individuals, can adopt children, subject to the same process of screening for suitability as heterosexual men and women.

“Surrogacy is a developing area of law … being considered as part of the development of a national surrogacy framework. At this stage it would be premature for any changes to be made in NSW.”

It is also now illegal to discriminate on the basis of domestic status, which had Christian Democrat leader Fred Nile claiming critical debate of same-sex relationships could result in a $40,000 fine.

“I have been before the Anti-Discrimination Board in relation to what I regard as trivial matters,” Nile told Parliament.

“Vexatious individuals could say, ‘I’ve got another weapon to use against the people I disagree with’. It costs the person who made the complaint nothing.”

Liberal MLC Charlie Lynn used the parliamentary privilege to attack previous equal age of consent reforms as “exposing vulnerable young boys to sexual predators” and accused the Government of not having a public mandate on these issues.

Nationals leader Andrew Stoner warned the Government was embarking on plans to undermine bans on same-sex marriage, adoption and IVF [sic], but voted for the bill anyway.

Sydney MP Clover Moore joined Greens Leader Lee Rhiannon in calling on the government to proceed with “urgent adoption reform”.

[Link: Original Article]

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson confirmed the Liberal Party’s stance on GLBT rights in a speech to the National Press Club recently.

“We believe … in relation to people, that families are the foundation of Australian society,” Nelson said.

“I make no apology for saying that a man and a woman is a marriage and that forms a family. I don’t support gay marriage, I don’t support gay adoption and I don’t support gay IVF.

“But I sure as hell believe very strongly that no Australian should pay a dollar more in tax or receive a dollar less in social security by virtue of his or her sexuality.”

[Link: Original Article]

The Australian-born star of the hit TV series, Baywatch, has been described as a “much needed role model” after revealing plans to marry his male partner.

Jaason Simmons, who played hunky lifeguard Logan Fowler on Baywatch in the mid-1990s, plans to wed his partner of eight months, Irish actor John O’Callaghan.

Simmons told New Idea magazine he would wed O’Callaghan in Canada and co-adopt his boyfriend’s adopted six-year-old son.

“We’re doing it for our family and for my soon-to-be son,” the former Playgirl cover model said.

“Although you don’t want to typecast yourself, you have to take responsibility and ownership and move humanity forward, out of bigotry.

“Our son needs to see we can stand in front of family and loved ones who are going to support our union through the good times and bad,” he added.

However, Simmons’ own homeland, Australia, will not be among the supporters, warned Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group spokesperson Rodney Croome.

“Even after Jaason Simmons is married in Canada, his vows will be ignored under Australian national law and he will be treated as if he is single,” Croome said.

Croome hailed Simmons, who was born on the Apple Isle, as a “much-needed role model”.

“Many young gay Tasmanians still grow up feeling isolated and stigmatised,” he said.

“The success of Jaason Simmons, both in his professional and personal life, sends a message to young, gay Tasmanians that they can achieve their goals, and need not be limited by other people’s prejudices.”

[Link: Original Article]

After quitting Baywatch, Aussie TV star Jaason Simmons did a lot of soul searching – now he’s about to marry his boyfriend and become a dad!

Baywatch hunk Jaason Simmons has revealed for the first time that he’s gay – and that he plans to wed his lover, Irish actor John O’Callaghan, and together raise the boy John rescued from an African orphanage. Jaason’s handsome face lights up with happiness whenever he’s in the presence of John, his partner of eight months. And his smile increases when six-year-old Odin, the Ugandan boy John adopted two years ago, comes home from school and joins them. Clearly they are a real family unit, and it will soon become official. John proposed a few months after they met and Jaason immediately said ‘yes’. When the two men wed later this year, Tasmanian-born Jaason will officially become Odin’s second father.

It’s a long way from flirting with bikiniclad babes on TV’s Baywatch in his role as bad boy lifeguard Logan Fowler, but privately Jaason was miserable riding that wave.

So in 1997, after three years on the show and with two years still on his contract, he quit, turning his back on Hollywood. He spent time in a Buddhist monastery in Wales, then returned to the limelight to make independent films like Mad Cowgirl and do theatre in London.

Jaason met John, a charismatic stage actor who has appeared in the TV series Stargate Atlantis, over coffee in Los Angeles in August 2007. A friend played matchmaker, and it was love at first sight for both. ‘When you get older you know what you want faster,’ says Jaason, now 37, explaining how quickly they fell in love and committed themselves to one another and to raising Odin. Because gay marriage isn’t recognised in California, they plan to wed in Canada, one of just five countries where same-sex marriage is legal, as John has dual citizenship. For Jaason, this readymade family feels like coming home after years adrift.

While the actor’s sexual orientation isn’t news to his close friends and family, nor to the woman he married when he was 20, TV viewers and fans weren’t aware. But being openly gay on Baywatch was impossible – as impossible as it had been for him growing up in Tasmania, where homosexuality wasn’t decriminalised until 1997. The saving grace for Jaason was that with his Baywatch castmates he was among good friends who knew the truth.

His emotional crisis during the show wasn’t solely to do with having to hide his sexuality – although that was part of it. After losing his father at the age of seven, Jaason had felt empty inside, and the fame of Baywatch, which had over a billion TV viewers, and the trappings of success left him feeling surprisingly hollow.

and he has since been active in trying to save the endangered Tasmanian rainforests. In 1995, as his unhappiness built, he found solace in a loving – but platonic – friendship with Baywatch actress Alexandra Paul. Suddenly they were tabloid fodder, being portrayed as a glossy Hollywood romance. In reality Alexandra, whose twin sister is gay, understood Jaason’s predicament and was his first confidante on the set. They’re still close friends, and Alexandra has met Odin. John’s journey was quite similar to Jaason’s. He was once engaged to a woman, and was openly gay in private with those he trusted, but feared being stereotyped if he came out professionally. Like Jaason, he had worked steadily in TV and theatre, but he wanted more from life than the Hollywood dream.

John met Odin when he spent two months in Kassese, Uganda, accompanying a documentary filmmaker friend. The small town’s orphanage housed 50 children and one
caretaker. Odin, then three, had malaria. He wasn’t HIV positive – although even if he had been, John says he would have been undeterred, because he felt such a strong pull to the child. ‘I felt he was my son,’ he says. ‘I just fell for him right away.’ Initially his adoption attempt failed, as Uganda has a threeyear residency requirement. But after multiple setbacks, John eventually broke through Uganda’s red tape. He passed FBI checks and completed the required home study course, and after nine months he finally got to take his son home. Jaason and John are sharing their story in the hope that more people will be inspired to adopt from sub-Saharan Africa, where there are 34 million orphans.

Jaason, how did you meet John?
JS: A friend texted me saying: ‘I’ve met your soulmate!’ I knew she wouldn’t say that lightly, she knows I’m a very spiritual person and don’t have time to muck around, and I’ve never been into dating. We met at a coffee shop, and the minute John turned around, you know they say you hear love poems and music playing? I’d never really felt that, but I finally understand it now, at 37! John told me he went to church on Sundays and had a son. I was like: ‘That’s cool!’ For him to adopt Odin, I knew he was a man of integrity. And he was an actor. We’d both struggled and gone through the same things.

What happened after that first blind date?
JS: We haven’t been apart since, and we haven’t stopped talking since. People said: ‘Isn’t it too quick?’ Fair enough if you’re in your 20s. But it’s different when you’re 37 and you’ve gone through the mill and been kicked around and learnt stuff. If you both want the same thing and are on the same journey, and you’re together until you pass, then what’s too fast? If you know, you know. Gay marriage isn’t legal in California, where you live.

Why do you want to marry?
JS: We’re doing it for our family and for my soon-to-be son. Although you don’t want to typecast yourself, you have to take responsibility and ownership and move humanity forward out of bigotry. Our son needs to see we can stand in front of family and loved ones who are going to support our union through the good times and bad.

Does Odin know other kids with gay parents?
JO’C: We take him to a monthly gay parent event, and I have gay friends with children, so we all hang out. Part of coming out is my belief that the more I’m proud of myself, the more he’ll grow up proud of himself, and not in any way ashamed or hurt by homophobia.

How has being a parent changed you?
JO’C: I became a man with adopting him. I was a kid, a free boy, flying to New York and Paris, going to lots of parties, and suddenly I had to stop. It was hard, but it was amazing to grow up and understand that responsibility and have someone depend on you. To love someone, and experience unconditional love.

Why did you adopt?
JO’C: People say: ‘Who’s his real father?’ I am. Birth parents are a little overrated. The father lived alone in a mud hut; lot of alcohol, he could barely look after himself. He didn’t visit Odin. But he was a lovely man. He said: ‘I give you my son! He’s a child of the nation!’ and was so excited he had a chance to go to America. We both cried. If I’d left Odin, I’d have regretted it the rest of my life. The first time he had a hot shower was amazing. To see the fear in his face, then the joy. Seeing him discover things is incredible. The sweetness of jam. He loves chips and spaghetti. He came to me with nothing, just a bunch of rags.

How long did it take to get him to the US?
JO’C: Literally nine months. I felt like I was pregnant. I even had cravings for weird food. I was on an emotional rollercoaster.

[Link: Original Article Page 1]
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