MEDIA RELEASE
11 JULY 2006

Gay Adoption - Children deserve better

The statement from Chris Carter that the government is considering fast-tracking the legalisation of adoption by gay couples is not surprising.

“Children are continuing to be used as consumer products by adults,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First Lobby, “with surrogacy on the increase, the recent news of a 62 year old in the UK giving birth through fertility treatment, increasing demands for choosing the sex of a child, and now the possibility of gay and lesbian couples in NZ being able to adopt children.”

It is also ironic that the push for gay adoption has come out at the same time that Family First has released its Principles on Family and Marriage, designed to strengthen and encourage marriage and families in NZ, ultimately for the benefit of children.

The Family principles include:

* the natural family, not the individual, is the fundamental social unit.

* the natural family is the union of a man and a woman through marriage for the purposes of sharing love and joy, raising children, providing their moral education, building a vital home economy, offering security in times of trouble, and binding the generations.

* the natural family is a fixed aspect of the created order, one implanted in human nature. Through time it may grow weaker or stronger. However, the natural family cannot change into some new shape; nor can it be re-defined by eager social engineers.

* the natural family is prior to the state and that the task of government is to shelter and encourage the natural family.

* the complementarity of the sexes is a source of strength. Men and women exhibit profound biological and psychological differences. When united in marriage, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

The principles on marriage include:

* Marriage protects and promotes the wellbeing of children.

* Marriage sustains civil society and promotes the common good.

* Marriage is a wealth-creating institution, increasing human and social capital.

* When marriage weakens, the equality gap widens, as children suffer from the disadvantages of growing up in homes without committed mothers and fathers.

Family First calls on the government to halt the social engineering to satisfy small minority groups of adults, and focus on the real needs of children and future generations.

“We can no longer allow government policy, liberal mindset, or lobby groups redefine family and marriage for their own purposes or to satisfy their ideology,” says Mr McCoskrie. “Children deserve better.”

According to Why Marriage Matters - a report co-authored by 13 leading social-science scholars, including Professor William Galston, who was a domestic policy adviser to the Clinton administration - children in intact, two-parent families earn more, learn more and get into trouble less. They also tend to lead longer, healthier, happier lives, avoid alcohol and drug abuse and endure significantly less physical, mental and psychological abuse. Because of this, they generally require less government welfare such as remedial learning, youth justice, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, depression counselling, and financial welfare assistance.[1]

David Popenoe, of the Marriage Project at Rutgers University (USA), has probably done more research on marriage and family than anyone else in the world. He concludes:

“Social science research is almost never conclusive… Yet in three decades of work as a social scientist, I know of few other bodies of data in which the weight of evidence is so decisively on one side of the issue; on the whole, for children, two-parent families are preferable…” [2]

“Marriage and parenting is not just an optional lifestyle choice for adults. It has far greater implications than that,” says Bob McCoskrie

“Despite the attempts over the last decade to redefine and minimise the importance of marriage, parenting and its benefits, these principles and the associated research validating them will remind us of what we, as a community, need to encourage for the benefit of our children and future generations.”

Both documents on Family and Marriage can be viewed online:

www.familyfirst.org.nz/pdf/PRINCIPLES_on_family.pdf

www.familyfirst.org.nz/pdf/PRINCIPLES_on_marriage.pdf

ENDS

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