Word, Ms Harriet Harman

[greenie_breizh]

"You can either be against discrimination or you can allow for it. You can't be a little bit against discrimination."

- UK Constitutional Affairs Minister Harriet Harman


The UK (well, the government) is struggling to decide whether or not Catholic adoption agencies should be exempt from following anti-discrimination legislation, and therefore still be allowed to reject same-sex couple applying to adopt a child.

'No Catholic opt-out' on adoption
Cabinet rejects exemption on gay adoptions

If the Cabinet goes decide against exemption, I feel like it'll be a step forward almost as important as the Civil Partnership law. Discrimination cannot be condoned just because you think your religion tells you it's okay to look down upon a certain portion of the population (that has done nothing wrong). We went over this with racial discrimination already, for Joss's sake.

Comments

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you were very lucky in the school you went to indeed.

A same-sex couple in France today CANNOT adopt, in any way. A same-sex couple in France today CANNOT get inseminated (nor can single women), and a male same-sex couple can certainly NOT use a surrogate mother to have a child. Apart from one or two exceptions, today according to French law, a child CANNOT have two parents of the same sex.

Which is ludicrous because 1) anti-discrimination laws mean adoption to a single person cannot be denied on the grounds of their sexual orientation (incredible logic and consistency in the laws there...), 2) Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands all have clinics that will inseminate lesbian couples and/or single women (at least European citizens), 3) divorces happen, 4) arrangements happen and 5) you can't stop human beings from having kids if they want to anyway.

So we have all these children in France today that legislation is completely ignoring and it's a very problematic situation. The children issue is definitely what we're having the most problems with right now. We have a form of civil partnership and even though our right-wing party won't support same-sex marriage, polls show the population is overall not entirely adverse to it. Bring the idea of children in, though, and everybody goes ballistic. It drives me insane.

[themegs.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's really shitty. You guys are definitely ahead on the same-sex unions, so I suppose it takes a few steps at a time. It just boggles my mind that it's an issue at all. Falling in love, getting married, raising a family are the most natural things in the world.