A time for anti-discrimination laws
The federal Government recently announced that it would not pursue a Human Rights Act.
While this came as disappointing news, the Government did promise to 鈥榟armonise鈥� existing anti-discrimination laws as part of its 鈥榟uman rights framework鈥�. However, this 鈥榝ramework鈥� did not expressly mention sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Government announced that part of its 鈥榝ramework鈥� would include human rights education. While this is promising, any education must expressly include sexual orientation and gender identity to promote greater public awareness and acceptance of LGBT diversity.
Education, however, is not a substitute for rights protection. Introducing sexuality and gender identity anti-discrimination legislation would send a strong social message that these forms of discrimination are unacceptable.
Australia currently has federal legislation which protects against discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, disability and age. However, sexuality or gender identity remains a problematic omission.
While each state and territory currently has anti-discrimination laws which protect against some forms of sexuality or gender identity discrimination, the inconsistency in terminology, the wide-ranging exemptions (particularly for faith-based bodies) and the absence of comprehensive federal protections means there are many gaps in protecting the rights of individuals accessing health services, goods or services, aged care, employment and education.
To ensure a 鈥榝air go for all鈥�, the federal Government must introduce legislation that protects people against unfair discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
‘While this is promising, any education must expressly include sexual orientation and gender identity to promote greater public awareness and acceptance of LGBT diversity’
Discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is a slippery slope to homosexual parenting as a right gained in principle of human equality, as two fathers or two mothers cannot provide for fundamental, opposite-sex relationships of the parent-child variety.
Homosexual parenting should be opposed as ideologically odds with the right of the child to be formed in the personal love of both a mother and a father. Laws that sanction the preclusion of opposite-sex familial relationships of the parent-child variety are in direct violation of fundamental, human rights.
Looking at the definition of ‘foster’, one finds the objective that those who pertain to care for children should embrace. According to the Oxford American Dictionary, to foster means to ‘encourage or promote the development of…a child who is not one’s own by birth.’ Adoption encourages prospective foster parents to consider that child as their own rather than as one under their care. As a child is formed of the gametes of a male and female, however, every child has a mother and a father of their own who is for one reason or another, absent.
Laws governing the care of children must reflect that reality. No one can replace a child’s natural parents but can only try to compensate for that loss. That loss should be acknowledged and honoured at least by an attempt to do so otherwise the question needs to be asked, whose rights are being served. But a homosexual couple cannot compensate for the loss of both a father and a mother within the context of family.
It follows that the main objection to discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is legally sanctioned, homosexual parenting, which precludes opposite-sex relationships of the parent-child variety. It is a pathway to the violation of fundamental human rights.