On your conscience

The NSW Parliament has been allowed a conscience vote on the issue of adoption rights for same-sex couples. Independent MP Clover Moore introduced a private members Bill in late June, arguing it was about time the government came to accept that same-sex couples deserve equality in all laws relating to parenting and adoption.


NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally offered her personal "in-principle support" for the Bill, but said MPs would be allowed a conscience vote on the matter because of, “very deeply held, divergent views on this issue, and adoption by same-sex couples is a sensitive issue for the community."

There doesn’t seem to be any hard and fast rules around what determines an issue to be a matter for parliamentarian’s conscience rather than a matter of government policy. Traditionally, parliamentary conscience votes are reserved for some of those tricky issues relating to life, death and humanity (abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, IVF) along with anything else considered, as far as I can tell, potentially divisive on religious grounds (pretty much anything to do with legalising marijuana or giving rights to gay men and lesbians). Interestingly, however, this has not always been the case. Until the 1930s in Australia, all parties allowed their members a conscience vote (then called ‘free votes’) on issues of trade protection. I am not sure why that was considered an issue worthy of free votes back then; trade is certainly considered pretty central to the platform of any political party these days. I imagine a conscience vote is now most often used when political parties want to avoid immutable divisions within their own ranks (as in when MPs' religious beliefs conflict with their party's 'line').

Relax, the kids are OK!

In case you missed it, the latest findings from the USA National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) have recently been released into the media.

The NLLFS is a longitudinal study of a group of lesbian mothers and their families. All of the mothers conceived their children via donor insemination in the 1980s. The children are now in their twenties.

The latest data from the study were published in the Journal of Paediatrics on June 7. The findings indicate that not only do the children involved in this study fair just as well as their heterosexual-parented peers, in some aspects they do better.

The media pounced on this story. They loved it and headlines emerged all over the world: The Kids are OK!

I am with them on this one. I love this story too. Good news stories about same-sex parenting, with a bit of good research to back them up, are rare. So this is great. While I feel a little bit unsure about the 'who's a better parent than the other person?' angle, I appreciate that the media need an 'angle'. And for the most part, the stories were really positive and gave a lot of airplay to a fantastic piece of research.