convenience bigotry
Just in case anyone was wondering whether it was the purity of religious doctrine or the hatred of gay people which comes first: it's queer bashing every time. First, in Jerusalem:
Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem have found common ground in their fierce opposition to a gay rights rally due to be held in the city this week.
Leaders from both faiths have united to denounce the parade, which has prompted nights of street protest by ultra-orthodox Jews, who regard homosexuality as an "abomination", and death threats against those taking part.
And then rather closer to home:
A HARDLINE Christian party which is campaigning against new rights for homosexuals has won significant support from Scotland's Muslim community in its bid to win a seat at next year's Holyrood elections.
It's The Scotsman's reporting so the claim of "significant support" needs to be taken cautiously - as carefully as we'd treat any claim that the Christian Peoples' Alliance Scotland represents the Christian community.
Still, it's amazing how dogma and fundamentalism can be pushed to one side by people on the fringes of religious groups when the opportunity for a little legislative queer-bashing raises its head.
6 comments:
This article demonstrates that members of the Gay community have a "siege mentality" that does not reflect reality. I know of Christian Peoples Alliance (Scotland) and I know that they are not in any way homophobic. They are arguing against gay adoption (and adoption by unmarried heterosexual couples, for that matter) due to the evidence that adoption by people who are unmarried (their relationships last an average of 21 months according to the IPPR) is against the best interests of children. If you call that queer bashing, your stance has no basis in the facts. CPA is no more bigoted or homophobic than you are. I know some of their officers and can confirm that they include gay people among their circle of friends. It only gives yourself a bad name is you attack people for homophobia based on your ideology rather the facts.
Unfortunately, that argument is a flawed one. People who successfully make it through the adoption process to the stage where they are able to take responsibility for a child are avowedly not average: the stability and longevity of the family unit is one of the primary things the process examines. Marriage, it should be noted, is not any guarantee of such stability, or of general suitability for adoption.
To dismiss gay people as a homogenous group who only enter short-lived, unstable relationships - including those who have entered into civil partnerships and have been in long-term relationships - smacks of unreasoning intolerance. The people making the argument might be well-intentioned, but it doesn't stop the argument from being prejudicial.
You are continuing to argue from an ideological standpoint, rather than a factual one, whilst claiming that it is me who is acting speaking with "unreasoning intolerance".
Whilst marriage is not a guarantee of stability or of suitability for adoption, marriage provides a 50% guarantee of stability (50% of marriages remain intact) according to the latest research. If a child is therefore adopted by a family centred on a married couple, they have a 50% chance of being brought up by that couple for the duration of their lives.
However, the vast majority (90%, again according to the latest research) of homosexual partnerships come to an end within 2 years. This is not conjecture of intolerance, it is fact. This means that a child who is adopted by a homosexual partnership only has a 10% chance of remaining with their adoptive carers during the course of their lifetime.
You cannot therefore, possibly argue that it is "unreasoning intolerance" to state that children are by far and away better off if they are adopted by a married couple.
As for your first statement concerning the rigours of the adoption process, you fail to understand that an assessment of stability and longevity is wholly subjective. The objective facts are as above. The additional fact that in Brighton, 50% of adoptions are to gay partnerships, in spite of the fact that same-sex partners make up 0.2% of all UK households, only serves to indicate that there is no objective playing field on the choice of adoptive parents - there is an aggressive political agenda attached. Did you know that 90% of married couples who apply to adopt are rejected? How can this be when there are 60,000 children on the adoption register and Tony Blair has said that he would like to reduce this radically.
We really must stick to the facts on this debate, otherwise I would be able to accuse you of lack reason in your arguments. Christian Peoples Alliance is only advancing a policy that is best for children, basic on pure facts.
A few more problems with your argument. There's this bit, where you contradict yourself:
Whilst marriage is not a guarantee of stability or of suitability for adoption, marriage provides a 50% guarantee of stability...
Then, having argued that marriage does guarantee stability, you state:
You fail to understand that an assessment of stability and longevity is wholly subjective..
.. meaning that your claim to "sticking to the facts" is in trouble. If the assessment of stability is wholly subbjective, why should I trust your version?
However, you've mainly ignored the basic precept that people accepted as suitable for adoption are atypical. As such, the average life-span of gay or straight relationships (which includes people who have no intention of anything permanent from the outset and would not dream of applying to adopt) is misleading if not irrelevant. That's not an ideological argument, it's a rational one based in reasoning.
The high number of gay adoptions in Brighton might just have something to do with the incredibly high gay population in the area. At the very least, it's a fallacy to take a regional spike and then claim a national injustice.
I don't know how for long anonymous and bookdrunk want to keep up their attempts at point-scoring against one another. However, I do know that, as a secondary school teacher of some 26 years, I have dealt with more children than I can even begin to imagine. In that vast number, it is a simple statement of fact that the best-behaved, hardest-working, most mature (at their particular age), pupils were, IN THE MAIN (there will always be the exception to any broad-brush statemnent), the children of stable, heterosexual, committed (i.e. married) couples. I doubt that any group could change the mind of our dictatorial Scottish Executive (witness the Clause 2A - Section 28 debacle, and the total disdain with which they treated the clear wishes of more than 1 million of the electorate), but I wish the Christian People's Alliance (Scotland) well in their efforts.
So children who come from a stable family unit do well and I don't dispute that.
However, we're dancing around the same point - which is that there is no essential, existential quality of a gay couple that would prevent them from providing a similar kind of environment - unless you believe that all relationships between gay people are intrinsically weak and short-lived.
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