Lords ready for fight
over gay parents
Tony Grew, from the
Web, January 22, 2008
London, Jan. 21 --
Conservative peers and senior churchmen will this week attempt to block new
legislation that will give more rights to lesbian and gay parents.
Leading gay rights opponent Lord Tebbit, a former Cabinet minister under
Margaret Thatcher, wants to defeat proposals that would allow two parents of the
same sex to be listed on a child's birth certificate.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill proposes new recognition of same-sex
couples as legal parents of children conceived through the use of donated sperm,
eggs or embryos.
A woman who gives birth and her civil partner will both be recognised as the
parents of a child conceived through assisted reproduction.
Two men will be able to apply for a parental order to become parents of a child
conceived through a surrogacy arrangement.
Lord Tebbit told the Daily Telegraph: "It is being driven by medical
technologists and the politically correct lobby who want to get rid of the
distinctions between male and females.
"There are a number of us who are anxious to ensure the new law continues to
refer to fathers."
Peers have criticised the removal of the reference in the previous 1990 Act to
the child's need for a father in the case of lesbian couples or single women
receiving fertility treatment.
The Archbishop of York, another opponent of gay equality, said in a previous
Lords debate on the Bill:
"The competing individualist arias of "I, I, I" and "me, me, me" provide the
mood music for an individualism that posits the right of a wannabe parent over
the welfare of a child."
Gay equality organisation Stonewall said the proposed new rules would merely
give legal status to gay couples that already exists for heterosexuals.
"At a time when three million children in this country are growing up in
single-parent households, it seems odd there should be this obsession with a few
hundred who have an opportunity to have a second loving parent," said chief
executive Ben Summerskill.
Today the Lords will discuss a change in abortion law.
Some peers want to remove a woman's right to an abortion at any time in the
pregnancy if the child she is carrying is disabled.
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