When New Zealand LGBT communities finally do get inclusive reform of our national adoption laws, how will it compare to other forms of same-sex parenting?

Based on my reading of the sociology of families, I’ve discovered that the Rubicon has already been crossed. When the Human Rights Act 1993 was passed to outlaw discrimination on the basis of employment, accomodation and provision of goods and services, reproductive technology access was included within that after the Minister of Justice convened a Ministerial Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (MCART) which gave the go-ahead in 1994. Since then, there has been little controversy about lesbian and gay access to in vitro fertilisation and other reproductive technologies.

I suspect that what might have consequently happened is this. As we are aware, the age of coming out has decreased steadily, as the stigmatisation of male homosexuality and lesbianism has steadily diminished, and as reproductive technology access has become possible, younger lesbians and gay men don’t go through a fully-fledged heterosexual facade that results in cohabitation, marriage and consequent parenting.  As this has happened, there has probably been a rise in same-sex-led families of origin, compared to those formed after a former ‘heterosexual’ partner comes out, leaves a prior relationship, starts a lesbian or gay one, and has to renegotiate their relationship with their ex-spouse and any children from the previous relationship.

Compared to these favours that might favour reproductive technology access, inclusive adoption reform may well mean that when it is achieved, there will be very few same-sex couple stranger adoptions, just as there are very few heterosexual couple stranger adoptions these days.  Straight women have greater access to reliable contraception and legal abortion, and need not become or remain pregnant, to begin with.  When one combines that with the existence of the Domestic Purposes Benefit and destigmatisation of solo parenthood and births ‘outside’ heterosexual marriages, then the net result is that there are very few children available for stranger adoption, in the first place. Apart from coparent adoption, then, inclusive adoption reform will be a formality and afterthought, included merely for the sake of completism.  Given Britain and Western Australia’s experience, I don’t think inclusive adoption reform will prove anywhere near as contentious as civil unions were, back in 2005. One wonders if the same will eventually be the case with same-sex marriage when it finally arrives in New Zealand.

Recommended:

John Angus: “Review: Maureen Baker: Restructuring Family Policies: Convergences and Divergences: Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 2006″ Social Policy Journal of New Zealand 32 (November 2007): 165-167.