Children vs Identity Politics

And so the votes begin on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill. Feelings are riding high on many issues - from abortion rights to stem-cell research - as well as the issue that most exercises my feelings - the intention to remove the need for a father for children conceived via IVF.

As usual in modern Britain, the discussion has polarised into a debate about a surrogate, with some players using the issue as a trojan horse to advance their team's colours. Guardian writers claim that opposition to this move is about an attack on "gay rights" (rights which are attracted to other rights of the same gender?), and I'm sure you could find a few quotes from the usual suspects on the right which would help them maintain that belief (have you noticed that the more politics deals with the less obviously economic, the more extreme the language used by its practitioners?). Even some Conservatives seek to portray the issue as a simple matter of equality for gay people. I find this staggeringly wrong-headed.

Why staggering? A simple matter of biology. Same-sex couples cannot conceive without the aid of a third party: that is, to be blunt, they cannot conceive as a couple. Some people view this as a reason for disliking the entire concept of same-sex partnerships: but I cannot see how this would follow. My love for my Other is not made less valid by the extreme improbability of me becoming a father. So let's just put that silly-ism into the box marked "rubbish arguments" and leave it on the shelf.

Unlike many Conservatives, I supported the government's requirements that adoption agencies consider the fitness of gay couples as putative adopters: because such considerations are always done in the needs of the existing child. I could not see how one could determine that all children in care homes would in all cases for ever be better off having access to putative adopters denied. While statistically not numerous, it doesn't seem impossible to me to imagine a situation where children would be better off raised in the home of a loving same-sex couple than they would be if left unadopted. I think of my own family, of course. Were something unimaginably horrible to happen to Keith's siblings, it would seem bizarrely wrong were we to be prevented from offering a home to their children.

But this is not the same at all as the situation where a gay couple, usually a female couple, demand access to IVF in order to create a new life. Such a theoretical child does not yet exist, and so it is correct to consider the life-chances of such a fatherless child, not in the specific case of the not-yet-existing life, but on the average, with respect to the evidence which exists about the outcomes for fatherless children.

Do we need much more evidence about this? One of the biggest problems in London, and I guess elsewhere, is what happens to (in particular) boys who are raised in a fatherless culture. I wrote last year about the outcomes for a society which persists in the political marginalisation of men, and nothing that's happened on the streets of London since then has convinced me I was wrong. Children need their fathers.

Children need their fathers. To willfully bring into existence a child who cannot, by definition, know the importance of a father's love is - forgive me for using the extreme sort of language I usually dislike - bordering on the pathologically insane. Do you doubt me? Close your eyes and imagine your life without your own father. Quite.

I hope our elected members reflect before voting today: reflect and remember their own fathers; consider, in many cases, their own roles as fathers. Do not allow the practitioners of Identity Politics to prevail. This is not a vote about gay people, and to defeat this provision is not an anti-gay signal. It is a vote on the importance of fatherhood.

Comments

[Tony Makara]

Just as with abortion, the debate does not take into account the rights of the child. The number one consideration has to be the best interests of that child and such interests are not served by denying that child its right to know its lineage. The attempt to turn this into a debate about gay rights is a deliberate attempt to divert the argument away from the child's rights. There is also the question of genetically transmitted disease. What if a child needed a bone marrow transplant and only the father could provide a match? We are what we inherit and there is no such thing as genetic autonomy. The child's interests must come first and being able to trace a father is a basic human right.

[Martin Sewell]

I think we need to be able to grasp a particualrly fashionable nettle here and loosen - if not uproot it There are occasions when the process of reaching the right decision will require us to exercise judgement for which another name is "discrimination".

I believe that many children particularly in the Care system will best be served by being brought up by a mother and a father. There are circumstances where a same sex couple is the right answer for THAT child.

As children's lawyer and Anglican Lay Reader I have acted with a clear conscience for gay adopters. It included advising them when they encountered difficulty with a local "hard line" priest over baptism.

Sometimes it is the very best outcome and when it is we should gladly take it. Having said that, if there had been a better alternative for each of those children I would see no objection to taking that course of action.

The preservation of the ideal is important. To start on the road ignoring that ideal is undermining of that which is best for society.

We should look at the effects of a father's role when weighing up whether to proceed in any individual case. Telling a couple that they are not to be accepted is not congenial but some of us have to tell parents they will be losing their children and that they will be adopted and that is no less stressful. We must not abandon what is best for society and children because some professionals would rather have no rules that take grown up decisions.

[John W]

Outstanding piece Graeme well done. I think you raise a really important point Martin, perhaps the central one for the whole Identity Politics areas. Discrimination was originally a positive thing, as in making a judgement between alternatives of which is the best - getting rid of discrimination, and turning it into a pejorative even, are just as bad as the racism, sexism, homophobia or whatever that anti-discrimination is meant to do away with.

We come back in the end to trusting people, to make the right decisions and to take responsibility for circumstances. Centralising responsibility tries to stop any bad decisions being made - but it can't and in fact impares the ability of those best placed to make god decisions.

[Sally Roberts]

Spot On Graeme! I think about my own relationship with my now deceased father - it was a difficult one, even stormy at times but there is no way I would have been without him and I owe him so much - my love of politics and of music and opera in particular are two examples which come to mind.
Families Need Fathers may be the name of a particular pressure group - but it is a truism all the same!

[Londoner]

Graeme - how very sensible. You may be in danger of becoming every heterosexual male's favourite gay!

Ranging a bit more widely, I think it is not just "gay rights" that gets misused but most other types of supposed "rights" too. I oppose ID cards and 42 day detention not on grounds of "human rights", but civil liberties. I oppose torture of prisoners on grounds of decency and opposition to cruelty. I oppose the woman's "right to choose" because there is no more such a right, in itself, that a dog owner has an unfettered right to kill its dog.

Even, as a conservative, "property rights" seem to me a fairly flawed concept unless one opposes all planning regulations.

So if anyone talks of "rights", it's usually best to examine very carefully whether there is some other principle behind what is being asserted and, if not, it's probably tosh.

[Ulster Tory]

I am quite angry at the minute thinking about the dire consequences of this bill passing.

What on earth will they do next?

[Steevo]

"What on earth will they do next?"

Well ultimately when you so severely undermine the nucleus of the family structure you fortify and strengthen that of the government. Very dangerous.

[Sean Fear]

A very sensible post Graeme. Deliberately creating a child, with the intention that it should not have a father, is an act of gross selfishness and irresponsibility, in my view.

[John Moss]

I also wonder on the adotion point, whether the anti-adoptionists have created a false consciousness where aborting a viable potential human being is seen as somehow "better" than allowing the unready mother to carry the child to term and then offer it up to people desperate to have children who through accidents of genetics or even just getting together later in life, do not have the chance of a child of their own?

[Philip]

I doubt I'd agree with you on most homosexual issues, gay adoption etc, but thank you for this excellent piece. As you and others say, what should be foremost is the best interests of the child. And if removing the need for a father for children conceived via IVF is passed, surely it would send a signal that fathers are less important, not just in IVF, but in any family.