GAY TRUTH

When I was taking my first few steps out of the closet in the late 1990s, a guy who called himself Tex offered me a short version of his life story over drinks at a Dupont Circle bar. The conversation took an unanticipated turn: he explained that his current partner had moved halfway across the country, leaving behind an ex-wife and kids. Tex would sometimes answer the house phone (this was before cell phones) and would hear a small voice cautiously ask, “May I please speak to my Daddy?” This was his partner’s eight-year-old daughter calling from somewhere in the Rocky Mountains . Tex said that it troubled him deeply that his partner’s daughter had to ask permission of a stranger in order to speak with her daddy. When I think of this little girl, my thoughts drift to folks like  Alana Newman  and  others  who have anonymous sperm donors for fathers, many of whom have daily asked that same question in their hearts.  May I please speak to my Daddy? Wh...

FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS “Our first question benchmarks the question from Sexton 2011 and finds the same high level of support for the fundamental rights of the child: 76% of Australians agree that “where possible, as a society, we should try to ensure that children are raised by their own mother and father”. “We get the same figure, 76%, in response to our question about marriage as a compound right: whether people agree “that the right to marry includes the right to found a family”. “Significantly, that means a quarter of Australians (24%) do not understand that the right to marry includes the right to found a family, as defined in theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights Article 16. That means they do not understand that laws for homosexual marriage include the right for two men to create a family by surrogacy or adoption – with the consequence that any state laws which presently prohibit same-sex adoption or surrogacy will be overturned. “If every fourth Australian fails to under...