Coverage of the Parliamentary Committee that studied the issue was inadequate as the Committee, after hearing over 500 witnesses, dealing with over 250,000 letters from the concerned public and traveling thousands of miles across the country, was not permitted to table its report in Parliament. Concerns for the well-being of children, presented before the Committee by REAL Women, Dr. Margaret Somerville, and others, were ignored.
{There's also a certain amount of "de rigeur" whining about the media in there as well, but I'm going to ignore it, because that is not the part that is notable and of interest}
The anti-SGM arguments have long argued that somehow or another SGM was harmful to "children's rights" - an argument that is utterly ridiculous, but gives us a window into the regressive views these people are pushing.
The news release itself was typically vacuous and lacking in concrete statements, except for a reference to Margaret Somerville's testimony regarding bill C-38. Given the number of witnesses and letters the parliamentary committees were dealing with, it seems to me quite possible that a lot of conflicting testimony was being put forth.
A bit of digging about turned up this article with a few tidbits about Ms. Somerville's testimony that I found particularly enlightening with respect to the "it harms the children" line of fallacy:
Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette opposes C-38. She concluded from an examination of various dictionaries: "...that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and almost always for the purpose of procreation....I maintain that this bill is more a political action than a legal exercise confirming the equality rights of same sex couples" She quoted Dr. Margaret Somerville, a McGill University specialist in ethics. She said: "When restricted to one man and one woman, marriage establishes as the norm the rights of children to a biological father and mother who will raise them ...Because same-sex marriage is not based on procreation, it deprives all children of such rights, not just the children of same-sex couples. Bill C-38 expressly recognizes and applies this change by redefining the parental condition in general, changing it from the natural, or biological, parental condition to the legal parental condition. This is the effect of Bill C-38....The rights of children must include:
1. The right to be conceived with a natural biological heritage — that is to say unmodified biological origins — and to be conceived with natural sperm from an identified man and a natural ovum from an identified woman; and
2. The right to know the identity of their biological parents."
Senator Hervieux-Payette concluded: "I cannot agree to vote in favor of Bill C-38 as it stands. It would run counter to my profound convictions on my role as a senator, which is to protect Canadian institutions and the most vulnerable of Canadians, our children."
The first thing that strikes me here is this statement:
The right to be conceived with a natural biological heritage — that is to say unmodified biological origins
The reasoning being applied is rife with implications. The accusation is that because a SGM couple cannot produce children, that somehow these relationships bear no legal status. The second prong of the attack is similar in that it raises the utterly invalid talking point that same-gender couples cannot provide "correct" parenting successfully.
However, stepping aside from the implications for sexual minorities, the wording and phraseology hints at a much broader attack on women's rights, especially around reproductive freedoms:
(1) By implication, only a child borne of procreative sex is a "valid" child. (After all, you must not only know that the child has a known father)
(2) The various reproductive technologies we have (artificial insemination, and a plethora of fertility treatments) are theoretically "out of bounds" - the use of the word "natural" has very significant implications here.
(3) Note the use of the word "conception" - this is very important because it turns out to be the underpinning of the forced-birth crowd's line of reasoning. By using this word, they twist things around and claim, essentially, that a woman has no control over her body the moment a zygote is formed.
(4) In recent years, the forced-birth crowd has also adopted an "anti-contraception" stance. They have begun campaigning quite vocally in the United States against most forms of birth control - from "The Pill" to condoms - I suspect largely on "moral" grounds, but it really comes down to punishing a woman for having sex.
Groups like "Real Women Canada" have been cheering recent changes in Federal Government funding, especially to the Status of Women agency. Whether or not they realize it, they not advancing anyone's rights, but in fact are attempting to push us back not merely a decade or so, but nearly a century, by revoking a woman's right to decide how she will contribute to society.
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