Homosexuality Debate Heats Up as Belgium Approves Gay Adoption

Belgium has narrowly approved a proposed Bill to allow same-sex couples equal rights in adoption.

|PIC1|The Parliament in Brussels has seen senators give their backing to proposals at the end of last week by just 34 to 33 votes, with two abstentions.

The House had previously given a 77 to 62 vote in favour of the Bill.

The vote means that when the Bill is adopted, Belgium will become just the fourth European Union member state to grant homosexuals equal rights with heterosexual couples.

Within the EU only Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden have given backing to gay adoption prior to Belgium.

The latest controversial decision in the homosexuality debate comes after months of tension across the UK and Ireland following the Civil Partnership Act coming into force in Britain; allowing civil ceremonies to take place between homosexual couples, and granting them similar rights as traditionally married couples.

Just at the beginning of the month the Irish Prime Minister had stated that Ireland would follow suit and soon look to legalise civil partnerships for gay couples. Bertie Ahern promised that he would soon open new offices for the country’s main gay rights groups.

Even though civil partnerships have purposely been made not to be marriages, it allows homosexuals to have the same rights to inheritance, state benefits as well as a host of other financial rights that normal married couples enjoy.

|TOP|The issue has been the centre of great controversy in the UK over the past year also. Previously the Church of England’s House of Bishops released a statement that caused heated debate throughout the religious spectrum in England.

One of the most senior bishops in the Church of England even issued a strong condemnation of the statement on Civil Partnerships, calling it “unbiblical”.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, rebuked the statement for undermining traditional teaching on marriage in a letter written to clergy in his diocese.

The Bishop of Rochester continued his attack on the Church of England’s leadership of the civil partnership controversy, criticising the permission it gave to the Government to change church legislation by order, so that the term ‘civil partner’ was automatically added wherever the term ‘spouse’ appeared.

Rev. Nazir-Ali argued that the legislation was not needed on the grounds that the ambiguity of the Civil Partnerships Bill is not consistent with core Christian teaching on marriage and would be unacceptable to a substantial number of its members.

|AD|He warned that the statement has compromised pastoral discipline at the local level and pre-empted the relevant canons in the context of preparation for baptism and confirmation, as well as for the purposes of receiving Holy Communion.

The Evangelical Council has warned of the negative consequences of the Civil Partnerships Act following the hundreds of gay civil partnership ceremonies that took place up and down the country in December 2005.

The Chairman of the Church of England Evangelical Council, the Rev. Dr. Richard Turnbull, has also previously warned Christians in particular of the need to uphold the unique position of marriage between one man and one woman.

"We recognise, of course, the need for fair and equal treatment before the law for all people,” he said. “However, Christians need to be very concerned indeed at the assertion of moral equivalence between marriage and civil partnerships. They are not of equal moral standing.”

He added that Christians have a unique role to teach others about the sanctity of the traditional family.

Rev. Turnbull said: “Christians must be clear, while acting with sensitivity and care, to assert the Christian teaching that celibate singleness or monogamous marriage are the ways in which God has provided for the best moral family framework for society. We depart from that at our peril both as a society and indeed as a church."