This week’s NSW Parliament debate on the rights of same-sex couples to adopt children will lead into a conscience vote which will come down to the wire – and the harshest critics of our communities are in full force spitting out toxic waste on the issue.

NSW Labor MP Penny Sharpe supports the Adoption Amendment (Same-Sex Couples) Bill, which was introduced to parliament by Independent Member for Sydney Clover Moore.

While many MPs and community groups have expressed their support for the equality-seeking law reform, Sharpe tells Same Same from Parliament today that “the numbers are very tight.”

Yesterday she tweeted about the piles of correspondence she’s received about the Bill: “Hundreds of emails, some heart breaking, some infuriating, some just lacking basic human decency.”

Adoption rights attack

Conservative Christian-based groups united to hold a small rally in the NSW Parliament theatrette yesterday, insisting that passage of the Adoption Bill would have dire consequences.

Long-time anti-gay foe the Rev Fred Nile was a key figure at the rally, bizarrely claiming that some women would abort their children rather than risk them being raised by gay couples.

Other groups including the Australian Christian Lobby have also attacked our communities making the unfounded claim that children would be worse off with same-sex parents.

“Heterosexual couples… can provide a more complete family environment,” says ACL NSW Director David Hutt, adding that “this bill is an indulgence on the Parliament’s time.”

Some lobbyists, such as the Rev Steve Estherby of FamilyVoice Australia, are grasping at straws to come up with reasons to reject adoption law reform.

“There are already long waiting lists of male‐female couples with good parenting skills who long to adopt a child – the wait would be even longer if homosexual couples were allowed to adopt,” he asserts.

Adoption agencies Anglicare and CatholicCare have both also voiced their opposition to the Bill.