The daughter of Vicki Harding and Jackie Braw told the committee last week she wanted her second mum, Jackie, to adopt her so they could be recognised as a family.
“I think it would be great if she was legally recognised. I mean, I already recognise her as my mum. But legally there are things like medical [issues...],” Brenna said.
Neither Clark nor Nile had any questions for Brenna or her mothers, despite the committee’s intense interrogation of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby earlier.
A third conservative MP on the committee, Labor MLC Greg Donnelly, made no attempt to hide his hostility to a dad-free family and pressed Brenna seven times on her relationship with her biological father.
“He’s not my father, he’s my donor. He doesn’t live with me, he hasn’t raised me. I see him but he isn’t like Jackie,” she responded.
Donnelly, a conservative Catholic and former secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Union, continued to press the family to respond to US research on single mothers.
“A daughter has special needs of her father especially the approval of her attractiveness as a person, acceptance of body shape, encouraging the confidence to say no to drugs, and understanding what she should expect in her relationships with men including sexuality,” he quoted.
Brenna said she felt her mothers had those things quite under control.
“There are plenty of families with fathers where those messages are not delivered to their daughters. The proof is in the pudding, the children,” Vicki Harding added.
The mothers had selected a school they knew would be good for Brenna, and addressed teasing by other students.
“Kids find amazing reasons to tease kids. We had a very slight issue in grade three. This boy had heard those teasing words somewhere, he was eight years old, it hasn’t come out of thin air,” Vicki Harding said.
“He’s heard that at home, in his community somewhere. If there wasn’t discrimination this situation wouldn’t arise.”
“It’s not do we have children as GLBTs, because anybody’s children could be teased.”
The Harding mother and daughter team are known in same-sex parenting circles as the co-authors of the Learn To Include children’s books.
[Link: Original Article]
No comments:
Post a Comment