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An Australian bishop has warned that if same-sex marriage is legalised, children of gay couples will eventually see themselves as another Stolen Generation.
Port Pirie diocese’s Bishop Greg O’Kelly, SJ, issued a letter in which he stated that same-sex and traditional marriage were like comparing apples and pears.
“The nature of marriage between two same-sex people and the marriage between a man and a woman open to life . . . are two very different things,” he wrote.
“A pear is not an apple, no matter what you say, even if you start to redefine that term from its traditional one, it doesn’t alter the reality.”
Bishop O’Kelly’s letter went on to say that children of homosexual couples would feel like a Stolen Generation, because they had been denied a mother and a father.
“I can see a generation in the future describing itself as something like another stolen generation.
“When bitterness occurs, they could say to their same-sex parents that they deliberately intervened in order to exclude what was the right of the child, to a father or mother as a parent.
“The natural process was stolen from them . . . and that was a gross injustice.”
Bishop O’Kelly wrote that “a gay couple adopting a child, where otherwise the child would remain an orphan, can be defended, I believe, if that proviso is in place”.
“What cannot be defended is the deliberate use of surrogacy or some other intervention in order to prevent the presence of a natural father or mother in the family of the child.”
Between 1910 and 1970, many indigenous Aboriginal Australian children were forcibly removed from their families as a result of government policies.
These children became known as the Stolen Generations.
In 2013, then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered a national apology to the Stolen Generations.
Australian Marriage Equality advocate Rodney Croome said Bishop O’Kelly claims are offensive.
Sources
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News category: World.
