27/04/12

In a recent judgement Gas and Dubois v. France, rendered on 15 March 2012, the European Court of Human Rights reiterated that the European Convention does not impose on the governments of party states the obligation to grant the possibility to marry to homosexual couples, since Article 12 declares that the right to marry and found a family is only for men and women of marriageable age. The decision is welcomed as attempts are being made to undermine the foundational unit of marriage, which is for the good of men and women and the welfare of children and society. For the good of future generations, claims that homosexuals should be entitled to marry and to bring up children should not be allowed to take root.

Although the Court decided that there had not been any discrimination against either of the applicants on the grounds of sexual orientation, several judges in separate annexed opinions urged the French State to review its legislation so as to enable homosexuals living together to share parental responsibility over the child born to one of the partners. The argument supported by these judges is that a child should receive the same treatment whether he is brought up by a homosexual or a heterosexual couple. However, simple common sense leads us to believe that it cannot be in the best interests of the child to be brought up by two homosexuals living together, which is both an unnatural and unethical framework.

It cannot be denied that the best interests of the child require that he be brought up by a man and a woman. Attributing shared parental responsibility to both homosexuals living together will not remedy the fundamental flaw that is at the root of an inevitably imbalanced homosexual environment. Marriage is the best framework for children to be brought up in, and one that cannot be replaced by any other form of arrangement that a homosexual couples would want to impose on a child that they wish to raise.

Article 12 states the right for a man and a woman to marry and also the right to found a family. In so doing it provides a definition of how a family is composed: a father, a mother and one or more children. The European Court would do well to maintain the proper interpretation of marriage based on the common Judeo-Christian heritage shared by European countries.

[THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE NEWS LETTER ON MAY 4, 2012]

(See also the longer version of this article in the Section "Submissions")