WA Liberals will recriminalise homosexuality

As with adoption, the Liberals call to ban IVF is rooted in the notion that gays make bad parents, and overlooks the fact that most lesbians achieve pregnancy via sperm donation (artificial insemination), and not through IVF.

Curiously, there has never been a ban on homosexual people fostering children. The end result therefore, is that Barnett will allow gay and lesbian couples to provide a loving environment to traumatised children from broken homes on an ad hoc basis, but will deny them opportunities to have their own children or to adopt.

Shutting the door of the Family Court to same-sex couples is the cruellest of his proposals. If gays and lesbians cannot access this court for property settlement, then they will have to go to the Supreme Court. This is more cumbersome, more expensive and has no confidentially, unlike the Family Court.

In an effort to not look homophobic, Barnett has said that heterosexual de facto couples would also be forced out of the Family Court, but with the caveat that they will be able to use it if they have kids or have been together for five years.

This policy risks angering many straight couples, and will mean that children in separating same-sex families will be disadvantaged.

Mr Barnett has been at pains to point out that he is not homophobic, but his policies make this assertion hard to reconcile. In Opposition, Barnett allowed a conscience vote for his party on Labor's law reform (some of which Liberal MP's supported), but now that's out the window and the policy will require a party vote. This means some Liberals will have to vote down measures in Government they previously supported in Opposition.

Whenever pressed on these issues, Barnett resorts to scare mongering about “gay marriage”. In fact, marriage is a Federal issue and has nothing to do with the State election. Barnett only deploys this red herring as a diversion from his own policies and to tap into the homophobia lingering from John Howard's “gay marriage” ban in Canberra.

Fair minded Australians now anxiously await the outcome of WA's State election to see whether Colin Barnett's Liberals, if in government, will be joining the real world or joining the Contra Rebels.