Proposition 51K0664

Projet de loi modifiant certaines dispositions du Code civil en vue de permettre l'adoption par des personnes de même sexe.

General information ¶

Author

Vooruit Guido Swennen

Submission date

Jan. 7, 2004

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

adoption of a child

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Discussion ¶

Dec. 1, 2005 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

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Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Justice Committee has devoted ten sessions to the examination of proposals for legislation aimed at allowing adoption by persons of the same sex.

After hearing Mrs. Storms’ exhibition on the work of the Family Law Subcommittee on this issue, the Justice Committee, before the debate on the substance of the case, made two important decisions:

- on the one hand, it decided, by 12 votes against 5, to divide between the consideration of proposals of laws on social kinship and those aimed at allowing adoption by persons of the same sex;

- on the other hand, after the exposure by the various authors of the bill proposals to be examined, the committee decided to take the proposal of Mr. Swennen as a basis for discussion. by

Very soon in the course of the debate, some members, including our colleagues Michel and Courtois, considered it necessary and desirable that additional hearings be organized — independent of those already held in the Family Law Subcommittee — to know the opinion of experts practicing the current legislation on adoption. by

This is why, as of June 22, the Justice Commission heard: - Dr. Hayez, Head of Service at the Pediatric Psychiatry Unit of the Saint-Luc University Clinics in Brussels, - Mr. Hayez. Jo Labens, coordinator of the adoption service "Gewenst kind", - Mrs. Véronique Wauters, director of the ASBL "At the crossroads of the roads", - M. Roger Pauly, Managing Director of "Gezinsbond", - Mr. Didier Dehou, Director of the Adoption Service of the General Directorate of Youth Aid of the Ministry of the French Community, - Mr. Claude Lelièvre, General Delegate of the French Community for the Rights of the Child Pierre Rans, Deputy Attorney General of the Brussels Court of Appeal.

They have made a lot of clarifications, including legal. They fueled the debate by advancing sociological and anthropological arguments and expressed, for some of them, some fears or sometimes reservations, ⁇ with regard to international adoption. For more detailed information, I would like to refer to the annexes of the written report concerning the content of these hearings. by

During the general discussion, one may attempt, although it is hard to see that some have evolved in their reflections and their positions during the debates, to summarize the positions taken in the following way. by

Ms. Taelman, on behalf of the whole VLD group, stressed that the filing of the bill currently under discussion had been preceded by long and intense discussions and reflections. She stressed that adoption by same-sex couples responds to a real need, in particular by illustrating the deplorable consequences of the lack of legislation for children, for example in matters of succession rights. She recalled that many studies show that these children educated within a gay couple have no fundamental problem. by

In addition, like members of the sp.a-spirit and PS groups, she recalled that many checks were carried out before allowing a couple, both gay tomorrow – if the law is passed – and heterosexual today, to adopt. She insisted that adoption should be in the best interests of the child and was not intended to give adults a right to a child.

For its part, the sp.a-spirit group highlighted the social reality. Many children are already growing up within a holebi family. It is a social reality. He recalled that the law of 24 April 2003 reforming adoption contains many elements aimed at preventing adoptions decided lightly.

by Mr. Monfils, for his part, recalled that the MR group left the freedom of vote to each of its members, as in any ethical file. He was in favour of the proposal to allow adoption by persons of the same sex. In particular, he believes that it is wrong that many people talk about some ethical laxism on the part of the authorities. According to him, the question here is why it would be necessary to establish a difference in treatment between heterosexual and homosexual couples. The speaker noted that sexual orientation has little importance in the context of children’s education, the important thing is that the family can enrich the child and bring them values.

In addition, from a psychological point of view, many elements are to be taken into account, the development of the child does not depend on his family. Finally, he is not convinced that there is any legal problem for this type of adoption.

Marghem, on the other hand, believed that the legal figure of adoption goes far too far in that she organizes for the future a homosexual parenthood for children who may not have sufficient resources to cope with what she considers to be an additional difficulty. She considered that therefore, in the face of this uncertainty, the precautionary principle should be defended.

by Mr. Michel asked him about the difference that can exist between the adoption by a couple of men and the adoption by a couple of women but also, in particular following the hearings, about the consequences that the proposed law could entail in matters of international adoption.

Genot said that the bilateral conventions on international adoption signed by other countries that practice homosexual adoption such as Sweden or the Netherlands have not been denounced by the other States parties. Bilateral agreements vary by country. She also insisted on the strength of reality since already today, children are raised exclusively by two fathers or two mothers.

For her part, Mrs Lalieux highlighted the hypocrisy that would consist in not allowing adoption by two persons of the same sex, since it is indeed a social reality concerning a not negligible number of persons and that it is therefore important to provide these families with the required legal certainty, precisely in the interests of the children concerned.

The PS group also insisted that a pedagogical effort be made in order to properly inform the public opinion of the issues of this debate.

The CD&V group believed that it was better to incorporate social parenting into a legal framework than to use adoption by persons of the same sex. Ms. Van der Auwera asked about the consequences of adoption by Holebis couples for international adoption.

by Mr. Wathelet expressed his opposition to the bill under consideration, stressing that a distinction should be made between filiation and parentality. In filiation, an original link is created and an identity is assigned to the child. This right to identity is based, according to him, on the complementarity of genders, a child being the fruit of two persons of different sexes. Every child has the right to have a father and a mother. The origin, the identity on which the filiation is based, cannot be questioned. Everything else is parentality and the set of rights, obligations and commitments of the parents that arise from it. for Mr. Wathelet, social parenting would have more helped to solve the problem of connection with people who are not the biological parents of the child but who have tissed privileged ties with him.

During the discussion article by article, several amendments were submitted. This is how Ms Lalieux et consorts submitted amendments aimed primarily at determining the procedure for the assignment of the name. Other groups, considering that the legal form of adoption did not provide all sufficient guarantees, have, in turn, submitted amendments creating new legal forms. This is how mr. Wathelet, for example, submitted amendments aimed at introducing social parenting into the Civil Code. by Mr. Verherstraeten introduced provisions on coparentality. In addition, Mr. Bacquelaine and consorts have submitted amendments creating custody by the spouse or cohabitant.

Following the discussion of the various amendments, the Justice Committee adopted the articles of the bill allowing adoption by persons of the same sex. Given the legal implications of the various amendments deposited and after the voting of articles in July, the chairman of the Chamber, as permitted by the House Regulations, submitted the bill amending the Civil Code in order to authorize adoption by homosexual couples and the related amendments for opinion to the Legislation section of the State Council. This notice is contained in the document no. 393/002.

On 9 November 2005, the Justice Committee unanimously decided to proceed, prior to the vote on the whole amended bill, to consider this State Council opinion at a new meeting. Given the quality and very technical nature of this opinion, I allow myself for the surplus to refer to the written report, which is very complete. I also take the opportunity to thank the services for the important work done in this regard.

In conclusion, the bill amending the Civil Code to allow adoption by homosexual couples, as amended, was adopted in the Justice Committee by 9 votes for and 7 votes against.

Thank you, Mr the rapporteur. This is an important debate. We will try to organize it properly. Some groups enrolled few speakers, others many. It is the right of all groups and speakers to register as they wish.

Colleagues, I ask you to express yourself appropriately, this is with the appropriate shrinkage. I have the habit of giving the word to the opposition first.

Many members have signed up.

I suggest the following. Mr. Verherstraeten opens the general discussion, followed by Mr. Wathelet, Mr. Schoofs, Mrs. Marghem, Mr. Swennen, Mrs. Lalieux, Mrs. Taelman. Then we see further.

I would like to intervene later in the debate.

I give the word to Mr. by Wathelet.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, I know that the day is already advanced and that this debate may be prolonged, but I ask you already to apologize for the length of my speech.

Mr. Wathelet, I ask you to comply with the Rules and not to exceed your speech time set at 30 minutes.

I know that you are able to show understanding when the importance of the subject requires it.

The bill for consideration today — we chose to discuss on the basis of Mr. Mr.’s proposal. Swennen, chairman of the Family Law Subcommittee —, like those that go in the same direction, aim to open the adoption of a child to same-sex couples on the basis of a triple motivation.

The first is the equal opportunity or treatment between homosexual couples and heterosexual couples. by

The second is to provide legal certainty for children who today live with persons of the same sex. by

The third is that different psychosocial studies would try to demonstrate that the education of a child by a couple of persons of the same sex would have no impact on the child.

I will try to answer these three arguments. We will then develop our position.

In terms of equal treatment, there is first and foremost equal treatment between homosexual couples and heterosexual couples. Then there is equal treatment between the different children.

On the level of equal treatment between homosexual and heterosexual couples, from a legal point of view — and Mr. Perpète recalled it in his report — adoption is not a human right within the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights, nor in the head of the adopter, nor in the head of the adopted. by

The Fretté judgment, often mentioned in the framework of discussions, also reminds very clearly that the right to adoption does not exist. In other words, the right to be parent does not exist.

The European Court of Justice also notes that the scientific community is divided as to the possible consequences of adopting a child by or for homosexual parents, given in particular the limited number of scientific studies conducted on the subject. It highlights the profound differences in national and international public opinion as well as the insufficient number of adoptable children in relation to the requests.

Once again, we were able to see the divisions and divergences of the public opinion in the framework of discussions regarding this project. by

In short, the justification advanced by France, to refuse Mr. The adoption is objective and reasonable and the difference in treatment in dispute is not discriminatory within the meaning of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). by

The Court of Cassation itself, in a judgment of 10 April 2003, also specified that “as far as it recognises everyone’s right to respect for their private and family life, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights does not require States to grant a person the status of adopter or adopted.” by

In other words, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights does not guarantee the right to adopt. More recently, our State Council also, in its opinion on the various proposals relating to homoparentality and social parenting, recalled that our current law, in so far as it reserved adoption to heterosexual couples, does not contradict the principles of equality and non-discrimination given the discretion left to States in this matter.

Furthermore, the Council of State also notes that the difference in treatment between homosexuals seeking in isolation to adopt and those who wish to carry out this approach in a couple is absolutely not discriminatory. by

It is in fact the fundamental criterion of the best interests of the child, which primarily allows to determine whether the impossibility for a person or a gay couple to adopt is compatible with the principles of equality and non-discrimination often invoked. by

The only question is what would be, from the perspective of the best interests of the child, the most appropriate legal status, which could be recognised to the bonds existing between the child and his two same-sex parents who exercise a parental function with respect to him.

As regards the right to family life, the State Council also reminds us of European case-law on this subject. While the right to family life enshrined in Article 8 of the ECHR can extend to the factual relationships that have been established between a child and his parent, the right to family life presupposes, however, the existence of a family already constituted and does not protect the mere desire for a child. by

It can therefore not be deduced from the judgments of the European Court of Justice in the matter that any project of creating a family by non-natural means is protected by Article 8 of the Convention since this right, recalls the Council of State, is part of the case-law according to which the right to respect for family life requires that one is in a pre-established family framework.

The right to family life does not imply the right to adopt, which consists in giving a family to a child and not a child to a family.

This is about the equal treatment of children. It is not contested — Mr. Maingain has repeatedly recalled it in the context of the discussions — that the legislator is obliged, according to a judgment of the Arbitration Court of 8 October 2003, to set a legal framework for the relationship ⁇ ined between a child and his mother-in-law, who shared the life of the mother of that child in a gay household, if the mother-in-law has ⁇ ined an affective relationship with that child since conception. This was the case that was submitted to the Arbitration Court, of course it can be extended to any type of homosexual couples.

The Court of Arbitration recalled that it was up to the legislator to specify in what form, under what conditions and under what procedure, the parental authority could, in the best interest of the child — this is what we seek — be extended to other persons who do not have a filial relationship with him. The situation involved a child raised by a lesbian couple, one of whom was the mother of the child born as a result of medically assisted reproduction with an anonymous donor. Such legislative intervention — notes the State Council — must respect the principles of equality and non-discrimination, which indicates that a similar status should also be granted to lasting beau-parenthood situations, born after the birth of the child in a homosexual or heterosexual context, by the way.

It should be noted that the status of adoption is not appropriate in the case of recomposed families. While the right to family life may be extended to certain situations of surrogacy, it does not preclude that, still under that right, the protection of family life has as its primary scope, with regard to children, to consecrate the rights of the latter and to see their filiation established from their birth, to lead their lives and to be raised by their parents of origin. This could hinder the recognition of a family bond between a child and persons other than those parents. This is precisely what adoption establishes, and this is what we challenge. These rights are recalled in the Marckx and Johnston judgment and in Articles 7 and 9 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

While it is unanimously accepted that the same rights should be guaranteed to all children, regardless of the family background, the use of the adoption status is inadequate and unsatisfactory. It is quite possible to offer stability, the necessary legal protection to the ties that have developed between that child and that person with whom he ⁇ ins privileged relations without going through the figure of adoption. This legal figure is inadequate to understand a situation that is objectively and fundamentally different.

I mentioned the principle of equality.

Now I would like to talk about the principle of legal certainty.

Opening adoption to homosexual couples means placing under an identical legal figure — adoption — factual situations with essential differences, those in which the adopters are of different sexes and those in which they are of the same sex. This is also the analysis of the State Council.

The State Council notes that having same-sex parents for a child is not the same as having different-sex parents.

To state that it is the same thing to have parents of the same sex as parents of different sexes, is to deny the trace of origin in the exercise of parentality (...). It is to evacuate the fundamental radicalism from the difference rooted in the real and symbolic character of the subject’s singularity.”

As for securing established family ties, it is obviously indispensable to legislate as regards the child raised by a non-parental partner. It will never be sufficiently emphasized that the path of adoption in this regard is impossible for the many children — and they are very many — born in a heterosexual relationship and who, after separation, live in a newly formed homosexual or heterosexual family.

However, adoption goes far beyond securing established family ties since it organizes, for the future of the child, a homosexual filiation. Adoption is much more than just a legal status or just a legal protection. It defines the identity of the person and of that child who will be brought up.

The adoption establishes a filiation relationship. The main effect of filiation is to define the sexual identity, this gender difference, of the child and to register it in a genealogy. The side effects of the filiation are the parental authority, the maintenance obligation, the legal and reserved succession rights and the set of obligations and rights arising from this status.

The filiation link identifies the child as born of a father and a mother. Every human being is born from the encounter of male and female sex. To want a child to be adopted by two persons of the same sex is to create a filiation and an identity different from that of another child since it would be an identity that removes this double root. This is to deny the gender difference in the definition of identity, in the civil status and in the filiation. by

However, this difference, this alteration, are fundamental. This difference must be respected even within its legal framework that recognizes and dares to speak of this difference. by

It is the responsibility of a society and therefore of political authorities, of the legislator, not to create confusion and to continue to name, for all human beings, the fundamental components of our humanity and in particular, the place of gender difference in the definition of identity and in the structuring of the filiation of the human subject.

The Council of State emphasizes that wanting to have a child adopted by two persons of the same sex, is to institute for this child a filiation and therefore an identity that would wipe out any reference to the difference of sex founding every human being. It is in a way to deny the bisexual origin of any child and thus give him a radically different identity than that of all other children. It only repeats all the arguments I have just raised. by

Some psychologists and psychiatrists also emphasize that in the event of the disappearance of the sexuality of what is necessary in the establishment of a filiation, knowing that the sexuality has already disappeared in the context of marriage, there will no longer be the need to operate the distinction between men and women in our law and in our society. This logic de facto removes the need to institute the gender difference in the civil status. This is a genuine anthropological disaster. by

The primary question, therefore, is not whether children raised by a gay couple are as happy as those raised by a father and a mother, or whether these children or children of these children experience difficulties in terms of psychological structure or sociability. This is not the main argument because it is known that it depends on cases. The fundamental questions we need to answer are as follows. Why suddenly decide to change the identity of these children to give them a radically different identity? Is the gender difference a fundamental element of every human being? by

We believe that it is not necessary — and that it would even be contrary to the best interests of the child — to resort to adoption. It is preferable to create a new legal institution such as beauparentality or social parentality or “zorgouderschap” that does not affect the child’s filiation or identity to respond to similar situations and that would allow equally high legal certainty. by

After equality and legal certainty, let’s go to psychosocial studies that have been much debated during these seven months of work within the Family Law Subcommittee and the Justice Committee. Theoretically, the psychoanalytic theory of identification emphasizes the importance of two parents of opposite sexes for the adequate realization of the Oedipus complex, a decisive step for the identity construction of the child. This concept of Oedipic triangulation presupposes the introduction of a third in the fusion between the mother and the child to open it to the outside world and confront it with the existence of the law. by

This role, usually played by the father, could however, according to some authors, be played by the introduction of any other male-type image, which implies the dissociation between the sex of the parents and their function within a family. For triangulation to be real, it is important that the gender difference can incarnate and take body for the child. It is therefore fundamental that his mother incarnate in a female sexual body and his father in that of a man.

While it is true that the paternal function is not distributed exclusively on the person of the father or on the person of the mother, it must be acknowledged that in a heterosexual couple, it is indeed the flesh-fathers who exercise the majority of the paternal function and the mothers, the majority of the maternal function. Moreover, these are not roles but people in flesh and bone, father and mother, whose positive presence contributes to the maturation of the child’s personality, identity, safety and confidence.

In this context, the evolution and identity construction of the child can only take place more difficultly in a homosexual couple. It is true that the human psyche is capable of adaptation, that children have the ability to adapt to the complicated scenarios of adults — we have received many testimonials claiming that this was going well, even very well for some. In addition, other people can play the role of male or female referent and children know how to get out of it or move forward without necessarily having this double referent. But the fact that these referents are those through which the child is in relationship with his origin is of immense importance.

Mr. Wathelet, I try to follow your reasoning to understand what you are saying.

On the one hand, you claim to accept the fact that after separation, parents can live a gay relationship, continue to see their children and raise them. On the other hand, you consider that this scheme is not acceptable in the context of adoption, because a triangulation is indispensable between a male or female sexual parent and the child. You speak, among other things, of the Oedipus complex, etc.

If you follow your reasoning about adoption — you say that it is impossible, that it is not acceptable — you have to go further! It must also be forbidden to the parent who, after separation, has a homosexual relationship but who retains his right of custody or his right of visit. If one follows your logic — which I obviously do not agree with — in all intellectual honesty, one must prohibit the right of visit, custody and parental authority to parents who became homosexual after separation, to heterosexual couples with children who reconstitute a homosexual couple. These are their children; they had them in a different previous sexual life.

The [...]

I did not say anything absurd. That is the reality. This is called social parenting. Everyone agrees with this.

How can you defend an intellectual conception of adoption by referring to psychoanalysis and reject this conception when it comes to real parents who have changed, after separation, sexual life?

I do not understand. Or you need to be consistent and prohibit social parenting! I do not share this idea. I try to understand, intellectually, the contradiction emanating from your speech.

Leave the M. Wathelet continues his explanations!

I want to try to make you understand, even though I know that you will not share my point of view. I try to be as clear as possible, but these concepts require explanations, dialogue. This type of questioning, we have had it many times in the discussions both in the subcommittee Family Law and in the committee of Justice. by

So there is adoption, which creates a filiation bond that already exists. Based on the assumption you took just recently, as part of a family that at some point separates to reform a gay or heterosexual couple, in this case, the filiation bond already exists. The child has a father and a mother. In some cases, he has only his father or mother. There is a filiation relationship. On the other hand, in the case of an adoption by a gay couple, this filiation is created, while it cannot be present.

Therefore, let us secure the child! Surely of course! through legal certainty. This is where we developed the concept of social parentality even though, as I have said many times in the committee, I reject this term. In this regard, the difference is fundamental. Indeed, some elements related to parentality can be attributed, but it is not a filiation as adoption seems to want to do. This is where it is fundamentally different. We affirm with many authors and experts that it is important that the child knows himself from this filiation. It is even desirable that he knows his parents and is in contact with them. Even if one finds that, from time to time, it changes or that it is no longer possible from a certain moment due to the facts of life.

On a practical level, I would also like to emphasize that the impact of homosexual parenthood on child identity construction remains obscure. I do not want to extend this argument, because it intervenes only in a subsidiary manner. I would simply like to return to the scientific quality of the various studies or investigations conducted overseas by teams of American, Canadian, or even in France and the Netherlands, in certain circumstances, in homosexual communities. While these studies may be considered satisfying in part, they may at the same time be challenging, depending on the analysis carried out.

Indeed, many studies develop the question of children born as part of a heterosexual couple with a pre-existing filiation bond and with the possibility of a sudden change in the situation. It is also known that the number of children — this is normal — is rather minimal. by

As Ms. Lalieux also recalled yesterday, this is often done on a voluntary basis. Some people enroll, on a voluntary basis, in studies in order to be able to analyze the psychological development of the child; and this is normal. Studies also on the possibilities of sexual differentiation or adoption of normal sexual behavior in children were conducted exclusively on children of lesbian mothers, compared with children of heterosexual mothers. It is therefore obviously often based on the realities that already exist that these studies have been made. It is observed that often reproduction was done through medically assisted reproduction (PMA) in women who live with a partner.

Furthermore, almost all of the studies compare the behavior of children raised by a lesbian mother to that of children raised by a single heterosexual mother or divorced. The comparison is officially cut off if it is not done with a child raised by two heterosexual parents. We also talked about a French study in which only parents were questioned; they were all members of an association of homosexual parents. In these studies, the child plays a role that can not be more important.

These studies therefore present themselves as systematically empirical, in the form of questionnaires whose terms are from time to time subject to caution.

A very comprehensive study examined in detail all existing studies on homosexual parenting, whose conclusions are sometimes radically different.

Therefore, the only conclusion that we can draw from all these studies, which have been read in all directions, each of the members of the committee having tried to document themselves as much as possible and having gone through the whole of these studies and conclusions – even for this reason, this debate has been very positive – is that it is difficult to draw a conclusion because these studies go in all directions, because they are made either on the basis of few examples or in comparison of some very specific situations. by

I think I have already answered the three arguments, namely equality, studies and legal certainty. Now I would like to develop some other arguments. by

What are, in practice, the situations that are targeted through this law?

This concerns mostly situations where a woman, a man who already lives in a gay couple decides, in this context, in agreement with her or her partner, to procreate a child, whether with her own gametes or those of a third person, and to integrate that child, from his birth, into the couple that he forms with his or her partner: child carried by a lesbian mother, most often by artificial insemination, child carried by a carrier mother for a gay couple, child from a coparental contract between a gay couple and a lesbian couple, etc.; all these situations that have been seen and heard.

So, the issue of opening adoption to homosexual couples is closely linked to the debate on access to medically assisted procreation and the anonymity of sperm donation, a subject that has already generated long debates in the House and more ⁇ in the Senate.

In this regard, the State Council reminds us that the right to family life presupposes the existence of a family already constituted and does not protect the mere desire for a child. I return to the idea I developed earlier.

Remember here the interpretation given by the European Court of Human Rights in the Marckx judgment, which states that the child has a fundamental right to a dual paternal and maternal filiation and to a normal family life. Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that the child has the right, to the extent possible, to know his parents and to be raised by them.

In its opinion, the State Council also raises serious objections, in particular with regard to the use of substitute motherhood. Substitute motherhood or borrowed motherhood raises serious objections as to the principle of unavailability of the human body, the dignity of the caregiver and the respect for the principles resulting from the Convention on the Rights of the Child as to the continuity between parenting — including maternity — and the responsibility of parents toward the child.

A second case may also concern the child born within a heterosexual couple who — like Mr. Mayeur mentioned it — due to the sexual reorientation of one of his parents, he is forced to live within a newly formed couple by his parents with a same-sex partner. If a homosexual partner adopts the child of his partner as part of a family recomposition, it is obvious that this implies that the living biological parent gives his consent. It can be understood that this will only happen in very few cases, as adoption is not a sufficient legal status. I will return to this point later.

This ultimately concerns – these will likely be minority cases but they will exist – homosexual couples who want to pick up a child whose birth parents could not or wanted to take on, themselves, the education and which, therefore, would have been entrusted to a placement institution.

For children, this situation is already difficult, since there is a rupture. In many cases, this goes very well but adoption remains difficult to live for the child and this first break can represent a difficulty in the future development of the child.

At the risk of adding a new element of uncertainty and to educate a child, it is important that a paternal function and a maternal function exist and that they are exercised in a complementary and harmonious manner as possible.

However, a homosexual couple will not always, at least to a lesser extent, be able to offer the child what this couple does not have, namely this complementarity of the sexes. At this level, there is always a lack. I am referring to a hearing we had in the context of these discussions...

Mr Wathelet, I have taken note of the fact that you want the paternal and maternal image to be saved for every child who, tomorrow, will be adopted. by

Under these conditions, why did the CDH, when it was in power, allow adoption by a single person regardless of their sexual orientation? You are now in contradiction with the texts you voted for and re-voted during the previous legislature during which this fact was not modified. You are in a hypocrisy. I will explain about this soon.

I repeat that there is a contradiction with the votes you put, not long ago, and the paternal and maternal image you claim.

We have already discussed this issue in the committee. You may remember that I said that we should dare to discuss such topics. It is true that the problem did not arise, in the past, when new votes were conducted. by

In addition, you know like me that the adoption by a single person exists in our Civil Code for more than 200 years. It was already present in the Code Napoleon. Of course, this has not evolved and the debate we have had could allow to put this question back on the table. We should re-discuss this problem in serenity and with the same proportional character as that of the discussions we had in committee.

For the child, the adopted status and the reality of having previously been abandoned are often associated with a painful and difficult feeling. In fact, it is not easy to admit that one is different, and that one does not have parents like everyone else. Why should society further complicate the life of this already tried child by putting him in a situation where he will also have to assume an additional difference, that of his adoptive parents? by

In this perspective, the child serves two things: the adult’s personal fulfillment in his desire for parentality, and the social recognition of an equal value and status supposedly annul the reality of differences between homosexual and heterosexual couples. This is not about the defense of the rights of the child, but rather the needs of the adults whose child is the problem. In this sense, an additional difficulty is added here.

The uncertainty also concerns the socio-cultural integration of the child raised by a gay couple. With regard to internal adoptions, experience shows that biological mothers almost unanimously want to entrust their child to a couple consisting of a father and a mother rather than a single person. They prefer a heterosexual couple.

We talked about this during the hearings. In internal adoption, a Flemish body told us that, since 1997-1998, 10% of adoptions in Belgium were intended for revealed gay couples. Only one person could adopt, but sexual orientation was revealed at the time of the course. Therefore, there are already 10% of adoptions that are done in Flanders through approved bodies.

This is a majority of more than 90%, and this is only in a part of the country. I try to put the necessary weighting and retention there, but I can’t do much better! by

In terms of international adoption, the opening of adoption to persons of the same sex remains and will ⁇ remain a scam for a long time. Today, only Sweden admits this, and it does not count, to date, any adoption by same-sex couples. by

The issue of international adoption by same-sex couples was discussed during the work leading to the elaboration of the Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in International Adoption, made in The Hague in 1993. During the work, it was stressed that in the international adoption procedure, the State of origin and the host State must cooperate from the beginning; they can therefore terminate the procedure at any time, for example given the personal situation of future adoptive parents. Furthermore, in the event that they give their consent to this particular type of adoption, the other Contracting States would have the right to refuse to recognize it for reasons of public order and in the name of their perception of the best interests of the child. by

The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in International Adoption of 29 May 1993 states that adoption must be organised in the best interests of the child and not only in the best interests of adults. by

The hearings in the Justice Committee clearly showed that if one refers to the only countries with which adoption agencies approved by the French Community are authorized to collaborate, one finds that 46% of children adopted between 1991 and 2004 are from countries where homosexuality is illegal or repressed, 52% come from countries where homosexuality is not recognized and 2% — fortunately — come from countries where homosexuality enjoys legal recognition. Of course, this is too little, we agree.

In 2004 alone, 66 percent, or two-thirds of adopted children, came from countries where homosexuality is illegal or, at least, repressed. Debates across several European countries about adoption by same-sex couples question and worry the competent authorities of these countries of origin. Thus, a country like China, which is the leading country offering children for adoption, very clearly excludes any possibility of adoption by a same-sex couple, so it can be concluded that opening up the possibilities of adoption by same-sex couples, in terms of international adoption, is and will remain a scam for a long time.

In addition to the importance of respecting these differences in culture and sensitivity — even if I disagree with them or strongly condemn some of them — it is also necessary to be cautious and not to underestimate the impact that legislation opening adoption to same-sex couples could have on ongoing or future procedures initiated by heterosexual couples.

The State Council notes that the effects of such legislation on the possibility for heterosexual persons to adopt children from such states must be taken into account. Remember that even today, the number of legally adoptable children is much lower than the number of adoptive candidates.

What legal status would the positive right mean to recognize the same-sex partner of the mother or father of a child, when that partner is involved, alongside the mother or father, in the exercise of a function of educational responsibility towards the child and that an affective bond — one can understand it; it is normal and fortunately that it is so — is connected, as in the recomposed families, between the child and his cousin? Is there an alternative for those children already living today with adults, forming a household, of which they are not the biological children?

It is not appropriate to change our conception of the paternal and maternal dual filiation of a child to create a bisexual or monosexual filiation and to admit that the child may be indifferently from his father or mother or the child of these two mothers or the child of these two fathers.

We find it more appropriate to create a new legal institution that would enable the creation of a legal bond between the child and the homosexual or heterosexual partner without that bond becoming a proper bond of filiation. The Council of State, in its opinion, gives us somehow the right. In fact, according to the latter, opening adoption to homosexual couples means placing under an identical legal figure the factual situations involving essential differences, those in which the adopters are of different sex and those in which they are of the same sex. If the legislator chooses this solution, he must be able to justify that the identity of treatment applicable to these fundamentally different situations is reasonably justified, in compliance with the principle of proportionality, taking into account in particular the best interests of the child — which must always be our logic guiding — the fact that the children are necessarily and naturally derived from mixed gametes and that adoption reduces, in the case of simple adoption, or almost completely annihils, in the context of full adoption, the legal relationship established at the outset between the child and his parents.

The State Council goes further. It insists by emphasizing that this identity of treatment of different situations requires to be justified with regard to the criteria of compatibility with the principles of equality and non-discrimination. “As the difference of situation relates to an important fact of the very nature of the conception of life and of the history of human society, namely the bisexual origin of the child and of his belonging in principle to a household of the same nature, it must be the subject of a ⁇ demanding justification.”

This fact of treating objectively different situations in the same way must be subject to a ⁇ demanding justification on the part of the legislator, in particular since the child under twelve years of age cannot consent to his adoption, that continuity in the child’s education and in his ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic origin must be taken into account, and that many foreign States will prevent the recognition of adoptions by same-sex couples under the exception taken from their public order, and that the effects of such legislation on the possibility for Belgian heterosexual couples to adopt children from such states must be taken into account.

It is even expressly emphasized that, even if the proposals for surrogacy were amended so that this statute provides legal security equivalent to those related to the status of adoption, this would not necessarily mean that the only possible solution for the situations that we want to settle is the status of adoption. by

According to the Council of State, the principle of equality and non-discrimination requires that one justify why one chooses a legal figure for adoption and not why one does not choose it. This seems to me very important because it reverses the non-discrimination principle invoked by the advocates of adoption. As I have demonstrated, this justification does not appear to me to have been provided by the authors and defenders of the proposal under consideration with all the rigor required by this notion of justification advanced by the State Council. Which legal figure to adopt, then, will you ask me? We have proposed the figure of social parenting. We have requested from the outset that this social parenting be considered at the same time, as an alternative. In addition, there are many situations where a child is raised de facto daily by an affective couple consisting of a biological parent and a person without a biological connection with that child. These situations should not only be addressed from the limited angle of homosexual couples: they also concern heterosexual couples. by

Social parentality is a new legal figure that would allow, without affecting the child’s own filiation and therefore its identity, to attribute to a person who engages and invests in his role as parent of that child all part of the side effects of a legal relationship of filiation. by

It is an interesting figure due to its flexibility and because it can apply to any type of family situations where a child is raised by a person whose child he is not biologically and legally the child, a person who has contracted an educational commitment to him, as in recomposed families. Whether they are heterosexual or not, there is this affective bond, that strong bond between that adult and that child. The figure of social parentality seems to go in the direction of what the Court of Arbitration advocates, which concludes that it is up to the legislator to specify in what form, under what conditions and under what procedure parental authority — and not filiation — could be extended in the best interests of the child to other persons who do not have a filiation relationship with him. by

Therefore, the application for social parentality would be rejected in all cases if the court finds, by a reasoned decision, that such parentality would be detrimental to the best interests of the child — this interest of the child must guide any reflection, any advancement in terms of social parentality — or contrary to the child’s father or mother’s exercise of his own parental responsibilities. There is no disresponsibility of parents — if they still exist, of course. by

Under no circumstances shall social parentality be preferred over biological parentality, and the assignment of such parentality shall not contribute to disresponsibility of biological parents. by

This is why we propose to distinguish two precise situations: the first is the one where parental authority over a child is exercised by one of its parents, either that the child's filiation is established only in relation to that single parent, or that the other parent is dead or absent. The second situation is where parental authority over the child is exercised by both parents. by

Finally, I apologize for having been a long time.

Confessed error is half forgiven, Mr. Wathelet!

Thank you Mr. President. The arguments put forward to defend this text of adoption by homosexual couples have not convinced us, as I have just demonstrated to you, whether that of equality at the level of couples or that of equality at the level of children, whether that of existing psychomedical studies, or that of the situation and the legal certainty that must be brought to children. by

On the other hand, a category of children is forgotten by this text: they are those children who live daily with adult people with whom they have affective ties, with whom they live 24 hours a day, with whom they have very good relationships, who want to maintain this bond with that adult person with whom they live, whether in a heterosexual couple, whether in a gay couple or in a recomposed family or not. by

This social parenting offered this true alternative to all these families, to all families in their diversity without giving this filiation, without giving this parental relationship. The filiation implies this right to difference, implies this complementarity in the eyes of the child. It is always in relation to the eyes of the child that it should be placed. It is this child’s interest that must guide all our reflection. The child will experience a first confrontation with a first difference: that of the sexes. It constitutes the beginning of filiation, the foundation of this filiation.

Therefore, we will vote against this proposal that is presented to us today.

On the Flemish side, the Flemish Belang is the only political party that resolutely and radically opposes the opening of the right of adoption by same-sex couples. We regret not only the planned legislative amendment, primarily for principled, ethical and ideological considerations, but also and strongly because we believe that a very large number of social issues and problems should be discussed by this Parliament, which, however, do not receive the attention and time they deserve, contrary to the current file, which has now been wasted too much precious parliamentary time.

It is, in other words, one of those foliage of purple, which is excessively placed in the viewer to distract the attention from the real problems. These leaflets are immediately the only achievements in which the red-blue coalition, since its entry into force and in a first phase during the previous legislature still accompanied by the Greens, has shown itself strongly. There may not be 200,000 additional jobs created, despite the false promise, the tax pressure may or may not have decreased, against all empty claims in, the historical misleading Belgium may or may not have become a model state, but one thing stands like a pillar above water: the realization of what one may commonly call the agenda of everything that can be referred to by the term "ethical-progressive", in other words the Dadas of the collected press groups, the lobbies or other logos located on the left side of the political spectrum. The realization of these things is indeed a characteristic of purple. It is these “political acts” — with this term I exaggerate in fact — that will ⁇ constitute the only meaningful content of footnote 38B in which Guy Verhofstadt, as yet another prime minister in the history books of this Kingdom, will whisper, though in small letters and not fat printed. Let it also be clear, on the other hand, that in this case, we will submit to every democratic majority for or against this proposal, as we always and in all cases do. If the Holebi adoption is approved later, then we will democratically respond to it. This can be said, however, given the accusations of antidemocratic or antidemocratic, which are so often misrepresented to us.

However, this does not mean that the supporters can convince us of their right. Nor will they prevent us from getting rid of this legislation as soon as we can find a democratic majority for it. That is also democracy! Today, this vote is the prey of a random political majority. I will go deeper into that later.

For the sake of completeness, I would like to say that we do not condemn the gays and lesbians who found a family on the basis of this law change. Many of the prejudices that the Flemish Interest is put into the shoes as so-called arguments from our party program are nothing more than flat lies. For example, I think of the so-called statement that all children who would grow up in a holebi family would, according to us, be sexually perverted or socially disrupted. This is not the case, although it is sometimes claimed.

Again – I have already said this in the Committee on Justice – the Flemish Interest does not in fact oppose any form of family as such. However, we remain aware that the traditional family consisting of a mother and a father provides the best guarantees for the upbringing of children. We remain of the view that this form of family must be protected by law with absolute priority and must be respected by society and consequently normalized as the only one.

I will not exhaust myself to once again pointfully refute the arguments of the supporters. The debate in the committee has already been sufficiently conducted. I allowed myself to sharpen our views on this subject by refuting three frequently recurring murderers employed by the holebi lobby and relatives.

First, there would be a number of studies that prove that children who grow up in a holebi family do not suffer harm from it. Honestly, I haven’t seen those studies. Colleague Swennen spoke of hundreds of studies. Mrs. Lalieux held a small 40 over. I do not know what it is. In any case, this causes me to worry that the reference to those studies and the gospel of figures in this regard are not a convincing support of the arguments of the advocates.

What’s more—this is our point of view—nobody needs a study that states that the traditional family as the natural order has biologically fixed it is the best form of family to lead children to adulthood. Not that alternatives would be impossible. In any case, you do not have to go through studies to prove that.

Second, advocates of holebi adoption come up with the argument that holebi families are extra motivated, getting much better screened, realizing that they look at society and the immediate environment with a very critical look. Also at this point, I have not encountered any comprehensive and convincing study. If one is screening with studies, one must be able to put them on the table. Even if these studies exist or may exist, too few holebi family situations weigh too lightly to make a meaningful comparison with the traditional family form. By the way, studies are nothing more than a subjective given. We don’t talk so much about the quality of a holebi family compared to a traditional family. Studies can be subjective and serve the interests of those who want to use them.

Mr. Speaker, I do not like — I have learned this from my time at the banquet — that one denies the light of the sun. It is said that there are no studies for them because they have not been seen. Maybe you don’t want to see them. Recently, Ms. Van Fraussen of the VUB conducted another such study.

Well, even in Belgium there are such studies. I am surprised that you did not want to read it. That is where it comes down.

What I’m saying, colleague, is that there’s cheating with numbers. You can always send me this study. That is my second argument. These studies honestly do not affect our cold clothes. We do not need studies to prove that the traditional family form is the best. The sun’s light has been shining for billions of years, and the traditional family has existed for as long as humanity exists. That is what we say. It is the natural order that it provides us. That I say. One may produce another hundred thousand studies — I have not even heard that number name —; you deny the light of the sun.

Proponents of holebi families argue – with this I come to the next point – that even in heterogeneous families so many children suffer from neglect, abuse, subsidy and the like. I have heard this argument in the committee. Sorry, that’s intellectually unfair, it’s comparing apples with lemons. The problematic state in certain heterogeneous families measures to a situation proposed by some even as almost ideal in holebi families, which is simply intellectually unfair. The supporters, by the way, also feel that that reasoning is on the edge and that that equation is not correct. The next logical step in reasoning must indeed be—and that step is one too far—that if all children grew up in holebi families, there would be much less social problems in the family sphere. When you penetrate the reasoning, then you must eventually arrive at it. You know you are going one step too far.

The truth, by the way, must not be violated, colleagues. It is precisely — and we continue to do so — the mentality that everything can and everything can on the ethical level that has systematically destroyed marriage and the traditional family as institutions since May 1968, since the outbreak of the so-called sexual revolution. The House and Parliament are also guilty of this. I am convinced, and I dare to assert with firmness, that here, with the breakdown of the traditional marriage, the traditional family, one must look for the cause of the since observed increased number of suicides, the growing number of social displacements, the increasing drug and drink abuse, and so on among many but not only young people. This does not mean condemnation of people who found holebi families. Absolutely not. I do not place the two opposite one another and I do not want to, I have already said. However, the breakdown of the traditional family has caused a great deal of marshal misery, despite our material well-being being greater today than it was before.

In the meantime, we have already been given the right from the Flemish Belang as to the possible consequences of both gay marriage and holebi adoption. We already predicted that by the introduction of the new concept of the concept of family, children would grow up in social forms with multiple fathers and/or mothers where it is the sexual orientation of the partners that will determine the exercise of parenting and not the path indicated by the natural order. This has now actually been shown by the reports we have received in the media where two gay fathers and two lesbian mothers will have cross-sectional children together. These children will then grow up in a family situation of holebi-co-parenthood, so with two fathers and two mothers.

We ask ourselves serious questions about this social evolution, if at least for a moment in these politically correct times.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, Mrs. Minister, therefore, it is not the arguments of the supporters that have impressed us. We know and feel, on the contrary, properly reinforced by the opinion of the State Council which, unfortunately, against all parliamentary inclinations in, was only discussed just before the final vote in the committee. In other words, too late.

Why the usual procedure in the committee was taken a loop, has also been shown afterwards. If this opinion had been given at the beginning of the debates, then one of the main arguments of the advocates of the hole bath option would have been taken down immediately, even before the debate began.

What is the first and most important consideration of the State Council opinion, the core idea in fact? That is, the so-called discrimination of gay couples against heterosexual couples in the upbringing of children is absolutely not discrimination. Along with the second, legitimate statement of the State Council that a child has the right to a family rather than that candidate parents would have a subjective right to a child, these are the arguments of the State Council that enable us to reject this law once the political situation is in a constellation in which we could redirect that law. The starting point of the reasoning of the advocates of the holebi adoption, that prospective parents have the right to a child, was undermined together with the principle of discrimination.

As I said before during the committee meetings — and be sure of that — the ethically-progressive slinger of purple is almost at its extreme peak in the swing to the left, but he will silently and surely return to the right. I take history as a guide for the future. It is waiting for the moment when the political majority can be found, but I realize, of course, too well, colleagues, that this will not be the case immediately.

There is a reason for the lack of that political majority. I explain myself more closely.

To find such a majority, a political party consistently conservative in ethical matters should be able to count on the support of the Christian Democrats in such circumstances. I say "would", because I dare to be honest, colleagues, to bet no more half nickel that the CD&V will ever want to come back with the present proposal when it would become a law, now that everyone has had to determine in recent months that it has first made a 180 degree curve and then another 180 degree — 360 degrees together. It is one of those political tours in which a stuntman, if he would enter the political stage, would say in advance: "Don't try this at home."

It is meaningful that CD&V does not want to cut off the spike of the debate; otherwise it happens always when there is opposition to be carried out. The attitude of CD&V proves indeed that it can fail. The CD&V has been disrupted. I will put my finger on the wound and how and why of this out of the clothes. Their

In this matter, I must first express my sincere admiration to colleague Verherstraeten who, during the last meeting of the Justice Committee on the occasion of the discussion of the opinion of the State Council, managed to say nothing continuously for three quarters of hours, that is, for 45 minutes, in fact. I was not the only one who determined that. The only meaningful phrase I remembered from his speech because it was also the only one, ⁇ unfortunately for CD&V, from which there was some clarity, was the following: "I respect everyone's opinion in this file." Their

Well, colleague Verherstraeten, it’s pretty wise that you have to say that. You cannot do otherwise either. After all, CD&V has actually expressed every opinion that exists about holebi adoption, from the left to the right camp, also during the parliamentary debate. I remember the discussion before, during the previous legislature, regarding same-sex marriage. I will remind you for a moment. The CD&V’ers did not stop this, provided that the hole pool option would not come out. That was already a weakness at the time, precisely because marriage is first and foremost the institution in which traditional parenting crystallizes itself as the best guarantee for the upbringing and protection of children. At that time you, CD&V, began the ethical mistake of the century by wanting to uncomprehensibly separate marriage and parenting from each other in order to find the backseil for same-sex marriage. That, in turn, is another political flatter on top of that ethical mistake, in an unlikely uncomfortable attempt to block holebi adoption. Their

Do not be mistaken! The advocates of holebi adoption then, when you made that statement, took their battles at home, because the marriage a priori includes the possibility of raising children. If not, it would only really be deprived of its essence and its own nature. When I am asked whether homosexuals, now that they are allowed to marry, can also have children, I am obliged to say yes, if one considers the institute of marriage as it has always been conceived in the Civil Code. This also applies to social data in general: one does not even have to indicate just a legal meaning. Their

This double, this ethical annex political mistake would naturally break you acid, CD&V, because you could no longer deviate from the deadly street you hit. Indeed, it should therefore not be surprising that colleague Van der Auwera, during the first meeting of the Justice Committee where the case was dealt with, must or may have come to say that there were no fundamental objections to the adoption of holebi, note bene referring to the studies. The first piece of the curve was taken: 180 degrees. Their

Then the backman began to move: this was not taken into account for a moment. Child and Family, for example, to name only one. This made the top of the party, including chairman Vandeurzen, eventually still land fairly gently, but instead in a field of burntnuts and distels that you had already sown when approving the same-sex marriage. The landing was not so smooth.

Forgive me and correct me if I am wrong. If you do not say it now, you may later say it in the speech desk. Is it now the last view of CD&V that remains valid, and what I heard at the time in television interviews, in particular that in practice, if the proposals of CD&V were followed — I have not seen them on the table anymore —, the lesbian couples would be able to adopt or raise children and the gay couples would not for some reason.

In any case, today I was able to hear during the radio broadcast that CD&V would apparently vote against. The 180-degree curve is taken again. The 360° are round in this way and so CD&V has landed back where it left.

I assume that everyone is satisfied, otherwise the vote will show that later.

Politically, you are now with empty hands. On the right side, you are notoriously overlooked by the opinion of the State Council. On the other hand, the guardianship, a meritorious idea that earned better, unfortunately, by your own fault, is gradually turning into a political shame to cover up the curve work on the holebiad option. Finally, the idea was unfortunately still weighed by the State Council and found too light to excess of catastrophe. I keep putting my finger on the wound. You, CD&V, have deceived and deceived the entire political market of ideas. You have tried here and there yourself to flush a crap into each other. However, the commodity was distributed and purchased a long time left- and right-hand. You have expressed all possible opinions. Now warempel no longer has a single opinion to proclaim.

From the finalisation of the process, which has begun to take place within the previous CVP, the consequences are only now, in this matter, very well visible. That comes from it. After all, for the past two decades you have applied the salamite technique to your own ethical ideological corpus. You have cut off the traditional values and standards from your program. The poor ends, the remnants that remain, let you then, under vague denominators — with terms such as, on the one hand, respect and, on the other hand, social reality — bend before the elector’s nose. Some members of your party know too well that a sweet but toxic preparation of the left-wing infusion was injected into your conceptual arsenal.

There is a good antidote.

What is a good antidote, Mr. De Crem?

The [...]

The voters will listen to you. Per ⁇ the best antidote is listening to the voter.

( ... )

The Peilings? I always look at the election results, Mr. De Crem.

( ... )

We’ll try to follow the polls, right? I wish you a lot of success.

Mr. De Crem, the marching of your party is the best proof that everything that the left thinks, calls, screams, sounds, collides, whistles and whistles in our politically correct censorship state, can claim the monopoly on the ethical agenda.

This week, we have seen yet another stall in connection with the new attack that is being prepared on the Flemish Interest, of the fact that if necessary, the right to free expression may be violated.

They just do. In any case, we continue to stand up for our free opinion — at least as long as it can — despite the cowardice of those who keep silent and prefer to hang their hook as much as possible and as submissively as possible to the progressive winds. Wind manufacturing, in which the Verhofstadts of this world are champions, let there be no doubt. The fact that we must spend our time on a file like this proves it.

Finally, it is characteristic that the decision in a political file with such an ethical dimension is made dependent on a random political majority, an eventuality in a Parliament that is already half of the legislature composed of successors for a quarter. That is the reality of today. This is how Paars sets out its policies.

There are only a few words left of this speech. The Flemish Belang Group will vote against holebi adoption with the full force of its conviction.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Deputy Prime Minister, dear colleagues, the bill that is submitted to us today has been the subject of many discussions both within this assembly and within the public opinion, it is a good thing! There has been a great rhetoric in the whole of society, we no longer count the debates in which many of us have participated, through the media or citizen meetings.

The debate, often passionate, has allowed the development of multiple arguments, often testifying to the complexity of the problem, or referring little or enough, consciously or unconsciously, to individual intuitions.

The challenge of the legislator in a democracy is to accompany, by law, the evolution of our society, when it risks to result in legal inequalities. To do this, it is our duty and responsibility to overcome all areas of non-law that go against our values and fundamental rights.

Everyone will today admit that the family is no longer declining in its classical form. Even if the nuclear family remains a reference model, no one can ignore that many children are living other family models: separated parents, parents who have created another couple, same-sex parents.

Recognizing in the rule of law the developments of our societies and, above all, accompanying them to frame them, allows us to register in modernity. Not modernity understood in a common sense, namely what is in fashion, what is trend, no! of philosophical modernity. This is dominated by the idea of human reason that determines and allows the autonomy of each individual. This modernity shapes human freedom and has nourished our democracies. Modernity rejects determinism by preferring responsibility, objective debate and, in the end, political choice.

Pretending, as some have done or still do, that we act in precipitation is simply being amnesic. Indeed, as early as 2001, in his general policy note, the then Minister of Justice stated possible opening of the adoption of homosexual couples. During discussions during the previous legislature, both of the law reforming adoption and that allowing same-sex marriage, the issue was raised and widely evoked, debated and heard.

During this legislature, the family general statements analyzed this problem using the opinions of many experts. At this assembly, the Family Law Subcommittee auditioned, starting in March 2005, a panel of experts outlining the problem in its various dimensions. It should also be emphasized that almost all of the legal practitioners we audited – all confused networks, since we heard of legal practitioners from UCL, Saint Louis, KUL – were in favor, except for one, of the legal form of adoption.

When the debate was held in the Justice Committee, additional hearings were requested. They have indeed taken place. We have been so far as to ask for the opinion of the State Council, and that was also a good thing.

The timetable of our work includes about two months of inactivity. I thought that for such an important project, it was indicated to have the opinion of the State Council, regardless of its interpretation on the matter. I think this is appropriate for the proper management of the legislative work.

You did very well, Mr. President. The opinion of the State Council was rich and the jurisprudential analysis of the most searched.

This 150-page State Council opinion confirmed us by clearly stating that there were no legal obstacles to adoption and that today we must make a political choice. Why Why ? Because, both judicial and legal solutions are unsatisfactory for the demand of equality and non-discrimination that many children today live in our society. by

Basically, the debate on the opening of adoption to gay and lesbian couples is evidently part of the fight against discrimination, but above all in the desire to support the best interests of the child, to recognize to the children of these couples a series of rights, thereby avoiding that they are also victims of discrimination as they are currently.

There are, today, children raised and loved by gay couples, those conceived by a lesbian couple by artificial insemination or those who were adopted by a single member of the couple, adoption by a single person being, she, permitted.

Is it the role of the state to ignore this reality? Is it the role of a State to close the eyes on the everyday life of children who are plunged from the beginning into the field of discrimination? Is it the role of a state not to protect the best interests of the child? What should we do? to prohibit? The beautiful hypocrisy. This is like letting all children live out of law, leaving them without rights. It is a great irresponsibility to plunge these children into legal insecurity! These children are raised by two people, two parents in their own eyes. However, the law recognizes only one of them, the adopter. What happens in case of separation, death of one of the parents? The child is deprived of ties with his "second" parent, who does not exist under the law.

By allowing homosexual couples to adopt, we give these children a status, we recognize them with the rights they are deprived of today. We simply register these children in the field of the rule of law.

I will allow myself to insist: today, both the law of 24 April 2003 and some techniques of artificial procreation allow a single person to have a child. In other words, a woman can choose to be a single mother, a single person (heterosexual or homosexual) has the right to adopt. Both parents are prohibited for reasons of sexual orientation. This sounds more than critical, Mr. Wathelet, I repeat it.

I will make little comment on the arrangement of the bill itself. In fact, I believe that the path chosen is the one that brings the greatest legal certainty. Adoption ensures the safety and stability of the child’s bond. by

I will add, for the good understanding of the debates, that the opening of adoption to homosexual couples does not mean that a whiteseing is thus granted to adoptive parents. It is necessary to clarify and be clear about this: the bill does not provide homosexual couples with an absolute and automatic right to adopt, a right to have a child. Adopting candidates will be subjected to a lengthy procedure, a thorough social survey on their affective and educational abilities.

Beyond moralist arguments, it is common to hear opponents of adoption of homosexual couples highlight the uncertainty — it has been heard — surrounding the balance and psychological development of these children. by

First, it is pretending to forget the love that surrounds these children. A child is raised in love by the attention and affection shown to him. The second is to ignore the scientific studies already published.

I don’t want to enter here into the debate about the studies we have abundantly cited to support our choice in favor of adoption by same-sex couples. Certainly, they have weaknesses, but I would also like to emphasize that no study has seriously and experimentally established the danger of adoption by same-sex couples.

As mentioned earlier, many arguments have already been exchanged. Nevertheless, Madame Lalieux, you seem to fly over the element of studies by asking not to look too much at them, because, in the end, they say a little everything and its opposite.

I am surprised to note that the studies in question, invented and mentioned in our committee debates, are, for the most part, studies conducted in the Anglo-Saxon countries; for the most part, or even for the most part, they aim only at the situation of women who raise children together, without targeting the situation of men. Somewhat naive and with an attempt of common sense, spontaneously and without being a specialist on these issues, I feel that it is not exactly the same. by

Many have highlighted the fact that these studies were conducted on a voluntary basis; as some have said, these people have decided to participate in these studies in a militant context. Furthermore, the deadlines in which they were accomplished are relatively short and the periods relatively short. by

Therefore, without any mention of unanimous and absolute consensus as to the best interests of the child, sweeping from one side of the hand the fact that today there is at least — I use the words with caution — no serious doubt as to the best interests of the child, that is what makes reasoning difficult. by

I can without difficulty follow your intellectual path for a number of elements, but on this point it seems to me that there is a terrible fragility. This gives me the impression that your reasoning is based on a bet. The bet that the studies in question, though heavily controversial, would be accurate. They may be, or they may not be. You decide, and it’s your conviction – and I respect it – to make a bet but it’s not my case, it’s not my choice.

I will not repeat all that has been said about the studies. Studies that follow families on a voluntary basis, this is true for homosexuals but it is also true for heterosexuals. There have never been studies conducted on an involuntary basis.

They are mostly Anglo-Saxon. This is true for early studies because, in the United States, it has long been possible to adopt in some states. Mr. Michel, you did not hear the words of the VUB team because you were not there.

This is not correct! A sub-Commission on Family Law was established with seven members. One member per political group was present and regularly ⁇ to its respective group. You said the work was done in the committee, I was present in the committee. by

Stop systematically suggesting that only you would have attended the hearings!

We will not argue! The Family Law Subcommittee is open to everyone, especially during hearings. The President repeated it. You were not there and you may have read their studies. VUB has been following these couples on a voluntary basis for twenty years and this multidisciplinary team also practices inseminations. And the same goes for all of our academic hospitals, of rather secular orientation. For many hospitals, these are multidisciplinary teams that I tend to trust. by

Mr. Michel, they have been doing this for twenty years. They are not witch teachers. They are betting on the lives of these children.

It is unacceptable that you say this in relation to those teams that have the full confidence of the public. There has never been a trial against them. by

Compared to male couples, it is true that there are far fewer follow-up examples as there are far fewer adoptions by male couples. Studies are actually fewer.

Again, this is not a bet. Children are not serving cobayes. I believe that all this has been thought of, that these children exist, that the majority of the testimonies of these children — that they are not forced! — are positive when they are young adults or teenagers today.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Lalieux compares situations that are not comparable and that are put into the same bag regarding the concept and the institution of adoption.

The situation of lesbian couples who practice artificial insemination with anonymous donor is radically different from the situation of gay couples, married or unmarried, who would adopt a child procreated, by essence, by a heterosexual couple. I insist that these situations are fundamentally different and draw your attention to this point.

These heterosexual couples

They are adopting! It is exactly the same thing!

The [...]

( ... ...

All those who interrupt will come and explain to the tribune, at their convenience. Let Mrs. Lilly speak out.

Mr. Speaker, I will continue. We received the studies; we analyzed them. We all have our opinion on these studies and we trust our medical and psychological teams.

I will answer the question on the precautionary principle advanced from the beginning by Mr. by Wathelet. Some emphasize this precautionary principle to refuse to open adoption to homosexual couples. The latter — I think they are many — start from the postulate that from the moment when one cannot measure the risks incurred by a child — Mr. Michel, this is what you said — when he is raised by homosexual couples, it is better not to pronounce. These risks have not been established; in any case, I have never read studies going in this direction. by

On the other hand, I am asking a very different question regarding this precautionary principle. What is the impact today, for many children raised by homosexual couples, of the refusal of the State to recognize them the relationship of parenthood that they live daily in those families that give them love? What is the impact for these children of the state’s attitude that denies their affective bond with both parents, which excludes them from the concept of family life? I would like you to ask yourself these questions.

By refusing to recognize this bond of filiation with their two parents, the state would send the following message to these children: the refusal to grant them a whole series of rights including fundamental rights, including that of having a recognized family. This message is ⁇ negative, it is equivalent to confining these children into a sphere of discrimination, to plunge them into a real insecurity that they already experience today.

I repeat, the proposal discussed today is not the result of a smoking strategy of a sorcery apprentice, contrary to what you have claimed during some debates.

In addition to the parliamentarians who support it, the proposal has gained the support of many very important and representative actors of civil society. I recall that the General Assembly of the League of Families has voted in favour of adoption by homosexual couples, as well as the Centre for Equal Opportunities, the Socialist Preventive Women, the Human Rights League, the Coordination of NGOs for the Rights of the Child, which includes UNICEF and Amnesty International. by

This proposal allows homosexual couples to adopt, that is, to register in an adoption procedure that we had ambitiously redefined during the previous legislature. Just like heterosexual couples or single couples who have already started steps to adopt, homosexual couples will be entitled to register in the adoption course tomorrow. by

I would like to remind you of this: when we reformed adoption in 2003, we profoundly changed the procedures. This was already in the best interests of the child and as part of the fight against the discrimination that affected unmarried couples. I believe that all the parties that voted for this reform at the time have confidence in the mechanisms we have put in place. We did not open a right for everyone to be a parent, to have a child, but a right to be a candidate for adoption. Today, we simply propose to prolong this reform and thus remove a good portion of hypocrisy. Those who voted the law yesterday and who refuse to extend it to homosexual couples allow a single person to adopt. They thus implicitly admit that a single gay person can adopt, can be dad or mom. To be clear, they refuse a gay couple to adopt, they refuse to recognize a couple of women or a couple of men to be parents and to be able to educate a child.

But where do they put the interests of a child? Is it not a form of neo-conservationism to refuse to see that there is another reality than the nuclear family, that this reality is that of children without rights related to filiation? Our debate must be within the field of social acceptance. It is the responsibility of the State to encourage tolerance and to combat all forms of discrimination. Opening adoption to homosexual couples is fighting discrimination, it is giving a status to all these children. We are in the field of social acceptance and I insist: it is up to the state to encourage tolerance and fight against discrimination. by

Mr. Speaker, I will conclude with a quote from Jacques Attali: "Society progresses when practices are organized by laws and when laws protect against the excesses of this practice." I received a very moving email from a couple of same-sex people living in Flanders. Following the adoption path, these persons had the opportunity to adopt in 2001 and 2003. This is a couple of men, Mr. Wathelet. They had the joy of having two little daughters, born of a drug addicted mother. They were lucky enough to welcome these two little girls into their family.

What do they say?

“An adoption law will add nothing to the emotional bond we have with our children. Love has made us a united family. A law concerning adoption will guarantee A. And to E." — the names of the two little girls — "that they can grow up with two parents who choose for them unconditionally. Our daughters were born in harsh conditions. Your voice is decisive for their future.”

I thank you and thank you for thinking about them.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, colleagues, in the explanation to my proposal for a holebiad option, which is to be voted today, I have been very concise about the reasons why. “It is a social reality that within our society children are educated lovingly in a multitude of forms of society: by single persons, by people who are separated, by partners of equal and uneven sex, in newly formed families. This diversity of forms of society is also increasingly reflected in our legislation. Witness to this the opening of marriage for same-sex couples. It is not up to the legislator to exclude from adoption one particular form of society, namely that of two persons of the same sex. In fact, there are no objective reasons for this, neither in the best interests of the child nor in the best interests of the potential adopters. Children who grow up in a same-sex relationship are at least as happy as children who grow up in other relationships.”

My colleagues, for my group and for me, that motivation was enough to submit my bill. Today, after the previous parliamentary process, it still applies. Moreover, after the discussions in the subcommittee, after the various hearings, after the hearing in the Justice Committee, after an additional hearing there, after the opinion of the State Council, after a subsequent discussion in the Justice Committee and after all the social debate — some say that it was not held, I think it is indeed held — I have only discovered more arguments advocating the introduction of holebi adoption in our law. A number of arguments I already knew, a number of others have become quite clear in the course of the debate.

This will be the core of my discussion. I will give you fifteen arguments to vote for holebi adoption today.

First, there are many scientific studies — one can deny that, but they exist — which show black on white that children raised in a holebi family are socially and psychologically as healthy as children raised in a heterogeneous family. The importance of the child is not questionable.

Secondly, worldwide — one can deny this, but the studies exist — psychological research has shown that all, at least very many prejudices must be wiped off the table. In-depth psychological studies show that missing a father or mother figure has no adverse consequences for the child. What matters is the loving care of the child. That is the essence. Who dares to say here that that loving dedication is by definition guaranteed with a heterosexual couple and by definition would not be guaranteed with a holebi couple. I remember the examples on this subject, which we all know.

Third, it is absolutely in the best interests of the child that it has two full-fledged parents, with rights and duties. Therefore, it is the task of the legislature to provide all children with maximum legal protection and security.

Fourth, adoption is the only way to create a full-fledged legal bond between holebi parents and their child. All other so-called solutions, such as caregiving and co-parenthood, do not offer that possibility. These new statutes do not give inheritance. By these statutes, the legal relationship with the parents disappears at the moment the child becomes major.

Fifth, this proposal for holebi adoption goes fundamentally, essentially, from the best interests of the child, from the right of the child to a family that provides for the best care. Therefore, this proposal does not prejudice the right of a couple to a child. In this regard, I would like to expressly point out that the same principled objection to the hetero adoption option was and is still being used.

Sixth, simultaneously — very ⁇ — with the realization of the best interests of the child, the equal rights of heterosexual and holebi couples are indeed realized. There is nothing wrong with this, on the contrary.

Seventh, as an intermediate, the State Council has not expressed any substantial objections to holebi adoption. The same-sex marriage at the time was different. Moreover, the State Council says that Parliament must decide.

Eighth, like the hetero adoption option, holebi adoption will be subject to a strict adoption procedure. Those who know the procedure know that there are very strict criteria for aptitude to educate, as they are called. Simply claiming, or giving the impression, that any couple that wants a child can simply order or pick up a child at an adoption service, is absolutely, but therefore absolutely, wrong.

Ninth, a holebi family is not more confusing for an adopted child than a heterogeneous family. Also in many heterogeneous families there is an adopted child with many questions about his origin. It is a problem that can arise with any adoption.

Tenth, this proposal does not contradict the classic man-woman family, but simply acknowledges one of the evolutions of the last decades in our society.

It is not the Parliament in particular, not the politics, but the society itself that has shaped a new reality. It is the society itself, what was built on the workplace of our society, it is that movement that has broken the monopoly of the classical family man-woman. Colleagues, you all know that many children grow up with mom or dad after a divorce or separation of cohabitants, in newly formed families with two dads or two moms, and so on. Let us also not forget that many children grow up in single-parent families, in same-sex couples, and so on.

Eleventh, the stigmatizing statement that a child in his upbringing cannot do without a mother and a father is equivalent to suggesting that a child cannot be surrounded by the best care and can grow up with, for example, a single mother.

Twelfth, a society in which same-sex marriage is possible but excludes holebi adoption is not consistent.

Thirteenth, that our country approves holebi adoption will have no consequences for inter-country adoptions. This is very clearly demonstrated by, among other things, the Swedish example, about which we received information during the hearing.

On the fourteenth, the acceptance of the holebi being will increase. The same-sex marriage proves that. We must dare to cross the threshold.

Fifth, and last but not least, tolerance in our society towards minority groups gets a push in the back.

Finally, my colleagues, I have the following. I have been a member of Parliament since 1991. Since then, I have been almost continuously committed to the equality of holebi’s. I can assure you that in the beginning, in the first bills, it was not obvious. The resistance was enormous, much greater than today. However, we have been able to break the social and political taboo with falls and rises. The adoption of the same-sex marriage law in 2003 was a huge step forward and today we can put the crown on the work of equal entitlement for the holebi.

In the first instance, it is a bill in the best interests of the child with maximum security and maximum legal protection. At the same time, and in one breath, we make equality entirely true.

Colleagues, think about your voice behavior, later, in the first place, the happiness of the children. Think of equal opportunities for everyone. Then you contribute to an increase in the happiness of many people — of children, of young people, of the elderly — in this society, in our world.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, as previously stated, the House is addressed with a series of proposals aimed at authorizing the adoption of children by same-sex couples only through the removal of the words "of different sexes" from articles of the Civil Code that deal with the institution of adoption, therefore, a priori, a simple thing. This concept of simplicity will be repeated several times during the discussion.

In addition, some of these proposals provide that the name will be chosen by mutual agreement by the couple or that the child will bear the double name of the adopted preceded or followed by the name chosen by the adopters. One of the proposals, which has so far become obsolete, even considered the introduction in our Civil Code, a new mode of filiation by the recognition of the partner as a second parent, which would not require a biological bond between the child and the second parent, since the filiation is already established in relation to that partner. That was the proposal of Mrs. Genot.

The proposals presented for discussion today are intended, on the one hand, to provide a legal framework for the following new family situations, namely a reconstituted family consisting of a father or mother who has received from a previous union, whose other partner has disappeared, one or more children and who lives or is married to a partner of the same sex as him, male or female, having adopted alone and living with a partner of the same sex, and a lesbian couple whose partner has conceived a child through artificial insemination with an anonymous donor; on the other hand, these proposals aim to enable same-sex persons, married or not, to be candidates together for international or national adoption of children.

Other proposals have the same scope, but do not create a subsidiary link. This is where I would like to respond to previous exhibitions. In fact, I think it is a little easy to say that the proposal currently being discussed would, using the concept of adoption, fill a legal void, create a framework that would not have existed and that could not exist outside the proposed institution, namely adoption.

As I have just said, other proposals have been submitted that, for example, would introduce a new system such as social parenting or that tended to improve the existing system such as affective custody. Wrongly or correctly, they were not examined jointly and therefore could not be compared with the adoption system during our work in the Justice Committee.

Either these proposals were deemed insufficient by some – wrongly it seems to me –; or others wanted to position themselves clearly and without interference for or against the possibility of a filiation link in the matter that we have to deal with today.

We can see, therefore, the solution that has been chosen, is to extract any other proposal that would not speak of adoption and to position – this is the only choice we have today – for or against adoption in relation to the situations of new families as I have described them above.

It is, it has been said and repeated, an extensive social debate, begun for more than a year in the Family Law Subcommittee first and then in the Justice Commission, fed by two salves of hearings and a number of interventions, both contradictory and exciting. This debate is now at a crucial turning point. We all, representatives of the Nation, will have to express, through our nominative vote, the way we consider that it is appropriate, in Belgian law, to protect the child who has lost or who will not know either of his parents. Adoption is in our society, especially since World War II, an institution aimed at providing a family to a child who has lost or could not know his own. By the creation of a substitute filiation link – and this is very important – linking the abandoned child to the adopter and carrying above all the obligation to bear on the latter (the adopter), the State assumes the assistance and protection it owes to the most fragile of us and expresses, by the law that founds this link, the way it intends that this protection be instituted and implemented, that is, in the best interest of the child.

The question here is therefore not, especially in the factual situations of which our ears are shaken, to pronounce on the affective and educational capabilities of same-sex couples. There is a strong bet — and this is not contested, neither by me nor by anyone — that same-sex couples have as much, if not sometimes more, affective and educational capacity than couples of different sexes. There is also no question of considering that it would never be in the child’s interest to be adopted by a gay couple. No, in fact the real question that is asked, is the universal question that some want to ask us today and which is summarized as follows: is it the same thing for a child to have one or more substitute parents of different sexes or of the same sex? Answering such a question involves asking about the extent of the difference in our society, and more ⁇ of the sexual difference, a reality that manifests itself most irreducibly in generation, that is, in the fact of procreating, of bringing into the world.

Now, in a culture where the realities that seemed to be the most elementary are the subject of debate, here are doubts expressed about the importance of the sexual difference at the heart of filiation. We see emerging the functional neologism of “homoparentality” – which I will oppose to the term “parenthood” linked to the generation – in a militant context, which ultimately aims at the institutional recognition in all its aspects of homosexuality. by

Recall that, since 2003, Belgium, which is tolerant, has fully accepted this claim by opening marriage to homosexual couples — marriage still conceived, until proof of the contrary, between two older individuals — with the effect of having changed the content of this institution of marriage and having it ipso facto disconnected from the two other institutions that previously resulted naturally from it, namely filiation and adoption. by

So those who say that we must vote for adoption for the children that would come into homosexual couples, because we opened marriage to these couples, in my opinion are mistaken, since the nature of marriage, from the extension of marriage to homosexual couples, has changed since 2003 in our country, the institution of marriage having been disconnected from filiation and adoption which, in my opinion, concern and should concern only children born or come into heterosexual couples. by

Indeed, if two partners in a heterosexual couple are enough to produce the generation, to produce a third subject, it takes at least three intervenants in a homosexual couple, in such a way that, in the latter case, the child is inevitably subject to a double problem of knowledge of its origins and construction of its identity.

To hear the signatories of the proposals discussed on the air of "everything that is simple is not necessarily bad", there would be no problem generally any for these children. by

And to produce a quantity of authority arguments ranging from numerous convergent scientific studies to undisputed conclusions – it has been said and repeated – to the love given to the child as a value justifying everything, through the will to educate foreign countries to the recognition of homosexuality, through adoption as projected in Belgium.

The analysis of these arguments demonstrates their insufficiency and must imperatively incite us to prudence and to the utmost prudence.

First argument, there is no discussion on the subject — the first wave of hearings is the proof of that — where one does not hear advance peremptorily that “a number of American scientific studies show that there is no difference in the well-being and mental health of children, between those who are raised by homosexual adults and those who are raised by heterosexual adults.” by

It is known and has already been said, when we examine these studies closer, in particular through a review made by Mrs. Charlotte Patterson (1992), as well as by a study not provided by the Spanish Institute of Family Policy, in May 2005, we notice various elements.

1 of 1. The constitution of the samples is quite critical

by the limited number of questionnaires;

- by the age of the subjects surveyed or concerned which, with two close exceptions, is often the pre-puberal age, without taking into account the intergenerational while the integration of the problem in the duration, that is, the fact of being able to question children who have parents who have grandparents themselves, over a long period of time, would allow much better to take into account the actual situation;

- by the quality of respondents: in a French study, only adults chosen from among the members of the Parent Association and future gay and lesbian parents are interviewed;

- by the choice of situations: almost all studies compare the behavior of children raised by a lesbian mother to that of children raised by a single gay mother or divorced, while it would also be appropriate to compare children raised by heterosexual parents.

2 of 2. The contents of the questionnaires are limited, all of these studies presenting themselves as "systematically empirical", that is, based on a purely behavioral and functionalist perspective. The functional is explicitly opposed to the structural, in the sense that the quality of family relations, the terms of comfort, satisfaction and social adjustment are called primary on the structure itself of the family. In psychoanalysis, things go beyond conscious representations. So we could have the resources of psychoanalysis to question more before this problem, which was not realized.

3 of 3. The conclusions of these studies also have an absolutely unilateral character, the results all going in the direction of the announced thesis, without any counter-example and without any reservation. Now, since Karl Popper — and our assembly has some scientists — falsifiability, that is, taking into account the facts or points of view that might contradict the theory examined, is commonly considered as a criterion of the valid scientific character of a speech. One can only question whether these children all have such adaptable behavior, in all the studies we talk about.

In this regard, the terms used to try to name parental roles in the same-sex couple prove the constant blurry there existing.

Indeed, unlike "parenthood", which is a functional notion, the terms "father" and "mother" are not malevolent and complacent and inevitably refer to incarnation and sexuality which are more than biological, which are the place of procreation that engages the whole person.

As long as one wants to think of parenthood outside of the bodily anchorage or, at least, of any established foundation of the difference, one remains to the floating of the representations of the imaginary. In other words, simply speaking, the question is not whether children are resilient enough to adapt to the desires and imagination of adults, but what are the conditions that will give them the most chances to deploy all dimensions of their humanity.

Second argument, the question of identity placed on the triangular Oedipus model is often evoked in these discussions. This model is based on both the asymmetry of places and the inevitable difference between the sexes. From the child’s point of view, being born of a relationship, of a union in the duality, of a meeting is constitutive of his own identity, of his self-consciousness as third parties, that is, as another and as subject in relation to his genitors.

Whether the child is a boy or a girl, being born of a couple formed by a man and a woman is for him constitutive of his intimate human consciousness, the first place of the discovery of the division of man, because he is not everything, that he is a finite, limited being and that he lacks in particular the attributes and potentialities of the other sex.

Furthermore, for the child, being a boy or a girl is not only the support of male or female characteristics, nor is it the result of identifications that would be postnatal and purely cultural; it is to be born, respectively, from a body of different or similar sex. In other words, the child knows, at the time of birth, if he is different or identical to his mother. If he is a girl, he is the same; if he is a boy, he is different. He knows it immediately.

The relationship of the child to the body of his mother will not be the same if the child has the feeling of coming out of that one body, experiencing itself as the extension outside the life of the mother. In other words, if a child is born of a lesbian mother who has practiced artificial insemination with an anonymous donor, that child has no known or known male reference. As a result, it can feel like the exclusive extension of the mother’s body. This is a completely different situation...

Madame Marghem, you explain to us that you are against insemination with an anonymous donor, since the child born to a mother with an anonymous donor would not be aware of its origin. It is completely farfelu! For some time, tens of thousands of inseminations have been carried out in Belgium. Thousands of children are not disturbed. This theory is quite delirious!

Madame Genot, I am not against the realities, I know obviously that tens of thousands of situations of this type exist. The question is whether we should have legislated before they exist, or if we should have pressed ourselves to do so. I would like to remind you that in other countries, this has been done, especially in Spain. We have looked at the question of medical assisted reproduction in this context. by

In essence, my demonstration is not directed towards a given situation or the other. I just want to come to say that, for me, adoption, which is the only topic of discussion that the commission has decided to discuss today to fill the legal void of factual situations, is an institution inappropriate for these situations since it concerns, since it contains a filiation link, exclusively situations of children born from heterosexual couples or living in heterosexual couples. by

As a comparison, I try to explain what is the situation of the child who is born, according to the circumstances of his birth, and what is the psychic structure resulting from it. You may not agree.

Like the French psychoanalyst Jeanne Chasseguet-Smirgel, we think that the difference of sexes and the difference of generations are the two rocks of reality. by

It is therefore a priori easier, more logical, more realistic, and therefore more directly consistent with the interests of the abandoned child, that he has heterosexual substitute parents whose mutual qualities, besides being the expression of reality, reproduce the situation of the time of his conception and birth. by

In the case of the homosexual parental couple, the child must make an additional effort to the suffering related to the initial abandonment of which he was the victim and differentiate, name, determine the place of each of his parents. In addition, the child will have to look for and find for its balance, outside the parental pair, male or female identification referents, depending on the sex of the couple of his parents.

He will have to fight, depending on the constant univocal sexuality he experiences – men or women – against self-depreciation. For example, the boy may have a feeling of rejection in his relationship with his two mothers, while the little girl who has not received the recognition of her father or another man carrying out the paternal function, will be able to settle into an impossible relationship with men. by

This self-depreciation could be reinforced by the contact of the social norm (the feeling of not being like everyone else, of not having parents like everyone else), which, be realistic, slowly accepts, in our society, homosexuality.

All these psychological overloads are ⁇ not systematically insurmountable—don’t let me say what I haven’t said! – the resources of the child and its surroundings are determining. by

But for what purpose should the Belgian State place the abandoned child in a more complicated a priori situation if there are candidate adoptive heterosexual couples who can at the same time offer an appropriate adoption profile for that child?

As a result of this reflection, I would like to emphasize that I consider it more difficult a priori for a child confronted with a single adoptive parent to validly structure itself and even more delicate for a child born in a lesbian couple where, by the hypothesis, paternal filiation is not established and is, so to speak, disincarnated. In my opinion, a reflection on these matters is necessary after this debate and not necessarily on the margins of it.

Third series of arguments. Most authors recognize the above, namely the need to assert the dual origin of the child. It will then be emphasized how important it is that the child knows that he comes from a man and a woman, his genitors, and even, that he is in relationship with them. But some carefully dissociate this concern from that of defining the educational or adoptive couple. A fortiori, the sexual orientation of adoptive parents will be considered secondary. The position is attractive at first and is spreading more and more. Therefore, just as one distinguishes the conjugal couple from the parental couple, one shall distinguish the latter from the adoptive couple or the educating couple.

Various scientific personalities, while opposed to the use of medically assisted procreation for homosexual couples, are in favor of the recognition of the right to adoption in favor of them. However, it is necessary to measure the number of dissociations that could be used. If, for intellectual clarity, certain dissociations are desirable, or that, depending on the difficulties of life, others may take place, to make a priori distinctions of principle is much more questionable.

Thus—I will list a few cases; you will understand better—between conjugality and parenthood, between parenthood and parenthood, between parenthood and parenthood, between parenthood and parenthood, between sexuality and sexuality or between sexuality and gender difference but also between sexuality and fertility or, if one prefers, between sexuality and parentality, between sexuality and filiation, what do we ⁇ ? To what atom of life, psychic, social, spiritual, to what schizo-parentality do we end up? It is necessary to see with clarity what all the dissociations in question imply, psychically and practically, for a child, and to see if it is useful to practice them.

It is difficult, says psychoanalyst Corinne Daubigny, to free the education of children from the reference to their biological conception, which is always linked to the sexual difference. The difficulties encountered by adopted children prove abundantly of this situation. It is known that dissociations in the history of these children introduce divisions within the subject.

Let us take the case of the distinction between sex and sex, which quickly proves, in the analysis, a totally superficial obvious.

Indeed, in itself, being sexualized is not very significant if one separates sex from the orientation of desire and the partners with whom the subject enters into relation. Whether or not the parent father is directed toward the female, toward the person of the mother, in particular, is not entirely indifferent to his masculinity and the apprehension of it by the child concerned. It is not to disjoined individuals that the child refers, but to beings of desire, of word and of relationship. It is also important that the child can rely on, refer to one or more people who matter to him and to whom he can, on the one hand, identify, offering him the male or female model he needs, according to the different moments of his history, and precisely when he lives alone with a parent or with two adults of the same sex. But this does not mean to establish in principle a priori that this referring adult can be equivalent to a father or a mother. Who will be made to believe that it is irrelevant that the child has, with a father or a mother, a relationship of origin, that is to say, that he is connected with that man or woman through all its history since its beginning, so that his identity is involved in this connection. by

In parenthood, the educational function is inseparable from the genealogical function, which inscribes the child in the chain of generations, which the adoptive parents do symbolically and analogically, that is, they inscribe a child who is not theirs in the chain of their generation. Indeed, the adoptive parenthood itself has a carnal dimension – often forgotten – in which the child receives the fruits of the relationship of the adoptive father towards a woman, the adoptive mother, to which he is bound and reciprocally.

It is not necessary to resort to analytical theories to perceive that everything that this child will receive for the construction of his own sexual identity comes from this alliance and is important.

The loss of this duality in the context of adoption by a gay couple is therefore a source of additional difficulties for the child, I said earlier.

Finally, the second hearing salve — and you know, dear colleagues — helped to nuance very strongly the content of the first hearing salve, especially in terms of statistics on adoption in its national and international aspects. by

First of all, since the supply is lower than the demand, it is necessary to ask, at equal supply, which demand, heterosexual or homosexual, must be preferred in the interests of the child. by

In addition, it became clear that the number of Belgian adoptions represented a congruent portion of the number of international adoptions. by

In addition, our country appears to be virtually non-existent in the international concert of adoption.

It would almost be a pleasure for us that foreign children are thus entrusted to Belgian adoptive candidates. It is constant that these countries are demanding in terms of reception conditions, having almost the feeling of being separated through children, from part of their national territory. In this context, these countries clearly express their preferences and this should draw our attention. They express preferences regarding the profile of adoptive candidates. Children must always evolve into a stable couple, preferably united by the bonds of marriage and composed of two individuals of different sexes. by

Indeed, in almost all of these countries, homosexuality is regarded as a disease, or even as a criminally reproachable behavior punishable with heavy penalties. It is not me who says it, it is from hearings conducted within the framework of the Justice Committee. In front of us was Mr. Dehou, director of ACAI and who deals with international adoption in the French Community.

I think you didn’t listen well. and Dehou. Currently, a number of countries agree to entrust children to Belgium and you say that it is only for married or unmarried heterosexual couples. Well, this is false, these countries accept other formulas: a quarter of children are entrusted to single people.

I have nothing against. I explained my position. I think it’s more delicate and that needs to be considered as well. I said it just recently. As Mr. said. Dehou, I recalled that these countries want to entrust children preferably to heterosexual couples in a stable relationship. I’ve said “preferably”, don’t go away from my words. by

In this context, will we not curb or simply destroy our relationship of trust with these countries by opting for the extension of adoption to homosexual couples and shedding illusions on adoptive candidates, increasing their cohort by decreasing the number of potential adoptions? In such a context, the all-symbolic will to be recognized, to be instituted as a parental model — which is ultimately exclusively that of adults, the children seeming to me absolutely not to suffer from anything or to be in demand of anything, and being never questioned about their lives with these couples — does not illegitimately oblige us to devote hours to a debate about ultimately very few concrete situations present and to come?

In which case, as I have always feared, the current demand is not merely a claim of adults only willing to be like everyone, while claiming to be different, and who under the cover of equalitarianism, the fight against discrimination and incantatory progressism use an institution in their own interests rather than in that of the children concerned? How can we further better invoke the urgency to settle situations of so-called legal vacuum by deliberately adopting non-standard behaviors, attempting by the policy of the accomplished fact to force the legislator to react?

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, for me who am lucky to be in a political group that has perceived the eminently ethical scope of this debate, therefore all the values and value judgments contained therein, and which allows each of its members to express themselves and vote therein according to their convictions, the only answer to all the unresolved questions raised by the subject is, for me, no. by

Not because we did not have the choice to extend our reflection to other formulas or to certain restrictions that could have proved appropriate and correctly defined, without resorting to the artificium of the link of filiation, manifestly linked to heterosexuality, and to our human condition. by

Two categories of parents, different by nature, would thus be seen to grant each other a different system, but equally effective in view of their specificity. by

But, of course, those who would have already wanted to vote on these proposals at the time of the vote on the extension of marriage to same-sex couples, are all the more pressured as no objective urgency manifests itself and ⁇ not in the head of the children currently concerned in concreto, and this all the better since the existing scientific studies are very shared and without sufficient retreat, as everyone has noted. by

It would have been well understood, if it were only about managing particular situations, my insistence could be different. But the question posed today does not concern the individual; it is institutional and must draw our full attention to this. by

When one knows, as I have tried to explain to you, the importance of the institutionalized character of the filiation as the founding structure of man, one realizes that one cannot, as some claim, bend the institution to the fantasy of particular desires and options, which belong to the individual freedom which can and must in this case assume itself without the automatic task of the law to validate it and erect it into an institution. by

Naming the filiation is not only indicating by whom the child will be raised, with whom he will have affective relationships, who will be his "adult reference", but it is allowing him to exist as a subject and to place himself in the chain of generations. In doing so, it is about recognizing and establishing the foundational structures of the human being. As Denis Vasse puts it: “What makes man from ever and forever is a word in a sexualized body and in a genealogy.”

The sexual difference is not only organic, it is carnal and, as such, it structures the symbolic order, as it is structured by it.

One loses its meaning when one loses either that of incarnation or that of symbolization. On the contrary, it is found in all its richness when these two movements meet. by

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, in the difficulty of the concepts — I apologize to you, but it was necessary to do so — I tried to describe to you the issues of paternity and maternity by questioning the meaning and values of today, based on the work we have experienced in the committee, on specialized readings in both magazines and in the recent press, and on my professional experience.

Finally, I will paraphrase Ernst Junger, and, inviting you to oppose today with me the proposals in debate while serenely resuming our work in order to find the true solutions appropriate to our society and to our rule of law, I would tell you that by trying to appear what we are not, we cease to be what we are.

I thank you for your attention.

Our discussion has been going on for two and a half hours and we have heard a quarter of the speakers. I don’t want to weigh on the debate, I’ve been at home for too long to do it. by

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the debate has already lasted two and a half hours, and that a quarter of the registered speakers have spoken. You see that I let the debate flow out, very serenely, but I still ask for an effort from everyone, if I can afford it.

Mr. Speaker, we will do our best.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, colleagues, when we and the VLD submitted a bill two years ago to enable the holebiad option, we did not go ice overnight.

I myself have long doubts about what is the best solution to the problem of children growing up in holebi families.

For indeed, we have gone from the assumption that today many children, many children, grow up and are raised in a holebi family. In most cases, these are lesbian couples with one partner having a child, often through artificial insemination. The figures, announced in one of the first hearings of the Family Law Subcommittee, by among others Professor Devroey of the VUB, clearly demonstrate this. In more exceptional cases, children are also raised by two men.

After this conclusion, two things can be done.

First, one can try to ignore it, stepping the head in the sand. Some voices even go up, saying that the government might be able to ensure that only children are born in a traditional family. As a liberal, this is quite difficult.

As a liberal, I do not believe in such a feasibility of society. And indeed, laws can be changed afterwards. But history has proved that pushing people into some sort of ideological slide does not work.

The second thing that one can do is try to find the best possible solution for the children who today live in such a situation.

I must admit that the debate is polluted on two sides, made emotional, while it is essentially about finding the best legal solution for existing situations. Their

We must try to bring the debate back to the essence. What is it really about? Despite reports in some media, the VLD, when determining its position, is based primarily on the best interests of the child and not on any possible discrimination. You can read all the texts. Our original bill is based on the best interests of the child. In the presentations, both in the Subcommittee and in the Committee on Family Law, we have always talked about the best interests of the child. Indeed, the child is at the center of the discussion.

I admit once again that before the submission of the proposal I had long doubts whether caregiving, co-parenthood, or whatever it is called, could not provide sunshine. We have turned away from this, because that institution does not provide legal certainty. The opinion of the State Council also confirms this. The criticism of the proposed scheme relating to parenthood relates precisely to the safeguards in which it is provided, in the best interests of the child. The State Council also made the comparison with adoption. If you read that passage in the advice, you may wonder why there is still a difference between adoption, stepmotherhood, co-parenthood, caregiving or whatever it is called. All guarantees of adoption should be included in a rope feed scheme. So please don’t go to name fetishism and call the scheme what it is: adoption. Choose clearly for adoption. By the way, the steppe parenthood or steppe parenthood has another finality, which can apply to both heterosexual and gay couples. This difficult legal debate does not want the VLD to escape. However, for the current problem it is not the right track.

I believe that not only the debate on the health care, but also other debates need to be carried out urgently. We are the first to say that. The debate on the divorce issue as well as other ethical debates should be held. However, this does not exclude the fact that we are currently facing a particular problem and that a solution must also be found.

What is that problem? These children have only a legal bond with one of the two partners. That is, there are no rights or duties in relation to the other partner or other parent, which can have dramatic consequences, including in the case of the death of one of the partners. It is in the best interests of those children that a legal bond and thus protection is established with both partners.

In order to provide that protection, the VLD chooses the legal figure of the adoption, because it provides exactly the same protection to children of gay couples as to children of heterosexual couples. In addition, it is an existing legal figure, which has already been widely applied, which offers the advantage of clarity, legal certainty and legal coherence.

Holebi adoption is a positive choice for the VLD. Holebi couples are suitable for raising children. This week we talked about some studies. Well, a number of studies show that too. It is a pity that Mr. Schoofs is gone, because he had a little problem with counting, dyscalculia. He says he saw zero of the 100 studies. Well, I will help a little. In the judgment-Fretté which arose following a dispute between France and Mr. Fretté before the Council of Europe, there are exactly 43 studies presented by the applicant, thus the proponent of the holebi adoption, and none by the opponents.

Critics, also here in Parliament, swing with contrary studies, but where are they? It reminds me a little of the fairy tale of the emperor who thought that he could have found the most beautiful clothes, while eventually — that everyone saw — he had no clothes. No one has ever seen those clothes. No one has seen those studies, while the studies that benefit are in the blue cage. You can find it if you want to make the effort.

Then comes the issue of domestic adoption. We must be honest in this and learn from the experience in Sweden, where it is already permitted. What do we see there? So far there has been no adoption by gay couples in Sweden. Does that mean there will be fewer children for adoption by heterosexual? No, on the contrary. An objective reading of the Swedish figures shows the opposite. Also, a study by the Dutch Ministry of Justice confirms that no country of origin will refuse to give children to heterosexual couples for adoption. In Sweden, on the contrary, the children who come from China – yet not the easiest country in terms of social acceptance – are...

Can Mr. Laeremans interrupt you?

This is really not an argument. China is currently undergoing a huge shift. You know that too. If there is a greater openness to adoption there has to do with 101 factors, but you can ⁇ not prove that it has to do with the specific Swedish legislation. I can list other countries where there is a remarkable decline, for example in South America. There are several countries in South America, Colombia, for example, from where suddenly much fewer children have been sent to Sweden.

Does this have to do with the legislation? This is absolutely unclear. That legislation is only yet in force there and there can not be made any major decisions out of it yet. It is ⁇ impossible to say that this has led to more adopted children being sent to Sweden. You cannot say that either.

Mr. Laeremans, I only try to make it clear that the argument frequently cited by the opponents, that there would be no more children from certain countries of origin sent to Belgium if we accept that law, is not correct. I just want to say that.

You are trying to make me say the opposite. No, I refute that counterargument.

We must be honest. The number of adoptions of children by two persons of the same sex in which the child has no connection with at least one of them will be limited. We cannot deny this. This is not a reason to introduce a half or an inconsistent scheme.

We have full confidence in the new adoption law, which as the first and most decisive criterion presupposes that an adoption can only take place in the best interests of the child. All couples, as Mr Swennen has rightly stated, both gay couples and heterosexual couples, must undergo a heavy procedure after which an independent judge makes a decision. I think there are sufficient guarantees.

Ms. Marghem has rightly said that one cannot say a priori that adoption cannot be in the best interests of the child, but, in our system, a judge will have to decide in every particular case, in each individual case, in the best interests of the child.

I conclude my speech, Mr. Speaker. I think I kept it pretty short. The starting point of the VLD is therefore not in the first place: a right to adoption for adults, but the protection of children raised in a holebirrelation. The right to adoption consists in giving a child a family and not giving a family a child. The VLD then chooses for the most clear, complete and legal certainty solution, which is adoption.

The VLD understands and respects the opinion of those who are not advocates of holebi adoption. After all, it is an ethical issue in which each person must have his own opinion and conscience to speak. For this reason, the VLD People’s Representatives have the freedom to determine their voting behavior in honour and conscience, but that does not exclude that we will vote in large numbers, colleagues.

Since 1998, Ecolo has started to

to reflect, inform, discuss with specialists and with the main stakeholders to better understand this theme of homoparentality, to understand its reality, complexity, legal difficulties. This allowed a serene and democratic debate to lead, in September 2000, to a clear party position which concluded this: "Since it is necessary to guarantee the child the most secure legal and family situation possible, Ecolo decides to allow same-sex couples to be candidates for the adoption procedure." But, as with any ethical debate, every member of Parliament will of course be able to vote in conscience.

I filed, in October 2001, with one of my colleagues from Agalev, the first bill in Belgium that allowed the establishment of a filiation between a child and his two parents of the same sex. This proposal was aimed at resolving existing situations. Currently, children are raised by couples whose only one component is recognized as a parent. The proposal allowed a second parent, non-biological, of the same sex as the first parent or not, to recognize the child, thus giving the latter a second parent, with the related rights and duties.

In November 2001, Parliament examined the overall reform of adoption. This reform was aimed at securing the situation of the adopted child. It implemented preparation, training of parents candidates for adoption, the end of wild adoptions, an obligation to obtain the approval of a psycho-medical-social team and a judgment to be able to adopt. On this occasion, adoption was no longer only open to single persons and married couples, but also to unmarried couples of different sexes.

At the time, we had submitted an amendment to open adoption to unmarried couples of the same sex. This amendment was not adopted but allowed to start the debate. At the same time, we have already conducted a series of hearings, during which different actors have been able to position themselves as part of this debate and give us their analysis.

In January 2003, Parliament decided to open marriage to same-sex couples, a symbolically important step as the legislator clearly indicated to Belgian society that lesbian and gay couples are couples like others. However, this step introduces a small additional inequality among children. In fact, children who are born and have as parents a heterosexual married couple are considered a priori with two parents, the father being recognized as a second parent without having any action to do. A child whose married parents are of the same sex is entitled to only one mother. by

In March 2004, I decided to file the first proposal for a French-speaking law opening adoption to persons of the same sex. Flemish colleagues had already submitted a set of proposals in this direction. However, I wished to submit a text aimed at opening also international adoption which was not yet considered in the previous texts and to provide for a exclusively judicial procedure for children already raised in families. In fact, in this case, it is not necessary to have such a heavy procedure. In June 2004, the Family Law Subcommittee decided to examine legislative proposals on this subject.

It was in the spring of 2005 that it began the debates on the proposals and hearings were organized.

The debate then took place in the Justice Committee. Some seemed to have discovered this problem only at this stage. Other hearings were held. However, the Parliament has been considering this issue for many years already.

The State Council took the summer holidays to carry out a thorough analysis of the text. According to the opinion given by the latter, the adoption or not of this text does not pose a legal problem, legality. This is clearly a political choice.

It was on November 9 that the Justice Committee finally was able to take a decision.

We are therefore here this 1st of December meeting in plenary session to finally be able to move forward on this issue.

After this brief history, let us return to the substantive arguments.

First of all, let us agree that this is a sensitive subject. It touches on the conception that each of us has of family, children. We all have images of Epinal, knowledge, different experiences that lead us a priori to prefer the traditional family model. But this model must be confronted with reality, taking into account the interests of children.

In this discussion, respect for everyone’s analysis is indispensable. It is necessary to avoid the trials of intent, the stigmatization of opponents of adoption. But I also ask them for a minimum of respect and to exclude unacceptable analyses or amalgamas associating, for example, homosexuality and pedophilia or zoophilia. This has nothing to do with this kind of debate.

I am also opposed to any caricature of our argument. There has never been a question of the right to the child, of unacceptable discrimination between couples. It is the right of the child to have a family, the right of the child not to be discriminated against.

Let us look at the current situation.

Children are raised by homosexual couples, some because they are born of a heterosexual couple and are raised in a recomposed family; there will be no talk about them today. Others, many, are born through medically assisted reproduction and are raised by their mother and partner. Others have been adopted by a single person, but are raised by a couple. These children have two heart parents, but they are only entitled to one legal parent. Therefore, there is no status for the second parent.

A problem for adults? No, this is a child problem. If it is true that nurseries will recognize the second parent by accounting, for example, his income in those of the household, not all other actors will recognize that second parent. When it comes to enrolling a child in school or authorizing surgery, the second parent will not be able to perform these acts. by

In case of separation, very often, fortunately, the parents manage to agree and find a satisfactory solution for each to take care of the child. Sometimes disagreement also prevails. In this case, the second parent is ⁇ impoverished: he has no legal bond with the child, only this terrible bond, this bond of having desired it, this bond of having loved it, this bond of having raised it, this bond of having grown it, sometimes of having tired of it, but no legal bond. by

A judge who adheres to the law will apply the rate applicable in these cases, i.e. only personal relations: one afternoon per month. Who can then say that it is in the interest of the child to see one of his two parents only one afternoon a month? by

In the worst case, the death of the parent, the second parent is not at all sure to be designated as a guardian. It is clear to everyone that taking the child out of his family already half-amputed is not really desirable.

In the courts, for the moment, the judges "bricolate", waiting for parliament to take its responsibilities. In the majority of cases, that is, when the second parent only benefits from this monthly afternoon, which parent would be content with it?

We welcome the courage of a Mechelen judge who granted the eight-year-old twin mate an extended visiting right: one weekend on two and half the holidays. by

Other stories are more painful. A couple of women, after a few years, decides to have a child. A little boy is born and the co-parent decides to stop working to raise that child for four years. Later, when the child is about six years old, these two women separate. At first, this is a friendly arrangement, they both continue to raise this child. Then, the mother goes into the household with a gentleman who decides to recognize the child; so he becomes his father. The new couple decides then that the child will no longer see the co-parent. It is very difficult for them to exercise their rights. The child really leaves with a family amputated in the middle of the course, which we find unwanted.

Let’s go back to adoption. Nowadays, only people can adopt. I have little heard people who defend the right of children to have two parents of different sexes worry about these adoptions by single people. It is therefore that, in a number of cases, older or other children, the adoption agencies, when they examine parents likely to adopt them, conclude that these single persons will be good parents and will constitute the appropriate family. by

Homosexuals are adopted as a single person or as a couple. On the French-speaking side, this often happens in hypocrisy. Only one member of the couple is heard by the various psycho-medical-social services and no verification of the abilities of the second parent! We realize how this could be potentially dangerous. In addition, in recent years, the adoption procedure has become more structured. Ended wild adoptions, where parents found a child here or more often abroad and asked the judge to approve the operation. Now, all candidates for adoption will have to undergo a preparation, which will clearly inform them about the procedures, the specific difficulties of the education of an adopted child, from a child wounded to the deepest by the abandonment he suffered. Then they will have to undergo a training procedure and have interviews aimed at determining whether they are fit to adopt. Adoption agencies will consider whether they can constitute the most suitable family for one of the children seeking a family. The judge may, at the end of the proceedings, carry out another investigation before finally entrusting the adoption to the family. So, a very heavy procedure, but at the height of the responsibility that the state takes by entrusting a child to a family. by

Let us be clear! There will be a lot of disappointment if the law is passed. Candidates will be dismissed. Others, though recognized as apt, will not be attributed as children, but some will have this immense joy. We already know, on the French-speaking side, stories of women who wish to welcome a child, who had a father and a mother. This child did not come from, for example, a lesbian couple, but had biological parents who, for some reason, could not educate him. These women offer him a new family.

But there are also some stories of men, from the Dutch-speaking side. As a single person, they have obtained the certificate of aptitude to adopt. Fortunately, given the openness of the Flemish adoption organizations, they did not have to hide their couple life and therefore, both members could be heard as part of the interviews. Furthermore, they have decided to be transparent with young women who give birth in Belgium and who decide to entrust their child(s) to adoption; they have waited for young women to make the choice of entrusting their child(s) to them. And I think, having met a number of them, that these young women did really well. by

In 2004, there were 366 international adoptions in the French Community and only 39 domestic adoptions of children born in Belgium. So very few children.

And we always hear this phrase: "But there are already not enough children for heterosexual couples."

At present, organizations that try to entrust a child to the most appropriate family already sometimes choose to entrust them to single people. Having a larger number of couples with different characteristics will allow them to search for, for each child, the most suitable couple. Especially because it was ⁇ important not to exclude a priori international adoption. In the short term, few countries will agree to entrust their children to same-sex couples, but this is not a reason to ban this possibility.

Does this openness to international adoption risk harming other candidates for adoption? The United States, for example, recognizes, in some states, adoption by persons of the same sex. Nevertheless, the United States is a “very large receiver of adopted children” and they have not been hurt in this matter.

Let us be clear! States will always be able to continue to choose to what kind of couples or single persons they wish to see their children entrusted. Currently, a number of countries have specified that they do not want their children to be adopted by unmarried couples or by single people. Their will, of course, was respected and they continued to collaborate with Belgium; this will also be the case after the vote — I hope — of this text.

The majority of children living in parent families come from medically assisted reproduction. This is far from being recent, given that VUB began the first medically assisted procreations in 1975 and the first procreations of female couples in 1979. Since then, they estimate to more than twenty thousand couples of women inseminated in their institution alone. If you look at all the Belgian institutions, you can see the number of children living in these families.

These children are living the situation I have described. They have only one legal parent: their mother. The second mother has no maintenance obligation towards them. The child may be separated as a result of death or separation and cannot claim an inheritance. He is not registered in the family of the second mother; there are no grandparents, uncles, aunts.

Institutions that practice medically assisted reproduction submit couples to a psychological interview. The figures resulting are identical for all structures: an acceptance of 80% of heterosexual and homosexual couples and an acceptance of 50% of single women.

For the most part, acceptances concern couples, and in particular women's couples, registered in the duration, who have thought a lot about their project, who assume their situation well, who are registered in an extensive family and friendly network and where they are two. Solitary people, on the other hand, are sometimes refused because they choose to have a child alone despite or because of risks of too intense fusion, where the child would not find his place.

So, very clearly, these parents are not parents by chance. and never. These are couples that form and who, after a few years, ask themselves, “What if we had a child?” Many stop at this stage. No, it is not for them. But some continue: “Isn’t this selfish?”, “Will our child not be stigmatized?”, “How will we explain it to him?” They therefore undertake a long process of reflection and preparation before considering future procedures.

These are long-awaited children, children with a mom or dad and a nanny or vatty; children for whom parents will look for the most welcoming school possible; children who will invite their little comrades to their birthday to introduce them to their family; children with whom their biological father or mother will be evoked; children who, ⁇ at some times, will be angry because of abandonment: "Why did you pick me up?" But above all there will be children like everyone else and we must do everything to protect them.

In recent weeks, controversies over studies and scientific opinions have increased. I heard Mrs. Marghem referring to a Spanish study, which was done by a computer scientist. For my part, I would rather use the VUB study, a Belgian study available for many years. What does this study say? This is a study that followed a number of heterosexual and homosexual couples having children by medically assisted reproduction with anonymous donors. These children were followed with very classic tests that are generally used to see how the child stands in relation to himself, his self-esteem, his sexual identity, his relationship with his parents, his relationship with his peers. Well, these children normally go, neither better nor worse than others. The only distinction that appears in this study is made between children aware of the circumstances of their birth, and therefore by the fact that their father is not their father, and those who are not aware. On that plan, we see clearly, like every good psychologist, that the secret is not good.

We also hear a lot of saying: "A child needs a father and a mother." He will find two kinds, different and complementary, in a couple: a love-fusion, unconditional, and a more defusing love, pushing outward. And like in all modern couples, these loves will not always be carried by the same parent.

Yes, it’s preferable and that’s why many of these children will have a maid, uncle, or grandfather especially invested.

I would now like to return to the other bills that were on the table, the proposals of MR, CDH and CD&V, which were submitted to open a series of rights to those who raise the child with their parents.

These proposals seemed inadequate to secure the situation of homoparental families. They did not create a connection with the family of the second parent, with grandparents or cousins; they often stopped at the age of eighteen; they did not place both parents, too, before their responsibilities. We seemed to want to give a part of the role of parent but above all not want to call a parent a parent!

This type of debate was held at the time of the vote on the same-sex marriage law. Conservatives, after creating a legal cohabitation contract, empty shell, were ready to fill it with anything, provided that it is not called marriage.

The proposals on the table will be a good basis for working on a future status of the father-in-law. This debate will be important but it should not be confused with the debate on adoption. Grandparents, of different sexes or not, have the right to see us work at a true status appropriate to their specificities.

After the marriage, the adoption. Sometimes I hear: “They’re going to atomize our family!” I understand those fears. But, over time, people married young, had children and then died. Today we are more demanding. Life is more shrinking. We move, we separate, we reform couples and family life has evolved. I am delighted that despite the difficulties of current couple life, despite the uncertainties related to the future, the tendency to individualism, people want to form families, commit, accept the rights and duties of parents.

What is the question posed today? The question is not whether or not homosexuals want to have children. They have and will have children, no matter what we vote today. The question is: do we want these children to be entitled to two responsible parents? To this question, the Ecolo group will answer yes.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, colleagues, spirit is very pleased to be able to vote today on a closing piece of equal entitlement for holebi. Together with Annelies Storms and Els Van Weert, I had submitted a bill. We were pleased to join the proposal of sp.a. colleague Swennen. It is extremely important to address the sense of discrimination that lives in very many holebias with a child desire. More importantly, the present proposal respects the right to equal treatment of the children it concerns.

I would like to join the 15 reasons that Mr Swennen cited to vote in favour of the proposal. In my speech, I would like to point out specifically 4 points, in particular the social interest of this law, the legal questions as raised by the State Council, the continuation of our work in the Senate and the voting behavior at the end of this meeting.

First, it is important to remember our starting point. There is no such thing as a right to children. On the contrary, when creating this legislation, we have always taken the best interests of the child. This law is necessary, not to meet the wishes of the elderly of a population group, but first and foremost in the interests of the thousands of children raised today and in the future by a couple of parents of the same sex. Through artificial insemination and through single-parent option, many children are already in this situation. The hearings in the Family Law Subcommittee with Professor Paul Devroey of the Centre for Reproductive Medicine of the VUB have shown that the holebi adoption per year — only to the VUB — concerns 1,500 children born through artificial insemination to lesbian couples. It is important that these children clearly and regularly see the legal relationship with their two parents. Adoption here offers the best because the easiest way to. What does not take away is that in the future there is still a lot of work at the store for other family situations. For spirit, this still has to be regulated by this legislature through the guardianship.

It is important to follow the opinion of the State Council. I would like to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for requesting this advice from the State Council during the summer months. This allows us to answer a number of legal comments. That is important because this law will undoubtedly be attacked from a conservative angle before the Arbitration Court as we experienced this when the marriage was opened. It is a good thing that we can answer the questions of the State Council before approving this proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I must note that the part of the State Council’s delicate opinion, which concerned the specific proposal that we discuss here today, was actually not so large. The State Council has taken a reckless stance. However, it is very important to keep in mind, for example, that the State Council has not explicitly asked a number of questions. The State Council has expressly stated three times or more that, although the texts submitted for opinion raise questions of ethical, anthropological, symbolic, philosophical, psychological and other nature, the Legislative Division does not wish to comment on this because this is the task of the Parliament.

However, the Council of State argues that the legislator must demonstrate that the equal treatment applicable to different situations exists a reasonable liability in compliance with the principle of proportionality, with particular attention to the best interests of the child. In fact, according to the Council of State, children fall within a reference framework, namely with parents of the same sex, which differs from the reference framework at the time of their conception. It is important to give them a motivation. That motivation, colleagues, lies precisely in the best interests of the child and in the right of the child to be able to rely on a full legal bond with the two persons responsible for the education within a gay or lesbian relationship. It is therefore my opinion that the answers to the questions raised by the State Council can be found in the extensive reports of the many discussions held both in the Subcommittee on Family Law and in the Committee on Justice.

... ...

Mr. Laeremans, you were also present and you were able to follow those discussions. I do not need to repeat it in extension here. I will repeat a few points that I think give me sufficient motivation. You know the texts too.

We have organized a lot of hearings in the Family Law Subcommittee and in the Justice Committee. It has repeatedly been shown that a child who is lovingly raised by a couple of the same sex, does so quickly. Various studies also show this. Now it is clear that there can never be a guarantee in both heterosexual and holebish couples that the children will be raised in a good, loving way. This week we have seen some unfortunate examples in the media. However, does anyone in this hemisphere dare to claim that the children concerned would have been worse off if they had been adopted by a gay couple after that couple was first screened by a judge? I do not think.

Colleagues, it is sometimes proposed by the opponents as if this law would allow caterpillar couples to soon pick up children in the supermarket by way of speech. Of course it is not so. The screening of possible adoptive parents will be as strict with them as with heterosexual couples. In its decision, the judge must always prioritize the best interests of the child.

I would ⁇ acknowledge that the Council of State states that States, in accordance with European law, have a very broad discretion in this matter. Therefore, the State Council does not say in any way that our country is obliged to open adoption for same-sex couples. This is not a discrimination within the meaning of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Council of State, however, says that our country can make that choice, but that the legislature must then explain in detail why it does this.

According to the State Council, states can deny homosexuals the right to adopt children, but that doesn’t mean that should be the state’s attitude. Spirit believes that Belgium, like the same-sex marriage, should be a pioneer on the European level in such matters. I can, by the way, inform you for some in prime that the Supreme Court of South Africa today ruled that the legislation of that country is not in accordance with the Constitution, since it does not allow gay couples to marry. I think that is an important step in equalizing holebi’s.

The law, colleagues, is an evolutionary given. What is not discriminatory today may be discriminatory tomorrow. In particular, I would like to refer to our hearing with Professor Frederik Swennen of the University of Antwerp in the subcommittee Family Law. The professor stated - I quote - "If adoption is possible in law, access to it should not be described and applied in a discriminatory way. By not allowing same-sex couples to be adopted and couples of unequal sex, the legislature considers that the education of an unequal couple is, and the education of an equal couple is not in the best interests of the child.

It is that principle of the legislator, colleagues, that, according to Professor Swennen, is both factually and legally outdated. If this bill gets a majority today, we actually say that we are moving away from that outdated view. The notion that a child should grow up in a loving environment is therefore more important than the obsolete notion used by the opponents of the opening of adoption, in particular that a child should grow up in a family where the married husband and wife take together the responsibility for the education of the common natural child.

Who says that the child must be born naturally? There are a lot of situations where a couple simply lives together or where through IVF a heterosexual couple has a child? Who says it cannot? Who says that?

Mr. Laeremans, we just think it is very important that for all situations that do not correspond to that classical pattern, a arrangement is found and therefore not only for cohabiting heterosexual couples, but for all children who are raised in a non-traditional family situation. We want to go a little further in that than you; you will not blame us for that.

Colleagues, after discussing the opinion of the State Council, I would like to point out the caprioles we have experienced from our colleagues of CD&V in the file. Le nouveau CD&V est arrivé, we thought when Jo Vandeurzen and Liesbeth Van der Auwera announced that CD&V would vote for adoption. I would like to repeat the position on holebi adoption that CD&V took on 7 June. "CD&V notes," said Jo Vandeurzen, "that the new adoption law provides for an individual suitability study with an active role for the youth judge. Against the background of this care for all couples, CD&V accepts that adoption is open to all couples.” That was, colleagues, without the conservative reflex of the back of Pieter De Crem counted. A typical Chechen compromise, the co-parenting, was the result. We have seen that several of our colleagues, such as Jef Van den Bergh, were disappointed by that party position.

My message to the CD&V colleagues who have said in recent days that they are actually in favor of that adoption is very clear.

You can make a difference tonight. With the words of Herman Van Rompuy to his brother Eric, when he was found too light by Yves Leterme for a seat in the Flemish government, I would like to say: Jef, as well as Nahima, Liesbeth and Dirk, be free. No one will blame you and you can show that the C in CD&V is not just for conservative. Colleagues, after the vote tonight on this bill, it is probably up to the Senate to speak, because we can expect that the high assembly will evoke the proposal. We all know that the Senate is a reflection room, but in these, the Chamber has already done a lot of reflection work. The chairman of the Senate Committee is a CD&V'er. We know from colleague Hugo Vandenberghe that he does not specifically belong to the CD&V wing that is in favor of adoption by holebi. Nevertheless, I would like to call on the senators to read the comprehensive reports of our work thoroughly before starting time-consuming hearings.

If the Senate fails to work quickly, then all the work we have done here threatens to have been done for nothing. This would be especially unfortunate for holebi couples with a child desire, and especially — and it is all about it — for the children concerned. These children are the subject of our discussion.

Mr. Monfils, I think you want to take a little time. But try not to exceed the time assigned, which is thirty minutes, I remind you.

Mr. Speaker, I reassure you immediately: I will ⁇ be much shorter than some of my colleagues, including those of my own group. Let me begin with a point on which everyone will agree, congratulating the rapporteur Mr. Perpete for his written and oral report. Please do not discount these ten seconds of my speech time, Mr. President.

As I said to you, I will not resume the pointillist debate that has opposed us for many weeks in the committee. I will simply give my feelings on five points that I consider to be the fundamental elements of this discussion. And first of all, why this debate about adoption by gay couples? In the already important list of ethical advances achieved in the last six years (euthanasia, cloning, gay marriage) and in anticipation of further debates, such as the one on child-bearing mothers in the Senate, divorce without fault or anonymous birth here, the question of today is whether to face and strive to resolve the problem of adoption by homosexual couples. by

No, this is not a parliamentary cocktail. This is no longer a fashion phenomenon. No, this is not a pleasant topic to discuss at dinner in the city. This is a necessity derived from the persistence of psychological and social dramas. Today there are children who have not chosen to live in homosexual couples but for whom the coincidences of life have led their parent to engage in a relationship of this type. In the current state of law, these children will never be the children of the couple and therefore will not benefit from the protection provided by our laws.

Today there are children abandoned at birth who cannot be fully integrated into a home like any other child because the couple who wants to adopt it, accept it, is a gay couple. This is all the subject of the debate today. To answer this question, should there be a vote for or against adoption? From the beginning of the discussions, things have been fixed, no argument being able to convince either party, even if partially. When one invoked the low number of children living with a gay couple to deny the urgency to resolve this issue, one rejected that one does not measure human distress quantitatively and that if it had been the case, one would never have voted the law on euthanasia since after all, it is only a few tens or hundreds of cases of one hundred out of ten thousand deaths per year. If one branded a report concerned about the absence of an image of the father or mother, one obviously invoked another text or interviews of children saying the opposite.

Those who sought an alternative to adoption by means such as social kinship or guardianship were criticized for the insufficiency of the legal guarantees granted and did not gather in the Justice Commission all the votes of opponents to adoption.

As for the best interests of the child, each of the two sides claimed it as his own.

In short, it was fatal that this debate went to the end of the logic that, in this case, is a parliamentary debate: for or against adoption.

Is there a third way?

I never believed in a hypothetical third way. Whether it is a new form of guardianship, a social parenthood, a coparentality... All these formulas raise legal problems or seem to provide only a partial answer to the question that concerns us. The reading of the Council of State is also enlightening in this regard. by

Just as common sense says that the original should be preferred to the copy, it seems to me that this type of response can only raise difficulties because it ⁇ ins inequalities at the expense of children living in homosexual couples and thus risks to nourish frustrations resulting from an unfulfilled expectation. by

It is not to be doctrinary that to refuse cowardly compromises.

Moreover, in ethical matters, a compromise generally does not last long as proves, for example, the establishment of the legal cohabitation contract applicable to heterosexual but especially made for homosexuals, intended initially to palliate the absence of political majority for same-sex marriage. Some time later, however, the same-sex marriage was voted!

Third, I will address the precautionary principle.

I never shared the idea that this principle led to waiting, to postpone the debate. by

To postpone until what date? In a month? In a year? After the municipal elections to avoid conflicts between the consciousness of the parliamentary and the knowledge he has or believes to have of his basic electorate? Waiting until the survey cursor reaches a level of acceptance deemed sufficient by each party? Is it not our duty also to open debates that are known to be controversial in the public opinion as well as in the Parliament, and to provide a response, even if it does not meet a majority membership? by

It should not be said in this regard that adoption by homosexual couples is the subject of a widespread reproof. The polls prove this and we note a ⁇ significant adherence of young people who, nevertheless, are the first concerned with this problem. The official statements of the League of Human Rights, the League of the Rights of the Child and, most recently, the League of Families which you know, it is not worth reminding you, the very clear text published unanimously minus three abstentions.

Again, as far as I am concerned, I do not determine my attitude as a politician solely by the number or quality of the supporters of adoption. But as some, in the opposite camp, brand the banner of the widespread rejection of the population against this reform, I must nevertheless remind that we are not alone and that organizations, who know what they are talking about, have supported this bill. by

Let us also recall some ethical debates that we have settled. Euthanasia for example. Sometimes it has been said that situations were not comparable because public opinion was in favor of euthanasia. It is false! It took two and a half years to get to the vote. At the beginning of the discussions, the parliamentarians open to the bill proposal, of which I was, plunged under the letters of insults, going to the point of treating them as Nazis, murderers of elderly people, etc. In the beginning, the political class was also terribly reluctant.

Closer to us, therapeutic cloning has resurrected the old abortion-time rancor about the status of the embryo and God knows if in the Senate, it has been talked about for a very long time. In short, at every stage of a social evolution, conflicts appear, which is perfectly healthy, in a democratic society. Today, as yesterday, the precautionary principle cannot be brandied for doing nothing, otherwise there would never have been any advancement in the field of ethics. by

This, of course, does not mean that everything can be done without limit and without control. Where is the limit? Where is the control in the case of adoption by homosexual couples? Simply, as for a heterosexual couple, in the very binding legislation, which applies to any adoptions. by

The time is no longer where one could go to pick up a little Chinese in China and bring him back by hand to Belgium. That time has passed. It is necessary to observe a procedure consisting of four broad lines: preparation of adoptive candidates for four months; I refer you to the text of the decree which is extremely binding in this regard. Upon completion of this preparation, applicants receive from the supervisory authority a certificate valid for one year, renewable only once. A social inquiry is ordered by the judge of youth. An adoption plan is drawn up. Interviews with the child are organized with adoptive candidates, the multidisciplinary team, etc. And, of course, a passage by a judgment of the judge of youth. When it comes to international adoption, the procedure is even more formal, more difficult. by

It is clear that administrative and judicial authorities will pay at least as much attention to the compliance of the decree conditions by homosexual couples as they do with respect to heterosexual couples. In case of non-compliance with these conditions, the adoption will be refused. All this obviously costs a lot of energy, time and money, but it allows to evaluate the quality of the motives of the desire for children, the capacity of the couple to host and love above all. This is the precautionary principle.

When it comes to the best interests of the child, we must not cover our faces, dear colleagues. by

The question asked by many is how to make total abstraction from a historically negative collective judgment placed on this type of sexual preference. This has been seen in the interests of the child. What is its interest? Even the judges are divided in this matter. In the Fretté judgment, cited in the Opinion of the Council of State of 26 February 2002 of the European Court of Human Rights, four judges said that one could refuse the adoption of a child by a single person because he was homosexual and that this could be considered as not in his interest. Three judges issued a contrary opinion, namely that the child’s interest should be measured by the quality of the reception and education he would receive. by

That professional judges accustomed to deliberating without passion but with reason do not find consensus says a lot about the opacity of the cloud that floats over homosexuals! Why, therefore, would the population of parliamentarians be different? How many times have we not heard the phrase pronounced: "It is already quite difficult to raise a child in a heterosexual couple, then in a gay couple!" The image refers not only to the existence of a father and a mother but also to the negative connotation of homosexuality itself. by

On the other hand — the only reference I will make — one can find trace of this attitude in recent positions taken by the Synod of Bishops and the statements of Cardinal Danneels himself. Asked why the Church of Belgium considered it necessary to engage in this debate, Cardinal Danneels replied in the newspaper "La Libre Belgique": "We ⁇ do not question the sincerity of homosexual couples who wish to adopt. It is also not a matter for the Episcopal Conference to enter into the debate on the psychological consequences that such adoption could have on the children concerned, because the question as important as it is has not yet been resolved. On the other hand, we are very concerned that, in the current context, such a measure will increasingly accredit the idea that homosexual couples are a mere variant of couples formed by a man and a woman. If we legalized adoption, we would only increase confusion with regard to what is still the fundamental landmark of the family: the sexual difference."So we see that the interest of the child is not at the center of the refusal of adoption, but it is the interest of the traditional family that is. Going further than homosexual marriage means putting on the same foot homosexual families and heterosexual families; and this is not in view of the position adopted by these persons. To this assertion, which has all of an immutable truth, there is obviously nothing to reject since there is no possibility to change this viewpoint, undoubtedly shared by a part of the population and its representatives. However, it must be noted that if the interests of the child are mentioned, it is in reality the interests of the traditional family that are at the forefront of concerns.

But let us abandon this debate on equality, which I would call morality between homosexuals and heterosexuals, and return to the notion of the best interests of the child. When it is stated that a child cannot be happy or is more likely to be happy in a heterosexual couple than in a gay couple, it is a general affirmation embedded in many particular cases: monoparental families, recomposed families, separations, divorces, children separated from parents who are torn apart (cf. Cf. The last book of Mr. Lelièvre, General Delegate for the Rights of the Child. The traditional family is not without reproach seen from the child’s best interest side.

Certainly, we could be blamed for a somewhat tortuous reasoning consisting of comparing a crisis situation — divorce and separation — to a stable situation. Homosexual couples could draw a conclusion beneficial to them. That is not my intention. I simply wanted to bring things back to their right proportion: no institution is free from criticism when it comes to the best interests of the child.

In any case, you can see what is not in your interest. As for children living in homosexual couples, their interest is ⁇ not to have only legal, patrimonial ties with only one member of the couple. What mistake have they committed that leads to life sentence, not having the normal life of a child of a heterosexual couple? by

There has been legislation in favor of natural, adulterous, incested children. They were given the same rights as legitimate children, but a child of a gay couple could not have two parents, two parents clearly recognized! Because obviously, the hypocrisy helping, these parents could act as if the child only lived with his parent or adoptive parent; the other member of the couple entrusting himself to some subterfuge to help the child through a donation, a will, etc. How can we support this painful staging of disguise and dubious legal constructions?

But you can also object to the eyes of others. Dear colleagues, there are many other discriminations that also call for comments in schools and in recreational classes. They have names for skin color, disability, poverty, monoparentality. Do you really believe that living in a gay couple is still today and will be much more tomorrow an insurmountable problem? The answer lies in the polls — I said it — which show that more and more, in the young population in particular, homosexuality is not considered as a trick, not even as a curiosity; it has become a banal phenomenon within the sole consciousness of people.

Sexual duality is often invoked as a necessity for the balance of the child, the roles of father and mother being different and complementary. I will not resume the debate in this regard but invoke the conclusions of the experts heard; although one can long question the reliability of the experts, psychologists and others in view of the Outreau case, in France. These, however, provide us with conclusions of lives lived in these terms: “Nothing can assert that a child of a gay couple will develop in a significantly different way from a child of a heterosexual couple.”

I add that the family is not the only contact of the child with society, and I insist. School, friends, youth or sports organizations, all this social life surrounds the child, shapes him as well and brings him the plurality of attitudes, tendencies of which his personality will gradually be nourished.

It seems to me therefore inaccurate to say that the interest of the child is not to be in a gay couple.

The last point is the view of other countries. Dear colleagues, if there is indeed one argument that leaves me interlocuted, it is the recourse to the judgment of other countries on our own legislation. This is, therefore, a sovereign state that legislates in the ethical field, by definition, a reflection of the evolution of its own society, and which should subordinate its attitude to the reactions of other states! My reaction is, “They’ll do it or we’ll miss them.” If a State, finding that Belgium allows adoption by gay couples, refuses any adoption of one of its nationals, even for a heterosexual couple, the adoption organizations will contact with other countries. There is no right to privileged chains with one or another country in this sector.

However, I can calm some anxieties.

First, some countries that do not accept single adoption have not closed their borders to international adoption but simply require that the adopted child be adopted in Belgium by a couple. Since adoption is no longer an individual request, an individual action, the adoption organizations will be able to fully guarantee to foreign countries that the adoption of one or another child will be carried out by a heterosexual couple, as they wish.

Finally, the movement is growing; let’s look around us. Countries like Spain have ratified marriage and adoption. Is it believed that the Latin American countries will close the door to Spanish adoptions tomorrow? Other countries are following the Dutch or Belgian example – if we vote for this provision – such as Britain and even some Nordic countries that, until now, did not allow adoption.

Would I dare to say that this case will eventually enter the morals? This is seen, for example, in same-sex marriage where more and more countries recognize the legal consequences on their territory of same-sex marriages, which are regularly celebrated in other countries. For example, I would mention France compared to Belgium.

I conclude by concluding. I will borrow the content of my first conclusion sentences from the very recent report by Claude Lelièvre, General Delegate for the Rights of the Child. He wrote: "Adoption must be considered as a right for the child deprived of his or her family environment, to benefit from a substitute social protection in which his or her superior interest is the primary consideration. No one can claim that this special protection, respecting the best interests of the child, is exclusively the adoption by a couple of heterosexual parents.”

“No one can...” In our time of questioning the patterns of thought in philosophical, religious, social, cultural matters, how can one defend a system of prohibitions based on a stigma of a sexual behavior deemed deviant? How can one not recognize that society is evolving, that it should be more open than ever and that the dictates imposed yesterday, without decisive justification, can no longer be accepted as such today?

If we vote on this bill, will the traditional family collapse?

I have recalled that people who embark on an adoption procedure follow a difficult path. The procedure is complex and long. There are chess.

Adoptions are rare: 366 cases in 2004 on the part of the French Community for ten adoption agencies, this with waiting lists of hundreds of people. by

Is it believed that, tomorrow, this proposal eventually voted, the figures will change significantly? Obviously no.

But then, you will say, why hasten to change the law?

Because, as I said, children are currently victims of the ban on adoption by homosexual couples. How much ? by 20 ? and 50? and 100? I don’t care about the number.

This law would bring a flash of happiness in the eyes of a single child that it would be perfectly justified. What a beautiful Christmas gift to say to a little boy, “Soon, very soon, even if you have two dads or two moms, you will finally have two parents who love you!”

I will listen to your words and add the act to the word. I will keep it very short. There have already been extensive discussions in the committees and there have been hearings. I limit myself to the essence.

The actual situation, colleagues, makes it possible for single people, regardless of their orientation, to adopt a child. By law of 13 February 2003, civil marriage was opened in Belgium for partners of the same sex, but without the possibility of adoption for married or cohabiting partners of the same sex.

As a result, two gay men or two lesbian women can never legally become parents of the same child together. The father-in-law or mother-in-law, if I can express myself in this way, remains a legal stranger to the child. At the moment that a single gay or lesbian is allowed to adopt, it seems to me that it is indefensible to refuse adoption to same-sex couples.

I have understanding for people who do not share that point of view, but in terms of acceptance of homosexuality, we have reached a point in our society where certain bridges can be taken, I think. Furthermore, colleagues, the experience that once a particular clip has been taken learns, the social acceptance follows very quickly. Homosexuality is not a contraindication to competent parenting. I consider it in the best interests of the child that a full legal recognition is given to the bond that a child has with the co-parent. I think we are all convinced that the only norm in adoption is the best interest of the child.

In adoption, I believe that all necessary factors that serve the best interests of the child must be taken into account. I think in that context of the pedagogical possibilities, the stable family situation, the possibility of integration and inclusion in a broader family connection and the existence of a social safety net. The sexual orientation of candidates does not, in my opinion, affect in itself, but rather the acceptance by the environment and the overall social context.

Research shows that about 15% of the population feels attracted to their own gender. That is 1 on 7. In the case of candidate adopters, I would like to advocate for a very thorough evaluation on the medical, psychological and pedagogical levels, by the recognised services. A 1999 study by the University of Ghent found that in Flanders 14% of lesbian women and 8% of gay men raised children. Half of lesbian women and gay men would like to have children. Their

The state has long existed in fact, but without legal support. Continuing to do so is not an option for me. The legal regulation is appropriate.

I conclude with an e-mail from the daily reality. A child psychologist wrote the following. “Every day I see children with emotional and other problems, with and without parents. One has only a mother, the other only a father, and there are those who have two pieces of everything. Unfortunately, there are many children who do not receive the necessary love and care. Is it not important that all children are provided with a good parenting, where the necessary dose of attention, love and care are actually at the center? Can this only be guaranteed by man and woman?”

Ladies and gentlemen, I will decide. Sexual orientation has little to do with quality of parenting, just as little as belief or race that has. N-VA gives this bill a chance and chooses a legal solution.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, in our assembly, the debate comes to an end.

The first element I allow myself to emphasize — even if it has been understood a few hours or well before — is that at the MR, each parliamentary, in his soul and conscience, will individually express his personal conviction through his personal vote in the framework of this eminently ethical debate. This is an element that characterizes us and I thought it useful to highlight it clearly. This means a freedom in terms of the vote given but ⁇ also differences between us in terms of the motivations of the same vote eventually expressed.

The second consideration I wanted to formulate is the idea that a debate like this can only be undertaken with modesty, humility and with one conviction: none of us here can claim alone to be right.

As far as I am concerned, after taking part in the work of the committees, after reading a lot, listening and reflecting, I decided to express a negative vote on this bill. I will present to you the considerations on which I based myself to take this attitude.

As a preliminary, it is essential to say from the beginning the difference between this debate and another, relatively recent, debate that has been addressed in our country and before this assembly, namely the one that touched on same-sex marriage. Regarding this topic, even if I was not a parliamentary in this debate, I would have voted in favour, without the slightest hesitation, for a very simple reason. Indeed, in the context of same-sex marriage, it is only the situation of two adult adults, consenting, totally free to determine their choice and the life they wish.

In this debate, even spontaneously and intuitively, this fundamental difference is well felt: it is not just two adult adults who are older and consenting — each has addressed it in his speech — but children.

Our role as a legislator — and I am not the only one who thinks so — is to have a special duty of vigilance towards the weakest in society who are faced with one or the other situation. Of course, children fall into this category. I am pleased that both supporters and opponents of this bill have focused their reasoning – even if they come to different conclusions – on the situation and the best interests of the child.

I am neither a pediatrist nor a psychoanalyst. Therefore, I can only read with modesty, study, try to understand the arguments of one and the other who try to answer this central question of the interest of the child. by

I must well see — I have said it with much sobriety, Madame Lalieux — that the studies available today are — this is the least that one can say — far from being consensual in considering that there would be no difference in one or the other situation. I speak here with words chosen with caution. This simply means that, based on what the scientific literature expresses, my personal conclusion is to say that I don’t know. I don’t know what the child’s interests are when I consider the question asked. That is why I choose precaution, precaution.

However, there is one element of the argument—I say it without polemic—that leads me to think that the authors of the bill are hypocritical. Indeed, it should not be believed that with this bill, we would settle the case of all children who are in the situation of being raised on a daily basis, sometimes for many years, by gay parents. A deliberately wrong message is expressed here. by

In practice, I find — and I share this concern — that there is a will to devote on the legal level this love, this affection that exists, including in the head of homosexual parents. But we must open our eyes and not forget that even if in many situations one or more children are raised by persons of the same sex, there are still two biological parents who, by hypothesis, are separated. At this point, you do not bring the slightest beginning of response, nor the slightest beginning of recognition. There is a discrimination between different children. This is a central element to which you do not give an answer.

The debate has already taken place in the committee. by

There were two types of proposals on the table. The first was the adoption. Let’s be clear, in adoption, there is only one biological parent — this is the case, for example, when a woman has been inseminated, so her partner has not had a child and is not legally recognized today — or there are no recognized biological parents, that is, children who were abandoned at birth or at a given time. This case of figure was effectively separated from what was called in its legal term "social parentality". by

Today, we know that there are different types of families. We know that there are recomposed families with two biological parents who, today, have parental authority. We know that the father-in-law and mother-in-law, whether heterosexual or homosexual, do not have this authority, nor this recognition. This is the problem that will be addressed, which we agree with. We never said that all situations would be resolved through this vote.

It has always been said that one would solve the case of adoption that is known since one takes a situation and a clear legal institution that you know, on which we have worked for two years under the previous legislature. Adoption means that there are no two recognized biological parents who educate the children. Therefore, we have never lied to anyone, we have always said that we are solving this problem. Social parenting, we will work on it because we know that recomposed families also experience dramas sometimes.

Thank you, but I am afraid that you would support what I have just said. As part of the procedure, you refused the possibility of analyzing all situations in parallel. You tell us today that we were right, but we will see it later. This is unfortunate, and it acknowledges the idea, ⁇ unjust, that there was a will to go quickly, in a slightly hasty manner, to make right first and above all to a claim whose scope is extremely limited. You have just confirmed this analysis with what you have just stated.

Children of parents of different sexes have the right to care, education, economic and succession rights of both parents. I will stop here because anyway...

Before concluding, I would like to address one last point. I am saddened by the way debates have been conducted in recent weeks or even in recent months. Even in the statements held at the moment, I do not believe that the answers that were yet needed have been provided. You may have guessed, I think of the issue of international adoption. I understand well the idea that it is not about letting other countries dictate the fundamental values, the central benchmarks on which we bring, in our democratic framework, the answers to the ethical questions that are posed to us. I agree with this analysis without any problem. Nevertheless, when legislating, do we not have a duty of lucidity, do we not have the duty to verify, in a concrete and practical way, what are the consequences of the decisions we make?

I would like to delay a few moments on this question by recalling the figures that Philippe Monfils delivered just recently. In 2004, there were 366 adoptions in the French Community. Less than 40 of these adoptions concern children born in Belgium. This means that the vast majority of adoptions take place within an international framework. What is observed? I refer to the remarks of the officials of the French Community in charge of these matters on a daily basis. They tell us that one thing is certain: in the vast majority of cases, the countries of origin of the children will not grant this adoption mechanism when it comes to homosexual parents. We choose to close our eyes on this.

If it were just that, it ⁇ ’t be too serious, I agree. But there is another element that we were told during the hearings and for which no response was given, I regret it: the idea that, for a number of countries, the risk is high that even heterosexual persons who undertake procedures find themselves in trouble because they come from a country that would have allowed adoption for homosexual couples. That’s why I don’t understand why you didn’t choose a wiser path, for example the one that was chosen by the Netherlands. The Netherlands is not suspected, in this regard, of being an atrociously conservative or atrociously conservative country.

Mr. Michel, in the Netherlands, they began to accept only domestic adoption. They just voted now for international adoption for all. So they acknowledged the mistake they made a year ago. Why would we make the same mistake by dividing the debate? I do not understand.

I will tell you why. By voting this legislation in a maximistic way, you will put in difficulty — and it is not me who says it, it is representatives of the French Community who deal with these affairs on a daily basis — heterosexual couples who pursue international adoption procedures with countries that have the greatest reservations with regard to this problem.

Another example is Sweden. The Swedish issue was addressed in a committee and no credible response was given by the promoters of the proposal. I regret it because, in relation to this aspect, we did not carry out the work until the end. What do we see in Sweden? The legislation was adopted, including for international adoption with an entry into force in February 2003. There is, at the level of figures in 2004, a free drop in adoptions with some countries. I admit that there is an exception for China, but for many other countries, for example Vietnam, Belarus, there is a direct decline in the number of international adoptions.

We do not have enough retreat in comparison to this. I agree with you that this deserves a deeper analysis. I am surprised that there was no more reasonable choice, since it was your will — although I do not share, for the reasons I have expressed, the choice you make to take this bet — to frame and define first the perimeter on the level of adoption at the internal level so as not to put in trouble the heterosexual couples who follow a ⁇ complex path.

Let me recall a few figures. There were 366 adoptions for the entire French Community over a year, of which less than a quarter at the Belgian level. This means 320 international adoptions in one year. This shows how difficult this path is. By the choice you make, which is in my opinion excessive, you go too far and you unfortunately put in trouble the heterosexual couples who undertake adoption procedures. This was said clearly in the hearings: no relevant contrary element was brought. And I asked nothing better than to hear it.

Madame Lalieux, I have noted with great attention during this debate — and I have respect for the arguments you have developed — that you have very skillfully — and ⁇ it was reasonably decided — omitted to speak of the issue of international adoption which has yet been discussed in a central way during our work in committee.

I conclude by concluding.

Those and those who carry this bill have made the bet that the vote on this proposal could be in accordance with the interests of children. They may be right, but they may also be wrong.

For my part, I do not bet since the object is a child because, I measure my words, I can not consider that the child is a cobaye!

Ladies and gentlemen, I will be very brief.

I am a lawyer and lawyers look at a problem legally. The chance is that there are a few lawyers here. There are them on all rows, even behind my back. I have heard a whole range of legal arguments here today, opinions from the State Council, studies of comparative law, and so on. I do not want to undermine the arguments we have heard today, nor do I want to fall into repetition. I think that the argument put forward today by many colleagues is very valuable.

I just want to add the following to the debate. I have seen reactions of chill, of fear, of fear of the unknown, and even of phobia. I think we should only be phobophobic. In other words, we must give ourselves down against those who create and arouse fear in others, and we must remove the fears of their fear.

Our guiding motives later in the mood should not be the cold, not the cold, and not the fear. Our guiding motives should be the warmth, affection and legal certainty we want to offer children. Fortunately, I felt a lot of warmth in the debate.

It has already been cited here today several times that there are no objective reasons for us to oppose the proposal. Colleagues, the harsh reality today is that a child who grows up warmly and lovingly in a holebi family and has only one legal parent and in reality has always had two, at the death of the legal parent in fact loses two parents. I hope everyone understands that now.

We can all have certain wishes or desires about our offspring. However, no one can predict in advance whether their children or grandchildren will be heterosexual, gay or lesbian. What I know is that the only thing that matters is the importance of children. I want our children and all children in our country no longer to face uncertain situations and that they can grow up in warmth, love and security. Therefore, I will approve the bill.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, because I consider that the debate on homosexuality is not a priority and that we have already devoted a lot of time to it, while much more crucial issues that affect thousands or even millions of Belgians require our full attention – I mean employment, cost of living, energy, competitiveness of Belgium.

Because the best balance for a child, on the biological, educational and human levels, remains the relationship between a father, a mother and that child, and because the evolution of that child obviously depends on the quality of the benchmarks that we will have been able to propose to him.

Because it is not a matter of ruling on the affective and educational capabilities of same-sex couples, but rather on the interest of the child in its identity and social construction of gender differentiation.

Because the legal vacuum harmful to children of homosexual couples could be filled by custody by the spouse or cohabitant.

Because adoption is already in itself a difficult act, difficult to succeed, and it is much more so when it comes to a gay couple.

Because an adopted child remains in the depths of itself, whether you like it or not, an orphan child.

Because the identity of a child and its insertion in society must be preserved and it is primary not to confuse parenthood and filiation.

Because I don’t think gay couples are more safe—why would they be? — breakup or misunderstanding as heterosexual couples, often used argument.

Because our Western society admits for the human being the freedom to live a sexuality different from the heterosexual sexuality, but that the biological and social identity as well as the psycho-effective balance of a child cannot be the instrument of any cause.

For all these reasons, Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, I will vote against the bill aimed at allowing adoption by homosexual couples.

Where is Mr. Laeremans now? Mr. Laeremans has been here all night. Give the word to M. and Cocriamont.

The debate we are attending this evening is a high-quality debate. Everyone demonstrated enormous arguments, both legally and psychologically. Everyone has shown tremendous respect for homosexuals. It would be politically incorrect to address homosexuals. It’s true that they have the right to respect, but I’m really not convinced that this law on adoption of children by homosexuals is a law that respects homosexuals.

While it is a right for homosexuals to be respected, they also have duties. And this duty is to conform, within the limits of their possibilities, as much as possible to the laws of nature. And as far as I know, nature has never given children to people practicing exclusively homosexual relationships.

Many homosexuals are opposed to this law. A well known personality, Mr. Pim Fortuyn, cried out loudly his homosexuality and his total opposition to this law, because he considered that homosexuals in general do not have a life of morality sufficiently exemplary for children.

We talked a lot about psychology and the relationship between parents and children. However, little has been said about other relationships that make life. There was little talk about the relationship between the children. Everyone should doubt that the children among them are cruel, that they are not kind or very rarely. Everyone knows that the children of homosexuals will be the heads of their little companions and even in adolescence, even in their youth, these problems will persist. by

I am replied that all these problems already exist, whether psychologically or legally, because homosexual singles are candidates for adoption. Well, to that, I only have one answer, it is a fault in our system. If homosexual women want to resort to artificial procreation, I think that doctors who practice these procreations, this childbirth aid, should refuse this type of procreation, because it seriously harms the child.

We are referred to studies. Who can believe it? They resemble exactly the polls of political parties that, when they are clients, are always in a more favorable position than others. by

We have been told that children are now victims because of the impediment of the co-disciple from being able to inherit, etc. We are also told that 20 or even 50 people are currently affected. I want to tell you, for my part, that if you vote for this law, there will soon be thousands of victims. However, the interests of children should precede those of adults. by

Instead, our duty is to facilitate the arrangements for adoption of orphaned or subscribed European children for heterosexual couples.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, many of the reasons why we are opposed to gay adoption have already been put forward by colleague Bert Schoofs. I do not want to fall into repetition. I will limit myself to a few legal considerations. Their

Mr. Speaker of the Chamber, I would like to expressly thank you for sending this whole dossier, including the amendments, to the State Council on your own initiative. We have asked this repeatedly during the discussion. However, this was proudly denied. If this had happened then, this file might have taken a very different turn, because the State Council has submitted ⁇ interesting arguments for not approving gay adoption. Their

Since the opinion came only after the approval of the various articles, it was too late for a period of reflection. The supporters were no longer able to mentally distance themselves from their great equals, despite the fact that the State Council explicitly invited them to seek serious, thorough accountability for that gay adoption. Their

I want to say this again. The main point of criticism remains for us that the legally organized gay adoption is not in the interest of the adopted children themselves. In this regard, I would like to quote what I said here at the end of January 2003 when approving the same-sex marriage, which was actually only intended to pave the way to what is being discussed today. Their

I said the following: “Everything suggests that the opening of the marriage is not in itself the true goal of the lobby behind all this operation. The real goal, the real end goal, is gay adoption. From now on, we will do everything possible to realize this as soon as possible. If today the same-sex marriage is instituted with the grounds of the so-called discrimination, then tomorrow, a fortiori, one will fulminate with the same argument against the inequality in matters of adoption, as provided by this law.

The same people who will soon pass this law will declare tomorrow, under the pressure of the homolobby with a poker face, that the inequalities that are now built up constitute a shameful discrimination. Their

The Flemish Bloc," as we said in January 2003, when the party was called, "continues that adoption should be reserved for heterosexual couples, especially for the best interests of the child. An adopted child does not grow up in his own natural environment, with his own father and mother, and is thus in a precarious, vulnerable situation. Many children who learn at an early or late age that they have not been raised by their own parents are experiencing a long-term identity crisis. Their

Especially for these youths, especially for adopted youths, we demand the right to a father and a mother, the right to an environment that is as close as possible to the natural parent-child relationship. When it comes to adoption, we should not focus on the needs and desires of the candidate adopters, but rather on the basic interests and rights of the child.”

That was my quote from January 2003. We said it then and we still stand behind it today.

By the way, we got right. I quote from the explanation of colleague Swennen’s bill: “The provision that only spouses and couples of uneven sex live together fall under the definition of adoptant, is an unlawful discrimination and in addition contrary to Article 11” — the equality article — “of the Constitution.” You will be the last to deny it.

We have predicted that. It is on this basis that we discuss all the texts today.

We are therefore very pleased that the State Council has also given us the right right in the meantime, in particular since the State Council confirms that not granting the right of adoption to same-sex couples is not discrimination. The existing laws are therefore non-discriminatory.

The Council of State thus completely undermines the foundation, the alleged necessity of the present legislation.

The Council of State emphasizes what I quote: "Particular attention should be attached to the superior interest of the child, which may be given priority over that of the parent." And yet: "Adoption means giving a child a family, and therefore not giving a family a child".

The State Council has wanted to make very detailed, with many pages of arguments, clear that the current situation is not discriminatory.

Mr. Speaker, if I listen carefully to Mr. Laeremans, he actually says that we only need to change something in the law from the moment that the State Council determines that there has been discrimination.

I thought we had a larger task in Parliament. We also need to respond to social trends. They do not necessarily have to be convicted by a court.

Mr. Bex, you are absolutely right in that. We have already submitted many proposals which have nothing to do with the Council of State or which the Council of State has ⁇ not blessed. We know that.

But it is not about that.

For the trends, for the needs that are social, for example, the newly formed families and the like, on which we all agree, by the way, a legal regulation is needed.

But the basis on which the bill has been laid, namely the so-called discrimination, has been underestimated by the Council of State, which says that there is actually no discrimination, because they are completely different situations.

Mr. Laeremans, can I take a moment? You just said that I did not adequately respond to the comments made by the State Council. But I have very thoroughly motivated that we do so from the interests of those thousands of children raised by two persons, where one of those persons does not have a clear legal link with that child. It is precisely from that importance that we act.

Do you deny those children that clear legal bond?

I will come back to that, but I want to say this now. A distinction should be made between children in newly formed families after a divorce or children of unmarried mothers who subsequently come together in a gay or heterosexual relationship. It is about children who come from a broken family or from special families. There is a need for legal elements in this area. We acknowledge that. The question is whether adoption is the right figure for that.

It had made sense to legislate the proposal for co-parenthood, which has also received criticism from the Council of State. At that time, there would be no discrimination but a arrangement would be developed for all children who are in such a situation. Now focus on a special group, which for some reason wants to please you very much. We find that not appropriate. We believe that all children who are in such a situation should count on a number of additional legal remedies and ⁇ not only the holebilobby. This is exactly what we have concerns about. I will later address those concerns.

Please interrupt me for a moment. After that, I will have Mr. Laeremans finish his speech.

It is not a legal discrimination of the parents, but of the children that we make this proposal. We make for children who are raised within a holebi family, the social consideration that everything is best arranged through adoption. Let’s vote on that later, but don’t blame us that we don’t have good reasons to do so. We have examined these reasons in detail and we will soon see if there is a majority to implement the scheme for those children. It is not about serving one or another target group. It is about the children.

Mr. Bex, the lobby we are talking about, had that as its sole goal during the last Gay Parade in Brussels. That was their great political demand. They have been lobbying for years. You want to take this for some reason – I don’t know which – absolutely, but we say that it is hasty and discriminatory, because all other children in broken heterogeneous families also have needs and needs. First address the big problems and then see if what is being done now is still needed. In any case, you will have to acknowledge that the amendment of an adoption legislation for persons who do not fit in the classical adoption story is a very fundamental legislative change. This is exactly what the State Council says.

I have a comment. Can you blame parents, whether they are gay or heterosexual, that they stand up for the rights of their children? So you do it! You accuse them that they are in a sort of struggle for the rights of their children. It is hard to blame those parents. These children have the same rights as other children. As for children who, after a broken relationship, end up in a newly formed family, I must say that I have some experience with this. There is a fundamental difference, because those children usually still have a different descent link, which children who grow up in mostly lesbian families do not have. What do you do with that other parent who, in my opinion, still holds the same rights on that child? You then end up in a difficult dispute with that other parent who still exists.

With that other parent who remains present, you end up in a difficult discussion. Therefore, in these cases, the custody of children who grow up with gay couples is not the right track, but adoption that provides the necessary guarantees, yes. The discussion about caregiving should be conducted, the VLD is prepared to do so, but this applies to other cases such as newly formed families where another parent is still present.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Taelman, a number of children can be included among the two figures, both adoption and caregiving. For those cases, we ask ourselves whether it is not better to declare the guardianship applied and not the adoption. By forcing this for a definite category, couples of the same sex, now you drag the horse behind the wagon and you are busy with a category but not sufficiently with the interests of those children. If all the time spent on these proposals were first devoted to the needs of all children — I know that debates are needed, but they could already have been held — then a lot more children would have benefited from the new legislation. Now you limit it to a narrow group. I find that so regrettable. I understand that that group manifests and demands some rights. The question is whether the interests of those children prevail or the interests of the group. Often these people have no children yet but they want children and then suddenly through adoption; children of both of them in a very strange and quite unnatural way. Of course, they have the right to protest. I have the right to refuse to accept those demands and to follow a very different idea. I hope that you give me that right; that you give me a completely different thought about this whole course of affairs.

The State Council has very thoroughly wanted to make it clear that the current situation is not discriminatory and that one must carry out with a very strong argument in order to be able to carry out gay adoption. This argument has apparently not been found by the State Council in the various bills. The Council of State states that this is not a banal and superficial matter in which some practical difficulties are settled in the field of inheritance, access rights and study choices. It is about creating under the same important institution, in particular adoption, situations that are completely different from each other. On the one hand, situations in which the children concerned have a reference framework with parents of different sexes, a framework that constitutes an extension of what was in place at the time of their conception, and, on the other hand, situations in which the reference framework of the children concerned, namely the presence of a father and a mother, is substantially amended, a reference framework thus in which they must lack either gender.

The reasoning of the State Council is as follows — I do not cite it now, but it is the conclusion I draw myself from it —: can fundamentally different situations be placed under the same institution? Is this reasonable, taking into account the interests of the child? In other words, can the government simply remain neutral? Can a government simply indicate that it is for it and for the Community regardless of which family the adopted child grows up best?

This is not for a moment, let the State Council actually understand. This means, according to the Council of State – I quote again – “connected with the very nature of the origin of life and the history of human society, namely the fact that a child is born from two persons of a different sex and that he is in principle part of a similar family.” A father and a mother is the principle, so let the Council of State understand. That is the normal situation. That is the starting point.

When we leave that principle, what is happening today, we must ask ourselves whether it is compatible with the principle of equality and the principle of non-discrimination. In other words, if you deny, in particular, certain adopted children the right to a father or a mother, you are, according to this reasoning, discriminating yourself.

I have a second concern. There is a threat of discrimination.

Does that mean that you reject doctors, as Mr. Cocriamont said later, who allow a single woman to be fertilized through artificial insemination, and find their practices contrary to the principle of non-discrimination?

This is not the whole discussion. A single woman who gets fertilized either naturally or through IVF is a fact that can only be established. I only hope that this woman as a mother recognizes the child as well. This has nothing to do with adoption. That is a completely different story.

I do not say that. I acknowledge the situation. I know single mothers who are in this situation. Who am I to blame them? I am glad that they kept their child. I think it is worth the effort.

I have a second concern. There is a threat of discrimination. On this point, the State Council is also warning. The law could have a long-term effect that certain states, from which many adopted children come today, will stop sending adopted children to our country. The proposers of the bill hope that this will not happen. However, the fear that certain countries will at some point change their attitude towards our country remains justified and continues to exist. There is a real chance that certain countries, especially when the demand for adopted children rises, in practice will give priority to countries where gay adoption does not exist.

This would have as a perverse consequence that a lot of heterosexual couples in practice are simply deprived of the possibility to adopt another child. This is also described by the Council of State as discrimination.

Third consideration . More generally, I would like to emphasize that it will be more difficult for heterosexual couples anyway to get an adopted child, because of course this law will not remain without consequences. Then we come to a very important aspect of what is happening here today. More and more, there will be a pattern of expectation in same-sex couples that involves adopting a child. Precisely by placing both situations under the same status, by no longer making a distinction, it will be very difficult, if not impossible for the adoption services and — agencies to give priority to heterosexual couples. At that time, same-sex couples will call for discrimination on the basis of this law, which is being voted today. They will demand and try to force — we know the pressure from certain groups — that a proportional part, a certain percentage of the limited number of adopted children — we know that there is a very limited number of children for domestic adoption — would go to couples of the same sex. They, too, will then be argued, have the right to an adopted child, as much as heterosexual couples, in the same degree or about the same percentage as heterosexual couples. The importance of the child itself comes then in second place. This will inevitably make it more difficult for heterosexual couples to welcome another adopted child.

The fourth consideration. Since this law will inevitably create a new expectation pattern with respect to gay couples, in the future much more than today will be sought to appeal to mother-bearing or borrowing mothers. This is also not a healthy evolution. The outputs that we all have been able to identify around baby Donna — where between the hooks there was also a gay couple with a wig, you’ll know — have shown in a screaming, shameful way how far Pandora’s box has already been opened. We have the greatest possible concerns about this evolution in which children are marketed as commodities and even on the Internet. The State Council also warns. More specifically, the practice of surrogate motherhood raises serious concerns with regard to the non-availability of the human body, the dignity of the surrogate mother and the respect for the principles arising out of the Convention on the Rights of the Child concerning the continuity of parenting, including maternity and parental responsibility for the child.

And then another last consideration, the name. Article 3 of the proposed law gives gay adopters the right to choose the family name for their adopted child. Only they have this right, no one else. I wonder how long this law will last. Just as it has been said that reserving adoption to heterosexual couples involves discrimination — quod non as the State Council has said in the meantime — but for many more reasons, heterosexual couples who want to give their child, for example, the name of the mother or a composite name will try to use this new inequality to claim the same right of choice as gay couples, as gay parents. It is a side concern that is somewhat separate from the actual subject of today but we are not naive, we have experienced it over the past years too often that new so-called discriminations were deliberately inserted – it has also happened with the euthanasia law – to then act as a break iron so that the legislator, so that you, so that we all, so that this Parliament can be bypassed.

Colleagues, I do not want to end without expressing my express hope that this nefaste bill will eventually not become a law. Our hope is placed on the Senate, where there will undoubtedly be less fanaticism and less dull acting than in this hemisphere.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, many of us in this assembly, probably have personal skills that help them to form an opinion sometimes almost certain, I heard, to issue their personal vote that we will all assume today!

As far as I am concerned, I am not a lawyer; I am not a philosopher; I am not a doctor and ⁇ not a moralist. So I react to this case with my personal experience of being a father — I hear today to say “father” — who has been living something different for a few years.

We have known for a very long time that the bill on adoption of children by homosexual couples would be discussed and examined. It was announced; therefore it was necessary to prepare for this debate, of course, in a group but above all, on a personal basis. I have therefore conducted, as probably most of you, a long and deep reflection, especially since within the MR, freedom of conscience and vote in ethical matters is a fundamental right.

I am not saying that this is not the case elsewhere. I would like to say that this is the case with mr.

It is therefore also impossible to take refuge behind any group decision, or even a question of group discipline. This is not a matter of collective responsibility, but of personal responsibility.

I would therefore like to officially thank my group leader and, through him, the entire MR group for allowing its representatives to assume, in matters of ethics, a personal and conscientious vote.

I am also aware that in this specific dossier, one voice, one voice, can sometimes change everything. I do not yet know the result that will come out of the urn in a few hours or minutes, but it is certain that every vote will count. The personal responsibility of each parliamentary is, therefore, crucial and radically intersects with the habit of majority votes against opposition where group discipline reigns very often as master. It is good that in this matter, that is, in the face of a real social debate, things are different.

There are several ways to analyze this dossier: from the point of view of parents, adults, and, of course, the point of view of children. For others, it is the moral, or even religious aspect, that will preside over their reflection.

We must be aware that this subject is delicate and that it can strike the consciences or simply disturb the daily life of some people who are not accustomed to living alongside all the realities of our society. With regard to this day, I will suggest you dare to face the reality.

First, adopting a child is a difficult thing. The conditions are naturally strict, and ⁇ for all and for all. Anyone, including heterosexual couples, can not adopt a finger crack.

Second, bringing love to a child is not the apennage of some, a gender or a group of people qualified as people "living normally".

Thirdly, many children in Belgium and around the world deserve to be cared for but also simply deserve to be loved. by

Fourth, many children are already concerned with the homosexuality of one of their parents.

Fifth, thanks to laws, in particular to a law passed here, as we have just said, a single man or a single woman can already adopt a child without causing the slightest difficulty. Even in foreign countries we are told that some could refuse from now on the adoption of their children because of the possibility of adoption by gay couples in Belgium.

Sixth, how to currently react with or without a law to an application for adoption by a single person if that adoption candidate confesses that he is gay, even if he is not married? Can it be judged on a case-by-case basis, according to the appearance of the applicant or the possible intensity of his relationship with a spouse? Or is it going to be privileged for the one who would not confess and who would lie about his real status as a gay living in a couple? All this is naturally vague and leaves room for many interpretations not always placing all candidates for adoption on an equal footing.

What is the most important? As far as I am concerned, I modestly think that a child is equal to a child — as I have often heard, especially when it comes to the payment of family allowances — even though the situation of his parents is different.

I have heard the views of some of you. As far as I am concerned, I fully respect all opinions that can be expressed in an assembly like this, as long as they are not excessive. What is this conception that is to say that because something is different in the head of the gay couple, this difference must automatically be transferred to the head of the child? Even though I can admit the viewpoint calling marriage between a gay couple and a heterosexual couple different, it remains that the real reflection must be about whether or not it is appropriate to postpone this difference on the head of a child.

I believe that it is fundamental, of course, to guarantee equal rights to members of a gay or heterosexual couple with respect to a child, but even more to guarantee equal rights to that child with respect to all other children.

Some proposals have been made to guarantee equivalence of rights but under a different legal formula, without actually using the word "adoption". Somewhere, adoption is disguised. Shouldn’t we be afraid that using such a system will concrete a difference of status in the head of each child concerned by homosexual adoption? And this could create a new space for disputes, especially on the legal level.

Creating this difference, in my opinion, risks resulting in discrimination between children, or even blaming some of these children in relation to the choice their gay parents would have made or not. Why would it be necessary to find another word or other legal or philosophical conception to otherwise qualify the same thing, namely the taking care, by two adults, of a child who is not always their own child but who, in some cases, may be in part.

Even if I risk shocking some, it seems important to me not to be hypocritical. This House accepted gay marriage as well as adoption by a single person. In this logic, in order to remain coherent and not hide the reality of the facts, nothing opposes adoption both morally and philosophically and intellectually.

Indeed, with or without a law, law passed in a few minutes or not, there will be adoptions by gay couples. There are already now, but those that exist are partly truncated, hidden, or even often disguised. Sooner or later, either the child concerned or one of the partners of this couple will be penalized.

As for gay marriage, at the risk of surprising some, I agreed to use another word to qualify this union of two persons of the same sex. Certainly for ethical reasons, but especially to mark the difference. I think adults are able to assume that there is something really different between a gay couple and a heterosexual couple. Therefore, it does not bother me that the act of marriage is otherwise called for a gay couple.

But as regards the child who, naturally, does not choose the situation in which he will live, except for exceptions, he should not be subjected, in my opinion, to any discrimination as to his status. An adoption is an adoption; there is no other term to say it. It is enough to refer to the reality that is or will be experienced for each of these children.

I dare to state here that I would rather hear people and members of this Chamber say to me that I am against adoption, to be against the fact that a same-sex couple takes care of a child, manages or adopts a child, rather than to hear that adoption is admitted on condition that it finds another name and takes another legal form.

I must confess that I have considered to submit an amendment to the bill; it would have provided for the possibility of adoption in cases where there is a filial link between the members of the same-sex couple and the child. This relationship of filiation could be considered in different degrees; I had spoken about it to some of my colleagues. by

Nevertheless, and always after mature reflection, it must be considered that the adoption of this amendment would have risked to generate new difficulties in specific cases and discriminations between certain homosexual couples, some can and others can not adopt. This discrimination could also appear in the head of certain children who could not benefit from an adoption in the family group, whether in the first, second or third degree.

Consequently, Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, Dear colleagues, after mature reflection and given my modest personal experience, I decided to vote in favour of the bill as submitted.

I thank you.

First of all, I would like to thank the rapporteur for his report.

Colleagues, we must not close our eyes to the social reality, which has existed for a long time. We see in life and in the field that many parents who are not the legal or biological parents commit to bear responsibility for children who are not theirs. It deserves all the praise and all the support. You have the right to rights, but also the right to duties. There should be a legal statute.

I am pleased that the overwhelming majority in our assembly agrees that all parents who wish to engage with children can be good parents. If we compare this almost unanimous consensus with the situation in many other countries in the world, we can look forward to the fact that we are far away in this regard.

The debate in the committee was, like the debate today, emotional. This is understandable in such documents. However, it was also served serenely. We are not talking about yes or no, we are not talking about for or against. Today the question is how we can provide a solution to the problem that arises anyway when parents who are not the biological parents still commit to children. How do we comply with this legally? How do we give these children a legal status? How do we respect the parents who make this commitment? The choice is not yes or no, but how. Which path will we take for this?

What I heard from one of the professors of Family Law of our country during a hearing in the Family Law Subcommittee, I had already heard in a different context. I share his belief, namely that one changes the family law if there is a sufficiently wide social support and if there is clear dissatisfaction among the people with the existing legislation.

Family law affects our fibers and is extremely sensitive. Consequently, it does not allow itself to create a support for the amendment of legislation. The support is better available first before changing the family law. Otherwise, there is a risk that the amended family law becomes a blow in the water.

Everyone in this hemisphere has certain points of view in this file. It is not about equality of rights. It is not about the right to homosexuality. These are matters that are not discussed. These are things that, fortunately, we all agree on. Nor is it about the right of parents to a child and the emancipation struggle of those parents and of holebi. This is not about today either. It is about the children. If today a bill on adoption is presented for approval, we must not forget that adoption was first and foremost a legal figure, and it has always been, to give a child or children who are in a precarious situation familyally, materially or psychologically, a reinforced, legal position, a status, an identity, especially an identity in accordance with the reality as those children experience it. That is where the question arises. There is, however, a distinction in the situation between the different types of families. Does a different situation deserve a different regulation?

Colleagues, I know that the criterion and the argument of the importance of the child are filled differently by the advocates and opponents of this proposal. Raising children is a damn difficult task today. Educating adopted children — I have a phenomenal respect for people who want and dare to take that commitment — is even more difficult. Anyway, many of you will know that from situations in their surroundings, adoptive children are faced with attachment problems, with root questions, with a processing process. During the hearing, we may have addressed too few adult adopted children. They have said that they are engaged in a processing process, that they have root questions during puberty and even during their adult life. Should they come from a family with persons of the same sex? The risk exists and the reality, unfortunately, sometimes teaches us that these children are bullied and get negative reactions from the environment.

That’s not good to talk about, but today it is, unfortunately, still the reality in some crushing cases. Today, unfortunately, it is still the reality that the Minister of Justice must write in its policy note and properly pay attention to it, that we must react quickly to homophobic behavior. There are still holebians who are humiliated, insulted and subjected to physical violence in this regard.

Mr. Verherstraeten, Mrs. Taelman wants to interrupt you.

Mr. Speaker, allow me to conclude this discussion and then Mrs. Taelman may have the floor.

It cannot and should not be the intention to involve children in a just process of emancipation that is not discussed. If that risk exists, will we take it? We talked about the precautionary principle that we should apply in all matters in politics and that a fortiori should address the most vulnerable children. That precautionary principle is not there to do nothing, because in this regard we have alternatives, but we believe that absolute precaution should first be in place.

Mr. Verherstraeten, you are, of course, rightly referring to the difficulties that some adopted children encounter with attachment and to the attachment problems that can exist when bringing foreign children to Belgium. It is indeed true that raising children is difficult: we all experience this every day. For adoptive children, this is probably even more difficult. Their

I think that in the new law we have approved a heavy procedure – your group did too – which makes in each individual case the best interest of the child the decisive factor in the adoption procedure. Can you a priori assume that it can never or never be in the best interests of a child to be adopted by a gay couple?

In fact, Mr. Verherstraeten, we must also be honest with ourselves and say that in 99.9% of cases this is not and will not be. The Swedish experience teaches us that. In Sweden, where gay adoption was approved, we have not yet seen any cases of gay couples adopting a child from another country. Their

You do not actually answer the question of what it is about. Is it not in the interest of children who now grow up in such situations with lesbian and gay couples that there is a regulation for this? This is essentially what it is about.

The colleague puts quite a lot of confidence in the strict and supposedly strict adoption procedure. Imagine that it would have happened that a gay couple had bought the baby, baby D., in every sense of the word, from the woman who had offered her child on the internet. There was a gay couple ready to do that. In the future, more and more caregivers will be engaged for gay couples who want a child. Do you think that in those situations the heavy, strict adoption regime will still be applied? One will simply establish that the child is there and therefore let it be adopted. There will no longer be strict control. It’s almost like taking a child out of an automate. I find that painful.

Mr. Stirling, you have heard the two questions. You answer if you want.

Colleague Taelman, we have not spoken against the interest, we have only said that there may be a danger that it might not be in the interest. You point to the preliminary examination. You rightly assume that it is sharp. One goes even very far in this, precisely because of the precautionary principle I just talked about. However, the preliminary examination, of course, focuses primarily on the parents and the family environment. Are parents really aware of the problems involved in raising children and raising adopted children? Is the family environment strong enough to capture all this? That preliminary examination does not say what will happen in the future with the child in the environment outside the family. A child does not live alone in the family and with the family in the narrow sense of the word. A child lives in a whole society. It has not wiped out certain conditions and situations and can then suddenly be confronted with behaviors to which I have just referred and which I regret, but which unfortunately are the reality. So let us be absolutely careful.

Second, you argue, and you are correct in it, that it may not be about the root questions, the attachment problems and the processing process, because such types of adoptions may not be granted. Why should the proposal provide for the possibility of international adoptions? If it does not happen in practice, then leave it out. This is stated in the proposal to be voted.

We do not want to talk about yes or no. We want to talk about how and which way. Our path is different. We had alternatives. An alternative has been on the banks for years: the guardianship. The guardianship is indeed applicable to many situations; on newly formed families, on guardianship - guardians have been asking party for a statute for years.

That can be perfectly applicable to holebi states, excuse, holebi families.

I know the criticism of this proposal. If we subsequently address the proposal on caregiving — that commitment has been made — and vote on it, then there are many concrete situations in which it can be applied. If caregiving is inferior to the holebi, it is also inferior to the others. I find it a full-fledged statute, for which there is a very great social need and for which there is a support. It is not inferior. It can create inheritance rights, not automatically — that is true — but by testamentary means. This does not exclude it.

I heard today during the debate that co-parenthood would be inferior because it does not create inheritance rights. I invite the colleagues to re-read the alternative that we suggested during the debate to thus grow together – which, however, has not proved possible. Then they will find out that we have provided inheritance rights with the co-parenthood.

That one would be a copy of the other, and thus the question can be asked why to name it differently when it is still the same, is not correct. Co-parenting is not exactly the same, but a different status for different situations. In any case, we do not provide for descent. This is largely the distinction: adoption creates descent, while we do not do so with our proposal of co-parenthood and caregiving. This does not mean that the proposals would be inferior.

The issue of legal security has been debated for a long time. Foreign adoptions have already been discussed here. It has repeatedly referred to the Swedish example, which has not given rise to fewer adoptions for heterosexual couples to that country. That is correct. The young figures confirm this.

In the Netherlands, 25 countries were surveyed. Fourteen countries have clearly responded that they will not cooperate in adoptions for holebi couples, but they remain willing to act as a donor country for heterogeneous families. Surprisingly, 11 donor countries did not respond. We have also learned that in Sweden three holebi couples have undergone the very difficult pre-examination period and investigations — colleague Taelman has rightly pointed out thereafter — and have received a principle approval, if I can use that terminology, but ultimately no child is assigned.

The question arises whether we should create for couples the illusion that they will be able to adopt internationally, or whether they should undergo a very difficult procedure of one to three years, to then disappoint them afterwards and to say that there is no country that wishes to grant them a child. Can we do them that? This creates actual uncertainty. And let’s be honest, 85% of adoptions are foreign adoptions. Their

There has already been a lot of reference to the Council of State. Honesty commands me to say that the Council of State has criticized the caregivery. Mr. Speaker, if tomorrow the question of the custody will be dealt with in the Committee on Justice, then it is our intention to submit a few amendments to address the criticism. Their

I had hoped that even in the current bill some precision would be supplemented by the applicants to meet the criticism, which is there anyway, of the Council of State. In other words, we take risks anyway. Their

I am not saying that this proposal will not pass the test with the Arbitration Court. That will show the future, when one or another requesting party, this can be predicted, will refer to the Arbitration Court. Questions were asked by the State Council. These will be evaluated based on a concrete situation. These situations are numerous. Based on a concrete situation, the Court of Arbitration will be able to test this. Their

The Court of Arbitration will in any case be able to make a concrete test, ⁇ in the light of what the Council of State has expressly said about foreign adoptions. There is a chance that ⁇ a heterosexual couple will not be assigned a child because our Belgian legislator has provided for holebi adoption. Their

Whether this will be the reality will also show the future. These disputes were mentioned in the hearing. I referred to others in this regard. Their

Colleagues, it must only happen once that a heterosexual couple does not get a child assigned because of the Belgian legislation, and then I fear that this is too much and that this could even backward the emancipation struggle, the justified emancipation struggle, of holebi couples. Therefore, we suggest a more flexible solution.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Verherstraeten, you should explain to me how you can answer this. To be honest, I find it a very rough argument, because I share your concern in this regard. I don’t want couples to be deprived of adopting and adopting children. Their

However, let me explain how you, with the argument that a heterosexual couple might not get the adoption, respond that you think that those tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of cases of gay couples where one wants an adoption should rather be excluded. That logic completely escapes me.

I will concrete to one. The State Council has not concretized to one, but has very consciously pointed to it.

You know the political reality as well as I do. Once that happens on the field, I fear that there will be a lot of criticism and that there will be a lot of accusations against a community that does not deserve it in an emancipation struggle that it has been conducting rightly for years.

Therefore, we suggest our alternatives, which are smoother, which are simpler, which do not require such a difficult procedure as an adoption procedure and which are wider in terms of scope. We thought that our alternatives, that our choice, our way to the problems that arise anyway, were more opportunistic.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, I am proud to belong to a political group, the Reform Movement, which leaves its parliamentarians the freedom to vote according to their conscience in all ethical issues.

Homoparenthood has sparked a debate in our movement, each confronting his own opinion and analysis with those of his colleagues.

Today, it is in soul and consciousness that everyone will speak out, in a few moments.

This right to adoption is claimed by ⁇ militant, structured, internationally acting homosexual associations, well-organized associations that carry, in each country, the same demands in the name of the right of equality. It is not a coincidence that the French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Belgian parliamentary assemblies are simultaneously addressed with identical requests. Association and movements representing homosexuals and same-sex couples claim equality in adoption rights.

In reality, two theses confront each other: gommer or, on the contrary, naming and assuming the differences.

Is recognition of these differences not precisely the expression of equality among humans?

In view of the many testimonies, the many letters, emails that we have received, we have been able to see that the child and his becoming occupy much less space than the equality and legitimacy of the union that homosexuals seek.

In adoption, the child is in a relationship of dependence. He must be guided to forge his personality and find the landmarks to become an adult. Those who indicate that statistics demonstrate that there is no difference between children who grew up with same-sex parents and others mislead the opinion. The phenomenon is so recent that no retreat is possible in determining the consequences on the future of adults who were adopted in their childhood by homosexual couples. The pediatric psychiatrists consulted have an extremely divided and nuanced opinion on the issue. Most advance the need for a child to live with parents of both sexes to build his balanced personality by opening up to complementarity.

The only precautionary principle, so often advanced in matters such as the environment, would not apply to what is probably the most fragile in our society, namely children? How can we accept that, without having the necessary retreat to determine the long-term consequences on young adults, we can adopt homoparenthood?

Adopted children all suffer a double wound when they realize that their parents are adoptive and that a mystery surrounds their origins and their true parents. Homoparenthood will be synonymous with a third injury for children, that of having only two fathers or two mothers.

What are the consequences of this third injury? No one can say that today. Of course, you will tell me, there are children of heterosexual couples who suffer from quarrels or the separation of their parents. Of course, there are recomposed families where the spouse who has custody of their children decides to live with a person of the same sex. But do you not believe that the blood bond that unites a parent with his child dominates, in this case, the relationship with a partner of the same sex? In this case, the legal guardianship could have easily settled the situation without going beyond.

The new law on legal adoption has just entered into force. It sets a more binding framework to provide a better future guarantee for adopted children. Every year, in the French Community, it was recalled, almost 400 children are adopted. The heterosexual couples who make such a request follow training, are subject to determination of the psychological profile, must open the door of their homes to see if there are enough rooms, if the environment is welcoming and if the parental conditions are met to give all the chances to the adopted child. These couples are subjected, among other things, to numerous tests, including the determination of the relationship between femininity and masculinity within the couple and its right balance because the child is to be guaranteed the right to grow up with a father and a mother united in a balanced relationship.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to know how femininity and masculinity are analyzed when it comes to an adoption by a single person.

You will ask the agencies. I can assure you that I have gone through this stage.

How will this latter quality be determined within a gay couple? Will there be two-speed adoption procedures?

We will inevitably create discrimination between couples, in the name of seeking recognition of the right to homosexual parenting. Furthermore, as has been emphasized repeatedly, procedures for adoption of orphan children, coming from foreign countries, are currently frozen in anticipation of our assembly’s vote on this bill. Adoption is about to happen. They are now suspended, to the great despair of the adoptive parents who had to go to the place to get the adopted child and to withhold him from the sometimes difficult and unhappy conditions in which he lives today.

The French Community counts, I repeated, between 350 and 400 adoptions per year. How many adoptions are expected by homosexual couples? 10, 20, 100 a year. No one knows.

Our choice today will prevent a number of adoptions of children from developing countries by heterosexual couples. We thus deprive these children of a host family that has been preparing for this adoption for a long time. Should we ignore this reality?

Finally, how can I not be sensitive to a question that was asked by a privileged witness who indicated me, I quote: "Because one suffers from a certain difference from a situation, should all suffer from it?"

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Minister, dear colleagues, because I place the interest of the child at the forefront of my concerns, because the divergent opinions of the pediatric psychiatrists on the matter appeal to me, because the principle of precaution must apply even more here than in other matters, because heterosexual families wishing to adopt children will be prevented from fulfilling their immediate will, because countries will close their borders to Belgian applicants, because I am not convinced that the first objective pursued by this bill is primarily the best interest of the child, I will not support this proposal.

Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Vice Prime Minister, dear colleagues, if it is a merit to this debate, it is ⁇ that it has allowed us to have a different look at human realities that we have so long wanted to hide, hide, deny, or even that some despise.

This debate is honourable. He deserves to be greeted. It is in the honour of Parliament. Basically, the legislator cannot ignore the realities experienced, because the role of the law is not to say what is right or wrong — this is moral — the role of the law is to say what is right and unjust in relation to situations experienced and to be assumed. by

I will not be able to join the arguments of those who, through respectable arguments, have only sought to defend the traditional conception of the family. Whatever their considerations about their desire for their family structure scheme, I deeply respect them, but the role of the legislator is ⁇ to recognize the diversity of family realities and the experiences of children.

That is why all the arguments to say that children would necessarily be unhappy because raised in families whose parents are of the same sex, because they would not necessarily have the permanent reference of gender differentiation, do not seem to me to be arguments that can carry my conviction of not doing the work of legislator. Because our only concern is whether we need to do legislative work.

However, I would like to remind you that we are faced with legal realities. Certainly, I have heard very beautiful advocates in favour of the acceptance of the bill proposed to us. We are all inclined to stand on the side of those who advocate generosity in this debate. I applauded the speech of my colleague, Philippe Monfils, because he gave all the arguments in favor of a legal status to be granted to the child raised by a couple of persons of the same sex. On this point, I agree. by

But the law does not call a single answer to this finding. The law does not draw a single conclusion to this reality. It is not accurate to say that the only answer is necessarily adoption by same-sex couples. I will try to prove it to you. First of all, let us give thanks to a bad legal argument, which was supported for a while in the debates at the very beginning of our work, but which did not resist the legal analysis of the State Council! There is no unequal treatment in the light of the Constitution and legal principles, because homosexual couples would not be recognized the right to adoption. by

This is not an unequal treatment. All those who have advocated, first in the name of equal treatment, the recognition of the right to adoption for homosexual couples, must admit that legally, this is not the right form. It is also not legally justified to say that the right to family life opens up the right to adoption for homosexual couples. Here too, the State Council opinion has given us very precise answers to the fact that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which recognises the right to family life, does not necessarily open the right to adoption. And there is no judgment from the European Court of Human Rights to open up such a perspective. I am not saying that developments are not possible; I am saying that in the current state of law, there is no legal basis for building the right to adoption on these concepts. by

So if our real concern — and it is the only one that matters in this case — is to recognize the protection of the minor child raised by couples of persons of the same sex, as we are invited to do so by Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child — I am sorry to do a little right — we must ask whether there are other legal routes that give as high, if not even higher, legal certainty as adoption for couples of persons of the same sex. by

And here, there are many possibilities. It is true that the State Council has analyzed other submitted bills that it has gathered under a title, a vocabulary for which I do not have a great sympathy, "beau-parentalité", which I find somewhat barbaric. These proposals ranged from social parenting to guardianship mechanisms or extension of parental authority for the benefit of children raised by same-sex couples. by

We could not push this debate far enough in the committee but we saw that there was a host of legal answers to a situation that must be dealt with legally. I recalled during the debate in the committee that by an important decision of 2003, the Court of Arbitration indeed forced us to take a legislative initiative. I recall the hypothesis that the Arbitration Court put forward. This is the case where a child who has only one parent in respect of whom the filiation is established but has lived permanently in the household formed by that parent and by a third party, both assuming the responsibility for the maintenance of the child. This is the starting point of the legal construction we want to establish. by

I ask the authors of the proposal, for all children who are raised by same-sex couples and whose parents will not offer adoption, what is the legal answer you bring to the void of the law that the Arbitration Court has found?

Yesterday, during a debate, Ms. Genot said to me, rightly, that this bill is probably not going to lead to a very important phenomenon of adoption by same-sex couples. There will therefore not necessarily be a general legal answer to a situation found by the Arbitration Court, which is that of children raised by same-sex couples.

To those who defend this bill, I will ask the following question: take the hypothesis of the couple who proposes to adopt the child they are raising but who, at the end of the course, is denied this adoption. What is the legal response to this deficiency? At the end of this bill, there is no one. There is a legal vacuum that continues.

That’s why I said, in committee, that this bill was such a partial response to a real legal debate that it could not take my membership. There are many other roads. In the past, the legislator has already shown what these other paths could be. When it was considered that the obligations of parental responsibility extended to the benefit of children born outside of marriage, the mechanism or institution of adoption was not used to protect natural children. The concept of parental authority has simply been extended to parents who are not in marital ties.

Without a doubt, we should have worked from the notion of parental authority to give real and full protection to children raised by same-sex couples. It must be acknowledged that it was intended to give this debate another connotation that is that of wanting to assimilate same-sex couples to heterosexual couples, which in itself is honorable — I do not dispute it — but which is not the answer to the legal problem that the Arbitration Court has posed to us and to the objective that the Convention for the Protection of the Rights of the Child assigns us as legislators.

Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that States Parties undertake to provide the child with the protection and care necessary for his or her well-being, taking into account the rights and duties of his or her parents, guardians or other persons legally responsible for him or her. The bill does not address other persons legally responsible for it and does not address all existing cases. I rather have the weakness of thinking that the proposed bill is a proposal of law of passion and not of reason, a proposal of law of claim and not of protection, that is why I will not adhere to it.