NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Almost anywhere in North America, gay rights issues are on the political agendas. This has been an ongoing issue for the past ten years. However, significant results have hardly been seen until some five years ago. Still today, many homosexual individuals have to fight hard on a daily basis to be treated equally as non-married heterosexual couples, in order to gain such privilege as the right In 1995, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that sexual orientation is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and consequently, the Human Rights Commission announced that it would begin to accept complaints of discrimination based on sexual orientation. By then, all Provinces, except Alberta, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, had already outlawed discrimination against homosexuals in their own provincial human rights codes.
Furthermore, a new tendency in court ruling across the country -- as well as in private corporations -- started quietly handing homosexual men and women, same-sex employee benefits, bereavement leave and rights to adoptions. Unfortunately, it is not so everywhere in Canada. In 1991, Delhi Vriend, a laboratory instructor at Edmonton's Kings College was dismissed after affirming that he was gay. Vriend went to court claiming that it was unacceptable to fire openly gay workers in Alberta. However, at the end of the trial, in February 1996, the judge explicitly stated otherwise when he said that: Social policy is a matter for elected legislator to decide, not the courts, and that the legislature had not included sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination (Dwyer, 1996, p. 24), in Alberta's human rights code. In the mean time, the gay community of Canada wants more than the recognition of the rights of gay individuals, but also that of their partnership.
In 1996 s Ontario ruling, for example, the court ordered a fundamental redefinition of the word spouse in the provinces Child and Family Services Act to include partners of the same sex. Adversely, this kind of decision makes some people fear that such new laws could easily lead to subsequent pressure to allow gay marriage. Reform MP of the time, Ian McClelland said that: If your wife ask about why there is a brochure for a new car on the kitchen table, you can tell her its only a brochure. But the next thing she knows, theres going to be a car in Close to home, in the United States, in 1998, New Jersey became the first state to set a policy allowing gay and unmarried couple to jointly adopt children under the same qualification standards as married couples.
In most of the other state it is current practice to let the court decide what criteria is used to determine the best placement for a child, but New Jersey had a policy against joint adoption of children in state custody by couple who were not married. Therefore, previously, gays in the state of New Jersey could adopt only as individuals, forcing couples to undertake the lengthy and expensive adoptions process twice. However, courts in Colorado and Wisconsin disallow such double-adoptions; New Hampshire and Florida prohibit any adoptions by gays, even as individuals (Cloud, 1997, p. 106). But now in New jersey, all unmarried couple, gays and straight can adopt. Throught out the United States, there are between 20 and 25 states where lesbians and gay men are routinely adopting children, but it tends to be an arbitrary decision.
It is somewhat dangerous when an adoption policy is arbitrary This new New Jersey policy brought waves of opposition by religious rights groups such as the Christian Coalition and the Family Research Council. Kristen Hansen, a spokesperson for the latter group declared that the settlement agreement was a loss for children. This is bringing state government in to... give[ing] its stamp of approval to these practices, and it seems to have government saying for the first time that a gay environment is a good one to Still, in practice, adoption policy are almost made case by case, and sympathetic judges -- in the U. S. , every adoption must be sanctioned by a judge -- can allow just about any arrangement. It is estimated that thousands of gays have adopted over that past 20 years.
Bibliography:
Free research essays on topics related to: gay, jersey, gays, sexual orientation, human rights
Research essay sample on Gay Rights To Adoptions
