Are gay fathers getting a raw deal?

Recent debate has focused attention on the suitability of homosexuals and lesbians as parents

‘I THINK if you have a choice between a straight couple – straight up choice – and a gay couple you always, always place the child with a straight couple,” said columnist Brenda Power on TV3 recently.

She was debating what has become a contentious issue in recent months among Ireland’s gay community – the rights of gay couples to be recognised as parents.

Power is not alone in her views that parenting works best when it is the preserve of a heterosexual opposite gender couple.

Writing in this newspaper last year, John Waters commented: “What gays are demanding is the ‘right’ fundamentally to alter this society’s definition of marriage and invert the protocols governing adoptions, shifting the emphasis from the child’s interest to the alleged ‘rights’ of certain categories of would-be adopters.”

While media reporting of the issue has been somewhat confused (gay persons have the right to apply for adoption, just not as a couple), it has raised the issue of gay parenting and highlighted that experience.

Aside from the ideological arguments, gay parenting exists, and for many it is a difficult experience, both within their family and as a result of the reaction they face from the wider community. And while lesbian parents may be more accepted and identifiable, for many gay fathers in Ireland, their experience is muted.

They fear attracting the wrath of an already weighted family law system, or of creating difficulties for their children in school or social settings. As the homosexual experience in society has become more confident, many previously married men are finding difficulties reconciling their role as parents with their sexuality.

Dave Roche, manager of Cork Gay Community Development Project, says the current debate over adoption adds to prejudices in society towards the role of gay fathers.

“The last 10 years we’ve noticed a lot of people coming out in marriage. The community has become more visible and as part of that we’ve noticed an increase in the number of married men, both fathers and gay at the same time.

“Before this, you would have men who were gay and in marriages but might have agreed to stay until the children were reared. So they subsume their own needs to those of their children.”

Roche says gay fathers in Ireland have not asserted their rights as much as lesbian mothers, purely by virtue of the gender bias that exists within the family law system.

“Very few fathers, if any, would go and fight for their rights. In our society they are ridden with guilt over the marriage and the children. A lot of gay fathers end up with severe mental health issues.”

He says comments by Power and others create further difficulties for gay fathers. “Her comments only reinforce prejudices out there in society. What often gets lost in this debate is that we have thousands of gay fathers in this country.

“The real issue is what is best for the child and any situation where they are brought up in a secure, loving environment, regardless of sexuality, is the ideal.”

Roche says that whereas lesbian mothers’ groups are numerous in Ireland, there is, to his knowledge, no gay fathers’ group active in the country. He says gay fathers suffer discrimination, both from their homosexual community and also wider heterosexual society.

“[There] is a deep reservoir of prejudice against men. These men are the most marginalised in the gay community. They are invisible within their own community and suffer double prejudice.”

Editor of Gay Community News, Brian Finnegan, is a gay father, and says that he and his ex-partner shared custody of their now 20-year-old son. He rejects the notion that this was an unorthodox or unhealthy environment for a child to be raised in.

“What’s normal is what people are brought up with. A so-called ‘alternative family structure’ where the child doesn’t have a mother or father around for instance – that family situation is normal for the children to grow up in.”

Over the years, several gay fathers have contacted him for advice, having found themselves isolated and without a voice. He says: “I’ve been approached by several individual fathers to have coffee with them and talk about their experience.

“I met two men where the mothers of their children had difficulty accepting their sexuality. This was not an issue in my own situation.

“They thought it was wrong and distasteful, and were telling their children that message about their father. It is a very hard situation for those men and there is very little they can do.”

Finnegan says the political will does not exist to tackle the issue head on and that current debate makes it more difficult for a liberal equality-based agenda to assert itself.

He says the fact that not enough empirical studies have been carried out on children’s experience in gay families is working against gay fathers. Therefore, arguments made against such models are largely opinion based and not drawn from scientific evidence.

“Our government is afraid of the children’s issue . . . The simple fact is that there are not enough studies done on gay parenting. So the argument currently is that gay people will be damaging to children because they are gay.

“ I am saying this is not true. Gay people are just as human and capable of raising children in a loving, caring and safe environment. To say otherwise is a discriminatory point of view.”

COMING OUT: 'MY BIGGEST FEAR WAS HOW MY DAUGHTERS WOULD REACT'

Ted O’Connell is a gay father of two who runs Loafers bar in Cork

I am 51 and if ever there were a case of life beginning at 40, it would apply to me. The strong message given out when I was growing up was if you have any feelings of attraction to the same sex, it is a phase and you grow out of it. I went down the traditional route, got married at 26 and started a family two years after.

By the time I was 30, I had two daughters. It became apparent, I suppose, about 10 years into the marriage there was something fundamentally not right. I didn’t have the same sort of feelings I previously did. You could say I was living in denial.

It wasn’t until six months before my 40th birthday the light was switched on and everything fitted into place, and I came out. It is pretty late by present-day standards. At that

point, my youngest daughter would have been about nine and my oldest was 12.

My biggest fear was in terms of how they would react to me. I didn’t have any particular concerns in terms of access to the children initially.

That became an issue at a later time. We were concerned that my youngest daughter would hear at school, so we decided we would tell her. We had a very positive reaction from her. She would have been 10 at the time.

The biggest challenge I had, throughout the girls’ teenage years, was a stipulation that my ex-wife made as part of our divorce settlement in 2002. On weekends, when the girls were staying with me, I was not allowed to be in the company of any gay friends or partners. I was very unhappy with this, but I basically caved in. That agreement was meant to remain in place until they were 18, but it fizzled out when they were about 16.

Once I introduced the girls to a partner of mine. I was in a relationship with a guy for about three years and in the second year I brought the girls to meet him for coffee in an airport. After the coffee he went off and I brought the girls back to my place. My ex-wife found out, and I was in court soon after where I was told if it persisted, I would be facing serious consequences.

That has changed now and I would not accept those conditions again. It is something I have regretted, but at the time I just wanted a resolution and to move on. In a scenario like mine, I think my message is to get very good legal advice and to listen to that advice. I didn’t listen to my advice. My solicitor had issues and he said you will live to regret it, but I wanted closure.

I have a wonderful relationship with my kids. One of them lives in an apartment over my bar and the other pops in all the time. I think that if deep down a father feels he has a good relationship with his children he should trust that. Children are amazingly empathetic when push comes to shove.

In conversation with BRIAN O'CONNELL