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BELFAST, October 25, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Health Minister of Northern Ireland, Edwin Poots, is under fire this week, accused of “wasting” public funds for asking the UK Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling that will allow homosexual partners to adopt children.

This June, the Court of Appeal ruled that legislation that prevents unmarried, cohabiting couples and those in civil partnerships from adopting was illegal. The Supreme Court refused to allow a challenge this week.

To date, 8,470 people have signed a petition calling for the Health Minister to resign or be removed from his post. 

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“It is with disappointment that I note that the request for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court has been refused,” Poots said. “I am currently carefully considering the implications for the Adoption and Children Bill, which is currently being drafted and which I intend to introduce in the assembly next year.”

Steven Agnew, leader of the far-Left Green Party, wrote in the Belfast Telegraph accusing Poots of being “ideologically driven” in his attempts to challenge the change to the adoption law, as well as trying to stop active homosexual men from donating blood and opposing attempts to bring in abortion through medical practice guidelines. Agnew called Poots’ attempt to stop homosexual adoption “irrational” and said it has no “demonstrable benefit to wider society.”

Alliance Party MLA Kieran McCarthy said that Poots’ “position as health minister has been seriously undermined” and accused him of wasting public funds on “his own personal campaigns despite several failures in the courts.”

Sinn Fein MLA Maeve McLaughlin said the court had issued a “sensible and logical decision and one that will be welcomed widely. It is a decision that is against discrimination and for equality.”

“There are too many children in our care system for us to be deciding who has the right to apply to adopt a child. It should be about whether a couple can provide a loving and safe home for a child,” McCarthy added, echoing Agnew’s judgment that there is no evidence that children suffer any ill effects from being adopted by same-sex partners.

The court case that decided on adoption for homosexual and unmarried partners was the result of a lawsuit brought by an unidentified lesbian woman and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in a procedure that has won nearly all concessions demanded by the homosexual movement over the last 10 years in Britain and elsewhere.

McCarthy and Agnew’s charge that there is no evidence showing ill effects from same-sex adoption, however, ignores substantial research showing that all children invariably do better in a family headed by two parents of the opposite sex in a natural marriage.

In 2005, when Spain was considering homosexual adoption legislation, the Spanish Forum for the Family and the Institute for Family Policy published a report on the effects on children of being raised by same-sex parents. The “Report on Infantile Development in Same-Sex Couples” gathered evidence from dozens of academic studies on the question showing significant harms to children raised in the homosexual milieu.

Problems included low self-esteem, stress, confusion regarding sexual identity, an increase in risk of mental illness, drug abuse, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, and homosexual behavior.

Canadian author and activist Dawn Stefanowicz has testified many times to her own experiences being raised by a father who was heavily involved in the homosexual lifestyle. In her book, Out From Under: Getting Clear of the Wreckage of a Sexually Disordered Home, Stefanowicz wrote that it took years to recover her mental and emotional equilibrium.

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In an interview with Mercatornet, Stefanowicz said, “I was unhappy, fearful, anxious and confused. I was not allowed to tell my father that his lifestyle upset me. You can be four-years-old and questioning, ‘Where is Daddy?’ You sense women are not valued.”

“I was at high risk of exposure to contagious STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] due to sexual molestation, my father’s high-risk sexual behavior, and multiple partners,” she said. “Even when my father was in what looked like monogamous relationships, he continued cruising for anonymous sex.”

She described being “exposed to bathhouses” to “cross-dressing, sodomy, pornography, gay nudity, lesbianism, bisexuality, minor recruitment, voyeurism ,and exhibitionism.”

“Sado-masochism was alluded to and demonstrated. Alcohol and drugs with sex were common,” she remembered. “My father would take me to a gay nude beach, other public places, and vacation spots where there was cruising. I was used as bait to attract younger males at various well-known pick-up places known by gay men.”