Where are the online copies of the Maxim Institute submissions against the Civil Union and Relationship (Statutory Reference) Bills? After all, the Justice Select Committee has already heard the Institute's submission, so it can't be said that its content is secret any longer, as parliamentary submissions can be retrieved via the Official Information Act, and still could be. This is inconsiderate to its fundamentalist constituency, to say nothing of LGBT watchdogs like yours truly, who want to analyse its content and see whether they've come up with anything new on the same-sex relationships front. At the moment, I suspect that it'll probably be something like this. The Institute will assert that heterosexual marriage is allegedly the best context to bring up children, except that most opponents of social conservative dogma would respond that the so-called 'marriage movement's' stance on these issues is based on highly selective research that simply ignores large amounts of orthodox mainstream family sociology. Then they'll argue that there's no evidence to support the proposition that same-sex relationships are healthy places to bring up children, except that they already conceded that Stacey and Biblarz made a benchmark study on that subject, within their earlier Care of Children Bill submission. It's also possible that they'll argue from the basis of single-parent family structures that families need two parents to function 'properly' - except that one cannot apply research from one family structure to another. Or, we'll have the dreary parade of Nagai, Lerner, Wardle, Gallagher ad nauseum lurch into view. However, none of them actually have qualifications in relevant fields like developmental psychology or pediatrics, or have publication records within peer-reviewed journals, or appear familiar with actual research methods and practices within those disciplines. Will the Institute get its act together, hurry up and post its submission?! This delay is ludicrous, but sadly indicative of its mismanagement of the campaign against LGBT relationship equality. Recommended Reading: http://www.challengeweekly.co.nz (New Zealand's national fundamentalist newspaper) http://www.maxim.org.nz (Maxim Institute) Rebuttal: Judith Stacey and Tim Biblarz: "Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?" American Sociological Review 68: 2 (April 2001): 159-183. Craig Young - 6th October 2004