The State mustn’t legalise more family fiction

News

If Government ministers decided that triangles now have four sides, they’d be wrong. Changing definitions does not change reality. The same is true of marriage.

When marriage was redefined in law to include same-sex couples, C4M was derided for foreseeing the far-reaching consequences. Today, we see that removing gender from marriage has profoundly undermined not only marriage but also family and the very concept of male and female.

The Law Commission’s surrogacy proposals highlight this drift. Under the legal reform quango’s preferred model, surrogate mothers could be erased from birth certificates, replaced by the ‘commissioning’ parents. This amounts to recording a lie about who the child’s mother is. The woman who carried and gave birth to the child would have no legal recognition.

Furthermore, the proposals would advance the commercialisation of surrogacy by allowing open advertising for surrogate mothers for the first time. Lies have consequences, and often it is women, especially those from poorer backgrounds, who suffer most.

At the same time, the Gender Recognition Act has since 2004 allowed individuals to obtain new birth certificates stating they were born in a sex other than their actual biological sex; while the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 allows two female same-sex partners to be recognised as legal parents without reference to any father. This, too, embeds fiction into our legal system, further detaching the law from reality.

These measures are not just legal oddities; they have far-reaching societal implications. By pretending reality can be redefined at will by the government, critical safeguards for women and children are lost, families suffer and confusion reigns. Marriage as a union between one man and one woman has always been a cornerstone of stable societies, providing children with the security of knowing their biological heritage and the support of both a mother and a father.

At C4M we call on political leaders to resist this drift away from reality. Marriage was not redefined without consequences. It’s time to reclaim the truth about marriage and family life, grounded in the biological reality of being male and female. Let’s stand together to protect the foundation of our society.