NSW Legislative Council Candidate Lyle Shelton Reignites Debate Over LGBTQIA+ Surrogacy

Family First Party National Director and NSW Legislative Council candidate Lyle Shelton is attempting to reignite debate about same-sex parenting, repeating claims that children should be raised by a mother and father while criticising surrogacy for LGBTQIA+ couples.

Shelton has been ramping up commentary on surrogacy and LGBTQIA+ parents of late, including releasing a recent podcast on the topic, where he spoke with Glenn Stanton, an American speaker from right-wing organisation Focus on the Family.

His most recent comments came after The Australian published a story about a woman who acted as a surrogate for her twin brother and his husband, helping the couple become parents.

Responding to the story, Shelton claimed the coverage of surrogacy focused too heavily on “adult desires” and “lifestyle choices” rather than what he described as the “rights and lifelong interests of the child.”

“Our sympathy is with every adult who experiences the pain of infertility or the heartbreak of not being able to have children. That suffering is real and deserves compassion,” Shelton said.

“But public policy must never begin and end with adult wishes. It must first ask what is in the best interests of the child.”

Shelton said Family First would continue to oppose both altruistic and commercial surrogacy, claiming that “children are not commodities to be commissioned, bought or transferred through legal contracts.”

He went on to repeat the long-running conservative argument that children should be raised by both a mother and a father — a claim that has long been used in political debates around LGBTQIA+ parenting and marriage equality, despite decades of research showing family stability, support, and the quality of relationships within a household are far more important indicators of child wellbeing than the gender or sexuality of parents.

“Children sadly lose a mother or father through tragedy, illness or abandonment. Society should do everything possible to help those children. But we should never deliberately create that loss because of adult lifestyle choices,” Shelton said.

Plenty of research from around the world directly challenges conservative claims that children of same-sex couples have worse lives than children with heterosexual parents.

Locally, the landmark 2014 study from the University of Melbourne, the Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families, surveyed hundreds of children and parents from same-sex parent households across Australia.

The study found children raised by same-sex attracted parents scored, on average, around six per cent higher than the general population on measures of general health, wellbeing, and family cohesion.

Shelton, who was a prominent campaigner against marriage equality before Australia’s 2017 postal survey, claims that surrogacy is “the unfinished business of the same-sex marriage campaign.”

“During the marriage debate many of us warned that redefining marriage would inevitably lead to demands for surrogacy and the deliberate creation of motherless or fatherless children. That prediction has proved correct,” he said.

LGBTQIA+ advocates have long pushed back against the framing of LGBTQIA+ families as inherently lacking, arguing that children have always been raised in many different family structures — including by single parents, grandparents, blended families, adoptive parents, and same-sex couples.

“Family First will continue to advocate for laws that put children’s rights ahead of adult preferences,” Shelton said.