Iain Duncan Smith may have been right earlier this week when he said that the revolt against him in the Parliamentary Conservative Party had nothing to do with the issue of adoption by the unmarried. Certainly, it was unwise of him to insist that his followers should vote against the Government on the issue. At the least, it provided the equivalent of an adjournment motion - an opportunity to vote on something of no intrinsic importance, but that could be used to measure opinion on some other issue. If he is now in serious trouble, that is entirely his fault. However, let us forget about the sorry internal politics of the Conservative Party, and turn instead to the substantive issue. Should unmarried couples—and the real argument is over homosexual couples—be prevented by law from adopting children?

Now, this is a complex issue, as it involves the rights of others besides those proposing to adopt. Mostly when people talk about "balancing" rights, they are using the word as a cover for denying rights. But where children are concerned, there must be a balancing. Below a certain age, they are unable to conceive and articulate, let alone seek enforcement of, their rights. Therefore, it is for others to act on their behalf. These others are usually the authorities. So how much control over adults should the authorities be able to exercise for the sake of protecting children?

I say that there should be no control over the right of people to produce natural children. Undoubtedly, many people will make grossly unfit parents, and will bring children into the world whose lives are a burden to themselves and to others. But the principle, once established, of limiting the right of certain people to procreate is illimitable. We might start by preventing criminals, the mentally subnormal and those suffering from hereditary disorders from having children. But the prevention would soon be extended to many other classes of people. It cannot be predicted how and when these further preventions would be made, but circumstances would provide opportunities, and these would be ruthlessly used by the "child welfare" agencies and all the independent moral entrepreneurs with an interest in the matter. We could easily end with a system that amounted to positive licensing of childbirth. The fact that this did not happen after the Mental Deficiency Act was passed is no argument against caution now. The eugenic laws of the early 20^th century were made in a cultural environment less hostile to freedom than our own; and the relevant special interest groups were less well-financed and institutionally powerful. Leaving people to bring children into the world as and when they please will have, as it always has had, unfortunate consequences—but these are far less unfortunate than those of regulation.

However, these considerations do not apply where the right to adopt is concerned. Here, the relationship is not one of nature but of artifice. Natural procreation does not require any legal process. Adoption does. It involves a formal, premeditated apportionment of rights and responsibilities. This being so, it is both legitimate and without obviously dangerous consequences for the authorities to enquire whether the rights in question will be respected and the obligations reasonably discharged. It needs to be asked whether an adopted child is likely to be well fed and clothed, to receive sufficient education, and be generally fitted out with those habits and skills productive of happiness as commonly defined.

This line of reasoning can be denied. But would those denying it be happy to allow people to adopt who have been in prison for killing their natural children by neglect? How about the severely disabled? How about the utterly feckless? As said, limiting the right of such people to produce natural children might easily lead to a universal tyranny. But creating legal relationships with the children of others is surely a different matter. Therefore, the question is not whether the right to adopt should be denied to the unfit, but who the unfit may be. This brings me to the matter of adoption by homosexuals.

Now, many homosexuals would still be denied adoption rights under the Government's proposed law—as would many heterosexuals. The law is not being changed to allow anyone to adopt, regardless of how they behave, but to end the limitation of adoption rights to married heterosexuals. There is no suggestion that the kind of men who offer themselves to strangers in public should be considered as adoptive parents, or men who pass rapidly from one unstable union to another. The authorities would continue to enquire about the stability of unions and the respectability of partners—but would no longer concern themselves with marital status or the gender of partners. So far as I can tell, homosexual unions are frequently less stable than those of heterosexuals. Whether this is because homosexuals lack the stabilising institution of marriage, or on account of more profound causes is not something I am competent to discuss. But I have come across some stable unions, and they do not seem to be that uncommon. If, then, stability of union were the only criterion, some homosexuals should qualify as adoptive parents.

But stability is not the only criterion. There is the positive welfare of a child. One argument frequently stated is that children need a home life with parents of opposite genders, and that it does no discredit to homosexual couples to say that they are by definition unfit to be adoptive parents. I do not think much of this argument. Millions of children in Europe grew up in the 1920s and 1950s without a father; and if they mostly had a hard financial start in life, I have seen no evidence that they suffered in any other way. Furthermore, it takes little acquaintance with history and anthropology to know that, while it is a natural institution, the family has greatly varied in shape according to circumstances of time and place. A nuclear family of two men or two women plus children is far closer to the British norm than many other family structures that have existed or do exist.

To be fair, this argument is usually advanced as a cover for a set of religious views about the sinfulness of homosexuality. Some people oppose adoption by homosexuals because they believe it is a public endorsement of filthiness. The detailed objections here—though I will not be very detailed—are of consistency and interpretation. The clearest New Testament injunction against homosexuality comes when Paul lists "them that abuse themselves with mankind" among those who will be denied entry into Heaven. This phrase is translated from the Greek word "arsenokoites", which may not bear the meaning normally placed on it. There is no history of its use in this sense before the letters of Paul: the earliest unambiguous definition of the word as one who practises homosexual acts come to us from over a century after Paul died. There seem to be much clearer injunctions in the Old Testament—and, since I do not understand Hebrew, I will assume that they have been correctly translated into English. However, I cannot think of any Christians who have the right to rely on them. The words in Leviticus "thou shalt not lies with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination" are surrounded by equally positive insistence about diet, clothing manufacture, land tenure, debt management, and livestock keeping, that are ignored by everyone except a few devoutly orthodox Jews. Why clothes of mixed fibre can be worn without objection is a question worth asking of those traditionalist Christians who rely on The Bible to argue against legal and institutional equality for homosexuals.

The less detailed, but more prosaic, answer is that England is not a devoutly religious country. I am not, I will say here, a secularist. I believe that England is lucky to have an established church, and I do think it worthwhile to continue insisting that England is in a loose sense a Christian country; and I even believe that the established faith should enjoy certain decorative privileges. These things make in practice for a religious harmony lacking in many formally secular countries, and they are part of our national character. I have no time for those who insist that Christmas should be renamed "Winterval" to avoid offending non-Christians; or that the growth in numbers of Moslems and Hindus should be made a reason for institutional or ceremonial changes. Even so, I see no good reason for letting the priests of any church, established or otherwise, demand a legal structure in which people are told how to lead their personal lives. And as I appear to be in the majority on this issue, I will give it no further discussion.

There is, though, a stronger argument from the welfare of an adopted child. Put bluntly, would a boy adopted by two homosexuals tend to grow up as a homosexual himself? I do not really know what determines sexual preference, but I suspect that there are three classes of people: those exclusively homosexual, those exclusively heterosexual, and a very much larger number of those whom circumstances can incline in any direction. This being so, the answer to the question is probably yes: a boy brought up by two homosexuals might be as inclined to become one himself as a child in a legal or a medical family is to take up medicine or the law.

Is this bad? I do not need to give consideration to the view that any boy so brought up would be condemned to burn everlastingly in the lake of black fire—though I will say that those who believe this often believe that the same fate attends those brought up in rival faiths, and they do not usually make the same fuss about that. But there is some evidence that homosexuals have a greater than average chance of being unhappy. I will not consider any statistics about physical or mental disorder, as these statistics are based only on those homosexuals who reveal themselves: there are probably many more than people notice, and this must bring all generalisations into doubt. Nevertheless, homosexuals were until recently a despised and persecuted minority; and, in spite of all the politically correct talk about the equal validity of lifestyles and the need for universal respect—of everyone, that is, except the politically incorrect—I suspect they are still not popular. Therefore, a truthful answer to the question might be yes—it would be cruel to let a child be brought up in such a family.

Here, I find myself announcing the rather odd principle that we should subject people to legal discrimination whenever they are also subject to social discrimination. But, though apparently odd, this does make sense where the adoption of children is concerned. We cannot devise a system in which adopted children are guaranteed happiness. But we can avoid putting them into families where it is highly likely that they will be made unhappy —not by their adoptive parents, but by society at large.

However, the further question to be asked is just how bad would it be for child to be brought up as a homosexual? Had the matter of homosexual adoption been raised before the 1980s, my own opinion would have been against. My reason would not have been that I disliked anything about homosexuals in themselves, but that others did. But attitudes have changed during the past few decades. If homosexuals are still unpopular, they are regarded as no worse than Jews, and probably much better than Christian Scientists and national socialists—and possibly rather better soon than smokers.

On this point, I can supply a little evidence. It is not based on a very large sample, but it may be indicative of opinion even among the most conservative. About a year ago, I stated a case on some Eurosceptical Internet discussion groups. Suppose, I asked, you were a Conservative activist sitting on a parliamentary candidate selection committee. You must choose between two prospective candidates. One is a devout churchgoer married with two children, the other an open homosexual. The churchgoer believes that Britain's place is "at the heart of Europe" and he promises that he will do all he can to get Britain into the Euro. The homosexual is an adamantine Europhobe who promises to work with all his ability to get Britain out of the European Union. As I had made up the case, I replied to anyone inclined to go beyond the stated facts that they were exactly as stated them: there were no hidden scandals on the one side, nor lack of honesty on the other. I had over a hundred responses to my case—many of them from the alleged "blue rinse brigade" of the Conservative Party. Only one person came down in favour of the Europhile churchgoer. Perhaps I was addressing myself to a group of people more than usually concerned about the European Union. But I do not think they were unrepresentative of opinion within the Party as a whole. If homosexuals are unpopular, they are not exposed to the same venomous hatred as in the middle decades of the 20^th century.

This being so, I can think of no reason for keeping the law as it is. Homosexuals should be allowed to adopt. As said, enquiries must be made on other grounds regarding fitness to adopt. But the principle that sexual inclination in itself should be a bar to adoption cannot be justified.

Before ending this article, one further argument comes to mind. This is that homosexuals are so depraved that they want to adopt simply to get control over young flesh. I look forward to seeing evidence for this. I have seen none myself. Nor do I believe that the overwhelming majority of homosexuals who want to adopt would think in these terms. There is an almost universal human prejudice against incest, and this is generally shared even in those families where there are no connections of blood. Before this particular argument can be viewed as anything more than a scandalous accusation, better evidence must be produced than I have seen—or than I believe can be seen.

So there it is—a rather hesitant yes to the principle of homosexual adoption. If I were a Conservative Member of Parliament, I hope I should have had the courage to ignore Mr Duncan Smith's orders the other night. On the other hand, I will not roundly condemn those who obeyed him. This is a complex issue. Principles can be stated, but their application depends so much on evidence and even on interpretations of evidence, that the issue ought never to have been classed as party political. Mr Duncan Smith deserves his crisis. I did once hope for better than this, and I am still disappointed.