An Austrian law which forbids same-sex couple from adopting children in certain circumstances has been found 
to be in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights
The Austrian law allows a man to adopt his own child when he is in an unmarried partnership with the child’s biological mother, but it does not allow a person in a same-sex relationship to adopt the biological child of their partner.
The European Court of Human Rights, in a narrow nine to seven decision [1] of the Grand Chamber, ruled that that there had been a violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) taken in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the Convention.
The Court however, upheld its previous jurisprudence stating that allowing adoption in such circumstances only to married couples was not discriminatory.
The case, X and Others v. Austria, concerned the complaint by two women in a lesbian relationship about the Austrian courts’ refusal to grant one of the partners the right to adopt the biological son of the other partner.
The child was born out of wedlock in a previous heterosexual relationship in 1995.
The Court found that the difference in treatment between the applicants and an unmarried heterosexual had been based on the lesbian couple’s sexual orientation.
The court said that Austria were not able to advance any convincing reasons to show that such difference in treatment was necessary for the protection of the family or for the protection of the interests of the child.
However, the Court also said that the Convention did not oblige States to extend the right to second-parent adoption to unmarried couples.
It said that the case was to be distinguished from the case Gas and Dubois v. France, in which the Court had found that there was no difference of treatment based on sexual orientation between an unmarried different-sex couple and a same-sex couple as, under French law, second parent adoption was not open to any unmarried couple, be they homosexual or heterosexual.
The new ruling was criticised by Alliance Defending Freedom, an NGO which campaigns for family rights and which provided evidence during the trial.
In a statement, they said they had provided “ample evidence that the natural family model must be protected.”
They said that the theory that same-sex couples do just as well in raising children as do mothers and fathers was not supported by social science.
“A child is not property and should not be subjected to social experimentation when the evidence clearly dictates that the natural family is the optimal family model,” said Senior Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. “The best interests of the child clearly demonstrate that a child does best with a mother and a father.”