Douglas Galley Family and Tom Parrish

We are a same sex family living in Australia. My husband, I and our sons have been working hard over the last 12months to raise awareness and bring an end to the current discrimination that excludes single people and same sex couples from adopting children here in South Australia.

Can you believe it is 2015 and in some States it is still illegal to apply to adopt and give a stable and loving home to a vulnerable child - because of your sexual orientation ! 

Over 15,000 of you have supported our campaign calling for a change in the law. There is currently a review underway of the adoption legislation and regulations to allow families like ours to adopt - we are waiting to see if the government will commit to reform.

So what is it like to be a same sex couple with children ?

We are like any other family with young children, we follow the same bland day to day routines, we laugh, we cry, we have fun we celebrate our triumphs and most importantly we love each other and we support each other. We are what makes our family.

Recently though,, the Australian Marriage Forum (AMF) aired a national campaign - "Think of the Child"  telling fellow Australians that children have a 'right' to a mother and father, and that marriage equality takes that right from children. An image of 2 fathers pushing a young child is used in the ad - as a voice over tells people 'thats not equality for the kids who miss out'

What happened following this advert was incredible - Australians in their thousands took to voice their disgust with the message pushed out by the AMF. 

 "  I utterly refuse to allow our progressive nation be dragged back to the 1950s "
 "  This ad is a disgrace"
 "  it is offensive, inaccurate and plain bullying to the gay and lesbian community"

Then we see the comments from Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of 'Dolce & Gabbana'  (D&G) - speaking in Italy's Panorama magazine they are quoted as saying 

"The only family is the traditional one," the pair said in the controversial article (via The Telegraph). "No chemical offsprings and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed."

Dolce noted, "You are born to a mother and a father -- or at least that's how it should be. I call children of chemistry, synthetic children. Rented uterus, semen chosen from a catalog."

The AMF and the recent comments by D&G has given us all an incredible opportunity: to educate Australians and the rest of the world about same sex families 

But to do this we need your help !!

We want to create a dynamic video - working with Creativa Videos based in Melbourne 

1. Using animated characters to tell the nation how positive same sex families are 
2. How well we raise our children 
3. What the academics and researchers say about our parenting outcomes 
4. How our families and support networks always 'Think of the Child'

Once the video has been created and edited we will work to reach maximin exposure throughout Australian and worldwide Media and State and Federal Government. 

You can help make this happen, together we can all come together to turn all this hate into LOVE 

This project will be open for donations for a period of 5 weeks.

Your donation will only be debited if we reach our target of $11,000

All funds go directly to Creativa to cover the costs of producing the video. We will publish their full financial invoices once we reach target funds.

Our job is to work hard to raise the funds, so this project can come to life - and we can reach Australia and the rest of the world with a positive message about how same sex families raise their children.

So we thought about this and the first and most obvious challenges we face are

1. Not raising the funds within the 5 week timeframe 
 
 So:
 We hope everyone reaches for their card and donates as much as they can 

2. People not sharing this on social media 

 So:
  We hope people will share the url link on Facebook/twitter/Instagram and tell their friends and families to donate what they    can to this very important project   - use the #itstimetounderstandus