HOW sickeningly farcical it is that, as proof of its supposedly family-friendly credentials, New Labour is toying with saddling taxpayers with a £500million bill for parents to take 13 paid weeks off work while, at the same time, planning to make it easier for gays to adopt children.

This move towards homosexuals being encouraged to be adoptive parents follows a government review in the wake of figures showing that there are more than 50,000 children in care homes and the recent scandal of widespread sexual abuse of those in homes in North Wales.

But if one accepts that children are likely to be safer from homosexual predation in private homes than in public sector ones to which, as the North Wales horror showed, paedophile gays have been drawn like moths to a lamp, one must at the same time stick one's head in the sand and pretend that there is no link between homosexuality and paedophilia -- and believe that all those routine tales of abuse by vile gay choirmasters, scout troop leaders and errant clergy are just coincidences.

Yet, even if one was charitably to do just that, could anyone in their right mind say that a child being brought up by two same-sex partners was normal or beneficial to the child?

Amazingly, New Labour, it would seem, has no doubts on this score.

But, then, we have become used to them making gay rights such a priority, have we not?