Gay unions of any kind are not on the agenda at the Ministry of Health and Family Services in the foreseeable future.

And Family Services Minister Patrice Minors said she did not believe a family with two gay parents was representative of a family based on moral values.

The question was posed to Mrs. Minors following a press conference on the International Year of the Family on Thursday. When asked at the press conference if families with gay parents came under the United Nations definition of ?family?, the Minister replied: ?The focus of this event is not to wander into those waters.?

The issue of a gay union ? whether it be a common law, civil union, or marriage ? ?has not been in discussion (at the Ministry? Mrs. Minors told yesterday.

The issue has not been brought to her attention as one members of the community desire to have discussed, she added.

When asked if it was to be considered in the future, she replied: ?It is not my intention during my term as Minister to have it introduced legislatively.?

If she was approached by members of the community to consider it, she said, ?it wouldn?t receive an endorsement from me?.

Gay marriages have been legalised in Canada, Hawaii and Alaska, and will be legalised in Massachusetts in May. They are illegal in California, however they are performed in San Francisco anyway.

The issue made headlines in the US recently when US president George Bush stated he was equivocally against the idea.

?We should not think that everything happening with our Western neighbours sets the agenda for our shores,? Mrs. Minors said.

At the International Year of the Family press conference, Mrs. Minors called for a return to good, old-fashioned family moral values.

Those do not include a family with two gay heads of house, she said. ?In my opinion, I do not believe it to be representative of a family based on moral values.?

Homosexuality between males was only legalised in Bermuda in 1994 amidst a flurry of controversy. Previously, the penalty for homosexual sex between consenting males over the age of 21 was up to ten years imprisonment.

Christian groups such as the Christian Coalition led ?frenzied? marches on Parliament before the passing of the Stubbs Bill in 1994, citing concerns of that homosexuality was immoral and that gay couples would start to show their affection in public.

The Coalition was later labelled ?fanatical? by then-Health Minister Quinton Edness, and the Salvation Army severed their ties with the organisation.

The issue had been voted on previously in Parliament in 1971, when a bill to legalise gay sex between consenting men was rejected. At that time Parliamentarians tabled a report entitled the Kinsey Report which stated that 10 percent of men were homosexual, and 37 percent had performed such acts in their lifetime.

It was in the 1960s that interracial marriages were first recognised as legal.