You are out of your depth, Spegster. If you studied the travaux préparatoires of CEDAW Convention, you would not be misinterpreting what was actually agreed.
Regarding Australia's international human rights obligations, the ordinary meaning of 'parents' is still reserved for the child's mother and father. Our Australian government, along with other members of the international community, has promised to ensure and protect 'as far as possible a child’s right to know and be cared for by his or her parents'. The ordinary meaning of 'parents' is made admirably clear in the Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The formal human rights language of Article 16 of the Women's Convention links the term "parents" definitively to "men and women" and to "husband and wife".
Indeed, the human rights directive here is unmistakable: that governments must NOT introduce laws that promote the deliberate creation of situations where the responsibilities of raising a child are not shared between a man and a woman and full recognition is not given to the role of both parents (i.e. not just the maternal parent and her lesbian partner, or the paternal parent and his homosexual partner) in the upbringing of children.
Our government's obligation under the UN conventions is to protect marriage in "the ordinary meaning" of the term which at the time meant marriage between "men and women" , not "men and men" and not "women and women". The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (Article 31, General Rule of Interpretation) lays down that if a country wants to change a meaning then the meaning has to be agreed by all parties to the treaty. A government can't change "the ordinary meaning" unilaterally.
You are wrong, too, when you try to correct me on the agreement to enact laws: the language used is “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures” which was agreed to be a short form of the original phrase used earlier in the Convention—“To take all appropriate measures, including legislation”.

You are wrong, Spegster, also, when you try to dismiss as worthless the CEDAW Preamble with its agreement to promote full recognition of “the social significance of maternity and the role of both parents in the family and in the upbringing of children” . As far as your preamble-based objection is concerned, the first and most obvious rebuttal that needs to be made is that what is stated in a preamble is by way of foundation and motivation for the substantive content of the relevant document. Conventions derive their compulsive force precisely from what is stated in the preamble, as a building rests on its foundations or as a mathematical theory rests on its underlying set of axioms. It is precisely what is agreed in the preamble that enables the ensuing content to be asserted and agreed. To attempt to dispense with some part of the preamble is to weaken the foundation, undermine the legitimacy, and dilute the fundamental message of the Convention.
Your argument is also invalid as it is in direct contradiction to Article 31, General rule of interpretation of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969):
1. A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose.
2. The context for the purpose of the interpretation of a treaty shall comprise, in addition to the text … its preamble…
The operative provisions within CEDAW (i.e., in the text) shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context (i.e., in the context of its preamble in addition to the text). Clearly, operative provisions must be read consistently with the perambular paragraphs, which set out the themes and rationale of the Convention.
Our obligation to promote full recognition of “the social significance of maternity and the role of both parents in the family and in the upbringing of children” still stands.

I think homosexual couples should be able to raise all the children they conceive naturally. No more No less.

RitaJ, those are the best researched and most useful comments I have read in many a forum. Thank you. It is encouraging to learn that the plain meaning of 'parents' was explicitly confirmed in the UN explanatory documents as meaning mother and father, man and woman. So much for the lame attempt to say that the child's right to the care and protection of his parents is a gender-neutral Caregivers' Clause. But the advanced dementia of our society is shown in how many people cannot see the blindingly obvious - that a child should know, wherever possible, her own mum and dad; the man and the woman who together gave her existence. That insight does not need the support of sociologists; it is basic sanity, and if we lose this insight we will be a deranged society.

Do spare us your bluster RitaJ, when the crown is a historically genocidal institution which even as we speak, deprives children of their liberty and locks them up without charge or trial for indefinite periods in circumstances known to produce adverse medical outcomes.

I could mention the illegal invasion of Iraq and so the list goes on.

You cannot pick and choose which parts of international law you support and which parts you do not. You are a hypocrite.

It was not so long ago when it was "lawful" for rock spider church nurses to steal the babies of unwed mothers as they too were deemed to be unworthy parents and even today, informed legal consent is not been appropriately taken from non english speakers in crappy little hospitals like princess margaret in Perth as they refuse to provide appropriately trained interpreters and refuse to provide translated documents.

Are you so ignorant to believe that we take you seriously?

The Regnerus study has been debunked - with the American Sociological Association formally condemned the study for being invalid in a brief to the United States Supreme Court.

In 2013, Darren Sherkat, professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University and a member of the editorial board of Social Science Research was asked by the journal's editor to audit the peer-review process of this study and results.

Sherkat:
"The key measure of gay and lesbian parenting is simply a farce...Regnerus admits that just two of his respondents were actually raised by a same-sex couple, though I doubt that he can even know that, given his limited data. Since only two respondents were actually raised in gay or lesbian households, this study has absolutely nothing to say about gay parenting outcomes. Indeed, because it is a non-random sample, this study has nothing to say about anything."

Witherspoon Institute and this study info at wikipedia with all the links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witherspoon_Institute