Gay men and surrogacy - the new “be kind”?

I do agree with you and it’s clear that surrogacy has many issues for biological mother and baby. I don’t agree with it in the vast majority of cases
My only query about it all is that, fertility issues aside, gay men are the only
couples who cannot produce their own families naturally. Not many people seem to have the same concerns about babies born to lesbian couples, maybe via sperm donations. These children also live their lives with no knowledge of one of their biological parents. I know it is NOT the same thing but the question does bother me none the less.
Not quite sure what the answer is.

In your view, how should gay couples have a child?

It's illegal in France, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden and other countries, so I don't know why we can't ban it in the UK too.

Does it need an answer?

I agree with OP. I might have had a different opinion before I had a baby but having seen just how dependent that baby is on me - how instinctive and primal the mother-baby dyad is - I can't accept any morality that doesn't put that relationship at the centre of decision-making.

Lesbian couples who have their own babies don't cut that bond.

Gay male couples and infertile couples using surrogacy arrangements do cut that bond. Not just cut it, but the "morality" of the "best practices" they impose is legalistically flipped from what I believe: "immediately hand over the baby so that the baby latches onto its 'true parents' instead of the 'gestational carrier'" etc.

I'm opposed to surrogacy in general but I agree with OP that gay men are a special case. Naming it as an equal rights issue means we feel we have to design a solution where they get to have biological children, even if that means suspending what I see as a higher moral duty (to the child). Sometimes that's not the right choice.

Couples where both parties are men shouldn't have kids. I don't care if that's controversial, I feel it strongly in my gut.

I'm against surrogacy full stop; for gay, straight, whatever combination. But what particularly gets to me is the posed for photos, and I've seen several of these, where one of the males in the couple is lying in the hospital bed with the baby on his chest, as if he had given birth, and his partner beside him. Female no where to be seen. I think that is so insulting to the woman who gave birth and makes a mockery of it.

I don't agree with the concerns about surrogacy being homophobic.

Where you get the gushing comments is usually wealthy gay men like Tom Daley who go abroad to buy wombs and children.

The OP's point was there is a parallel about wanting to seem progressive (aka trans rights) without considering the impact on others.

If you think that British gay men have the right to have genetic children then by all means volunteer to be a surrogate for them.

Or campaign for paid surrogates to be legal for British women. But not for it to be legal to bring these babies in from abroad which is colonialism frankly.

Just seen a LinkedIn post from a gay man who is writing a book about the surrogacy “journey” he and his husband went through. Cue gushing comments about how amazing this is…..

It has really upset me. The sheer fucking privilege of gay men to buy babies and then be lauded and praised for it like they were super heroes. And untouchable to criticism due to blinkered “be kind” beliefs about the poor gay men who just want a family like heterosexual men.

Where do people think these babies come from? Do you think people delude themselves that all these gay men just have kind, altruistic female friends who happily have a baby for them? As opposed to exploiting vulnerable and desperate women in India, Mexico and the like.

I feel so angry - women are just fucked over and abused time and time again by men and it is all dressed up as progressive when it is the exact opposite.

When I was a younger women I loved having gay men in my social circle. They seemed like “nicer” more lovely men than most straight men. Now I realise that underneath it all they just the same sexist, privileged tossers as many straight men are. They want a baby? No problem - buy one! They want to invade women’s spaces? No problem - just reinvent yourself as “the most vulnerable in society”!

It’s like the scales have fallen from my eyes.

I too have questioned all parentage journeys where the child looses contact with their natural biological families.
They often seem to have missed that later in life and crave to find the missing pieces. Mostly all turns out fine and positive, to be fair.

I tend to view gay couples who manage to have children with other gay couples and who ensure both biological parents remain in contact as more favourable than using donated eggs or sperm implanted in donated wombs often in other countries.
There is room for so much exploitation.

I also view donations of womb, sperm or eggs within families as having better outcomes for the offspring. Just my opinion - no real research.

It's all hunches and if I had actual personal experience I would, no doubt, feel differently.
What is important is that children are well cared for, loved and wanted.

They don't. Having a baby isn't a human right. If your biology doesn't let you have a baby, you don't have one.

The UDHR right to marry and start a family exists to prevent the State from forcibly sterilising people or denying them a civil marriage. It doesn't confer a right to have someone else make you a child if your body won't let you make one yourself.

Although I disagree with surrogacy, largely because of reading more about it on these boards, I feel the same about it whoever the parents are- gay or straight.

I don't have a problem with gay men or lesbian women adopting children. Stats I've seen in the past (and I wouldn't claim to be an expert), suggest that children with two loving parents (or more in cases where there may be another non-resident parent) do well regardless of the sex of those parents. They certainly seem to do a lot better than children who spend their lives trapped in the care system.

I mean, lesbians can't have children together either.

Some people have a problem with surrogacy, but not donation of gametes. Others object to both.

I really don't see what differernce it makes though, if something is in itself immoral, the fact that it means gay or lesbians could not have kids would be kind of irrelevant, wouldn't it?

If we found that infertile women could have children by removing the uterus of live women, resulting in their deaths, we wouldn't say that was ok because it fixed her infertility. What differernce would it make if we took that same scenario with a same sex couple?

Do immoral acts become moral because it promotes some kind of equality? (And where somehow biological reality is seen as a kind of inequality that is immoral? Surly that is a dystopian road to go down.)

So no, I think surrogacy is immoral, and I don't care if it means gay couples can't have kids. That is a fact of life, like many other facts.

Would you say that about the days when babies were taken from poor unmarried mothers to be adopted to better off married couples?

Why would anyone celebrate taking a new born infant from its mother? Such a big deal is made these days about preserving the mother-baby bond, skin to skin contact, the reciprocity and bonding inherent in breastfeeding. It's seen as not only unfortunate, but also serious, when a health problem necessitates separating the mother and baby for a time and efforts are made to make sure they remain in contact, physically, as much as possible.

Your "be kind" around this isn't kind at all, it is choosing to over-look a horrendous cruelty.

@FakingItEasy in the vanishing small number of “altruistic” surrogacy arrangements that may be the case that the women are entering into with agency.

But the vast vast majority of surrogates are from countries like India, Mexico, Georgia, Nepal…They are doing it because they have no other viable way (or believe they have no other way) of supporting themselves financially. Ditto prostitution - sure a vanishing small number of women fit the “empowered happy hooker” trope but majority turn to prostitution out of desperation (or are forced into it by men).

And the ultimate test is how you would feel if your daughter (if you have one) or close female relative were to decide that her only option to financially survive was to become a surrogate I would hazard that you might view it differently

And surrogacy is not just about bodily autonomy and a women’s right to decide what she does with her body, it is also about what is in the best interest of the child.

If the arrival of children had been celebrated back then, poor unmarried mothers would have been able to keep and support their children. Children could grow up with their mothers.

Children should grow up wanted, within a loving family, without shame.

Would you say that about the days when babies were taken from poor unmarried mothers to be adopted to better off married couples?

Why would anyone celebrate taking a new born infant from its mother? Such a big deal is made these days about preserving the mother-baby bond, skin to skin contact, the reciprocity and bonding inherent in breastfeeding. It's seen as not only unfortunate, but also serious, when a health problem necessitates separating the mother and baby for a time and efforts are made to make sure they remain in contact, physically, as much as possible.

Your "be kind" around this isn't kind at all, it is choosing to over-look a horrendous cruelty.

People are not 'owed' a child.

Absolutely. The right to a family life is the right to not being prevented from having children. It is not the right to be supplied with children.

Why is it illegal to purchase a newborn baby?

Why can it be legal to purchase a newborn baby if the contract was signed before the mother became pregnant?

As @AFishDoesntKnow has said, my post is not an anti gay men - it’s about the specific issue of gay men using surrogacy as a means to have a family being seen as something to be celebrated

Why shouldn't the arrival of a child into a family be celebrated?

There are many happy and thriving children of gay parents. I’m guessing you don’t have any gay friends?