Teen Panel 2016: Surrogacy children of gay dads share their stories.
In this part the panelists speak about two defining moments in their recent pasts: the June 2015 decision by the Supreme Court on Marriage Equality, and the election of Donald Trump. As children with LGBTQ parents, how did they feel on these historic occasions, and how were their lives affected?
This panel was part of the 2016 Men Having Babies NY Conference. It was offered in cooperation with the Outspoken Generation program of Family Equality Council, and was moderated by the organization’s executive director, Stan Sloan.
More than 220 attendees from 12 countries attended the 2016 MHB Brussels conference on Parenting options for European gay men. The conference was widely covered by the Belgian media, allowing us to raise the need for ethical and effective surrogacy legislation around Europe.
This was our second Brussels Conference and it once again provided a wealth of unbiased information and access a wide range of relevant service providers. It was offered in an expanded two-days format, and at a larger venue, yet once again we had to add an overflow room with live video feed to accommodate the large demand. It brought together community activists from several LGBT European organizations, medical and legal experts, parents and surrogate mothers.
On the first day of the conference we will introduce MHB’s new Framework for Ethical Surrogacy, which was developed with the assistance of an advisory board made of surrogates. The framework already received endorsements from several LGBT family associations worldwide.
On the second day several workshops and panels provided peer advice on surrogacy in the USA and Canada, and adoption of children from the USA. Advice was also offered on finding and picking professionals to help in the process, and how to obtain financial assistance.
Ron and Greg are personal friends of mine and have been mentors to gay dads around the world. Enjoy their amazing story and meet their kids, Elinor and Tomer.
Thank you to Megan and Candice Berret for sharing your story in such a wonderful way.
Megan and Candice Berrett reveal the gender of their new baby with Beyonce’s ‘Who Run the World.’
Thank you to Megan and Candice Berrett for sharing your story in such a wonderful way.
Please watch to the end and I guarantee that you’ll be dancing and smiling along with the GIRLS! This creative gender reveal shows exactly why our children grow up as happy and loved as children from non-gay families.
If you have a creative gender reveal video you’d like to share, send it to Anthony@timeforfamilies.com or visit my contact me page and I’ll post it on my site. Good luck Megan and Candice Berrett with you new…???
Brandy and Susan describe the process of picking a donor and give tips to lesbian moms about known donors vs anonymous as well as things to watch out for.
The Next Family is a diverse community where modern families meet. It is the start of an on-going, open-minded and sincere dialog between urbanite families, adoptive families, in vitro parents, interracial families, same sex parents, lesbian moms,gay dads, single parents and so on. It is a way to remind people that the Next Generation of families already exists in larger numbers than the old model of a “family unit”.
John and Frank live in Oakland Park with their four-year-old son, Zachary. In 2012, the couple fostered Zachary right out of the hospital after he was born and then 18 months later, Frank adopted him as a single father and they became a gay family.
John is from San Francisco. He recently graduated from college and works in human resources. Frank is from New York. He is a registered nurse at Broward General Medical Center and a former New York firefighter. In fact, he was one of the initial responders on 9/11. The couple met eight years ago playing softball.
The two got married in Broward County just after midnight on Jan. 6.
In addition to the legal benefits, a huge motivating factor for the couple getting married was so John could join Frank as Zachary’s legal father on his son’s birth certificate. In many cases, unmarried gay couples were not allowed to adopt in Florida, with single fathers having to pass off their significant other as a “roommate”.
“(Before) If something happened to Frank, I wouldn’t have (had) a place to live and I would (have) lost Zachary,” John said. Meet this gay family!
In America: Gary and Tony Have a Baby aired on CNN five years ago. It is hard to imagine that so much time has passed, and I am honored that the story of my family was shared with so many people.
The documentary represents the face of my new initiative, In America with Soledad O’Brien. The idea is to do in-depth stories about communities whose voices often get lost in the cacophony of daily newsgathering. The concept was born with Black in America about 2 years ago as a 2 day, 4-hour documentary surveying the black community. We had trouble representing everyone because the community was so vast. So we are now on Black in America 3. With “In America: Gary and Tony Have a Baby,” we are trying out a new concept. That documentary is a one-hour tightly focused look at the journey of two people, a way for viewers to watch a human drama unfold organically rather than experience communities as issues or topics of debate. It is part of a larger Gay in America initiative that includes stories about black lesbians marrying in their Washington church, gay teens in Mississippi trying to stem violence in their schools and Atlanta gay families talking about how they had their children.
Tony, and his partner, Gary Spino, would sound very much like any couple if it wasn’t for the obstacles they face. They have spent a small fortune on lawyers and social workers and doctors trying to make their family. Their son is the product of Gary’s sperm and an egg donated by a woman they met through an agency. A surrogate carried the baby. They went to court to do a second-parent adoption which makes Tony the legal second parent of Gary’s biological son. Since they are two men, they cannot get married in the U.S. So they now both have a legal relationship to their son but no relationship to each other in the eyes of the federal government. This is the face of Gay in America today.
Anthony & Family
Tony and I are in LA to do a premiere screening of the documentary. The Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has gathered about a hundred members of its community to see what we’ve produced. The discussion moves quickly past the story of these two men, which is exactly what we want. Jarrett Barrios, GLAAD’s director, talks about how he came out many years ago, fought for and won the right to have a state marriage in Massachusetts where he lives. He thought he’d made his world a more welcoming place. What he didn’t count on was that his adopted teenage sons would have to fight the same battle all over again, even though they are not gay. One of his sons recently started dating but didn’t want to bring his girlfriend home to meet his fathers. He realized that his son had to come out just like he had. He had the discomfort of revealing he has gay parents.
Men Having Babies created this Surrogacy Workshop in order to take a broad look at the crucial decisions and milestone gay men face in their pursuit of biological parenting. It outlines some of the typical steps and milestones parents go through, presented chronologically and as a decision-tree.
Initial research:
Check web, come to Planning Biological Parenthood meetings, speak to surrogacy veterans, and attend free consultations with agencies and watch this surrogacy workshop video. While you do not have to make all of the following decisions upfront, you may want to keep these questions in the back of your mind:
Consider surrogacy versus other options like adoption, foster care, shared parenting.
Consider Traditional Surrogacy (TS) versus Gestational Surrogacy (GS).
These options vary considerably in process, cost, duration, legality and likely future relationships with the surrogate /egg donor.
In TS, a surrogate is carrying a baby conceived through artificial insemination using the sperm of one of the intended parents. In GS, a carrier is impregnated with embryos created through IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), using the couples’ sperm and donated eggs.
If you decide on GS, consider various options for egg donation: unknown, known (donors who are open to meeting the children or providing additional medical history information should the need arise in the future), or even from a family member or a friend.
If you are a couple, think of paternity options: should one of you provide the sperm, or should you mix your samples before the insemination /fertilization? If you are doing IVF, you can fertilize half of the eggs with each sperm sample, so that the paternity of each embryo can be known, and you can choose to implant embryos from both dads.
Think ahead of your desired family makeup: are you likely to want to go through the process again in the future for a sibling? Would you like to maximize the possibility of having twins in the first round?
Consider options for establishing parentage: will you be seeking second parent adoption? Are you interested in a pre-birth order?
Understand the likely timeline for each scenario, and possible setbacks: the chances that you may need more than one cycle to achieve pregnancy, having to consider changing the egg or sperm donor, or even a carrier, and the possibility of a miscarriage.
Once you researched and considered these and other issues, you may be ready to decide: what professional help will you require in your process? Will you try to keep outside help to the minimum (the Independent Track)? Will you employ a full service agency – or maybe just a lawyer? Will you first choose a clinic?
Ethical Surrogacy guidelines are imperative to a successful journey to parenthood.
At the Men Having Babies 2015 New York Ethical Surrogacy Conference we focused on teaching the public at large about surrogacy and providing tools to intended parents to ensure that their surrogacy journey is ethical and positive.
As part of our mission to promote ethical surrogacy practices that benefits all involved parties, Men Having Babies is in the process of devising a framework for ethical surrogacy principles, protocols and best practices for intended parents. The latest version drafted by our Board and our Surrogates Advisory Board is available on menhavingbabies.org. The document is already available in English, French and Hebrew, and we are collaborating with several community organizations to translate this document to additional languages and collect feedback. Selected issues from this framework will also be brought up for discussion and public comments at our upcoming conferences.
Men Having Babies (“MHB”) is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to providing gay biological fathers and fathers-to-be with educational and financial support. We offer the following framework of ethical guidelines and best practices as part of our goal to promote surrogacy practices that minimize the risks and maximize the benefits to all involved. The framework comprises of three levels: a Statement of Principles, Baseline Protocols for Providers, and Recommended Best Practices for intended parents.
