The Bathtub: Men in Cages: If Only Kids-R-Us Actually Sold Kids

Question: Should gays be allowed to raise children?
Answer: Yes. Obviously gays should be allowed to raise children. In fact, gays should be actively encouraged to raise children. Why, if I'd had two gay dads, I wouldn't be the miserable fashion victim I am today. And, if I'd had two gay moms, the Tub's softball team totally would have made it to the playoffs. Nothing but good things can come from gays raising children. Moving on.

Question: But gays can't really make babies. So like, how should they go about acquiring children?
Answer: Now that is a good question!

Incidentally, just days ago, I was discussing this very issue with a fellow gay. (For the purpose of storytelling, we'll call her Shanaynay.) Shanaynay was trying to convince me that gays should adopt kids. And I was all like, "But I want a kid that's mine. I don't want somebody else's kid." And Shanaynay was like, "Tori, you suck." Shanaynay and I proceeded to engage in heated debate for a while, but eventually we got distracted by some playful seals. (This is because we were at the zoo.)

Anyway, I've always assumed that, when the time comes, I'll make my own babies in spite of the fact that it's not all that easy for the gays to do so. Since discussing the matter with Shanaynay, however, I've come to realize that there are a lot of negatives associated with this course of action. That being said, adopting a baby isn't all peaches and cream either. So what is a gay to do? Well, I don't know. That's why I have assembled a point-by-point comparison of the two methods of child acquisition:

Point 1: Creating the Child
So, the reason two gays can't make a baby in the first place is that baby-making requires a whole lot of fusing and zygoting and shit. And, in order for all this magic to take place, you need both a sperm and an egg. (Unless, of course, you're a gay mouse.) Assuming that you're not a mouse, but you are a gay, you need to go find the "missing piece of the puzzle," as it were, in order to reproduce. For the ladies, this means hitting up the sperm bank. For the gentlemen, it means convincing some chick to take your sperm (and then impregnate herself with it, get fat, visit the doctor constantly, abandon her social life, give birth, hand the baby over to you, and say, "ttylz!"). Because the latter scenario strikes me as entirely implausible, I'm just going to deal with the sperm bank thing, cool?

Right, so choosing a sperm donor has got to be a painfully exacting process. Did you ever do that exercise in school where you read about the backgrounds of two guys and then are asked which one would make the better president? The first guy has all these great leadership skills, has been to the best schools, received awards for military bravery, and has filled many important governmental roles. The second guy attended school for like one year and spent much of his working life logging and hog-sticking. So obviously you pick the first guy as the superior presidential candidate. And then it turns out that the first guy is Hitler. (And the guy you tossed aside is Abe Lincoln.) Anyway, this exercise makes me worry that I might select Hitler to father my children. Not literally, of course . . . but it does go to show you that anybody can look good on paper.

It strikes me as highly likely that I'd accidentally select the sperm of someone entirely intolerable. I'd be all like, "Ooh, this sperm went to Harvard and studied literature!" (Forgetting that I cannot stand people who went to Harvard and studied literature.) And then, oopsie, before you know it, I've procreated with this guy. (As a side note, I would rather have Hitler's babies than that guy's. At least Hitler's kids would do well in student council elections.) And what if you accidentally pick your brother's sperm or something? Do they have checks against that?

Moving onwards, however, the point of the story is that selecting and obtaining a stranger's sperm is kind of scary. (And asking a friend to donate sperm is also scary, becuase even if you know you're getting sperm from a genetically acceptable individual, you're greatly increasing the risk that you'll end up on some Dateline NBC special about biological fathers stealing back their kids from negligent lesbian mothers.)

All that being said, when you adopt a baby, you're taking even greater genetic risks. All the biology has taken place completely independently of you. If you're crazy/ugly/otherwise f'd up, this is a good thing; your child is that much more likely to not be crazy/ugly/otherwise f'd up. But if you're a judgemental bitch like me, you need not freak out only about the quality of the sperm that made your kid; you've got to freak out about the egg as well. Egads.

Point 2: Birthing the Child
The most obvious benefit of adopting is that you get a kid without having to squeeze anything out of your vag. You're also likely to receive your child fresh and clean (i.e., not dripping with nasty fluids). You can even get an older kid who's totally done with that whole "shitting himself" phase. These are all major plusses.

(That being said, I've definitely heard a lot of talk about how magical birthing is. At first, I was less than inclined to believe this talk. I mean, let's not beat around the bush here; childbirth has got to be insanely painful. A person is emerging from a tiny, little hole in your body. But, as my biological clock ticks away, I think more and more about the fact that my body was designed to have a person emerge from that hole. Childbirth is one of those things that's just inevitably on my womanly to-do list . . . something I should undergo in order to fully experience all that is being female. Undoubtedly, however, once I'm writhing in pain during my seventh hour of labor, I will deeply regret my choice to "fully experience all that is being female" and will wish I'd just adopted.)

Point 3: Paperwork
No matter what route you go in order to gay-birth, you're going to have to do a shit-ton of paperwork. This sucks. Go give money to the Human Rights Campaign and fix this problem.

(Actually, don't. Well, I mean, feel free to give money to the HRC, but don't expect it to significantly alter the situation. The fact of the matter is, every baby is the biological product (and property?) of a man and a woman. Signing away parenthood (and ownership?) is always going to be complex and messy. It's not bigotry; it's super-hard for straight couples to adopt too. The whole "one member of the gay partnership birthed a child and the other member of the partnership wants to be considered a parent as well" is never going to be easily worked out. The list of potential "what ifs" is really long; there's no way around it. If you want to donate, you should probably donate legal services and/or Excedrin to the people who have to deal with all this.)

Point 4: Raising the Child
Ah - the hard part. The part where you have to set bedtimes and quell nose-picking and respond to your kid's refusal to eat anything that doesn't have chocolate syrup on it. In theory, this part of the process shouldn't be all that different for gay parents and straight parents. Parenthood is probably insane regardless of who you're sleeping with (or not sleeping with because the soccer carpool has left you too exhausted to give a shit about romance). I mean, I'd assume the gay parent has to answer a few more awkward questions than does the straight parent, but other than that, parenting is parenting . . .

Except that, when the child of straight parents does something awful, both parents realize they're to blame. "Well, our kid is shitty because our genetic material is shitty," they think. And, when the adopted child of gay parents does something awful, both parents realize they're expended of responsibility. "Well, our kid is shitty because that Russian orphanage was shitty," they think. BUT, when the birth child of gay parents does something awful, the non-biological parent can totally pin all the blame on the biological parent. "Well, our kid is shitty because you suck," the non-biological parent thinks. This seems like the sort of scenario that could cause the dissolution of lots of gay partnerships. And that's no good.

One possible solution would be for each gay parent to birth a child . . . but then they're likely to always be comparing the kids and having fights like, "Looks like Rain got an A on the algebra test, unlike Beau. I'm glad one of us has acceptable genes . . ." (You know lesbian moms would totally give their kids gay-ass names like Rain and Beau.) Generally speaking, it seems like the whole "only one parent is actually biologically responsible for the kid's idiocy" situation is wrought with problems.

Conclusion
So yeah, those are my four points of comparison. Have they helped me to form a conclusion on this matter? Absolutely. They have helped me to conclude that I lack the adequate maturity necessary to become a parent. Because, honestly, if my biggest parenting worries include "accidentally birthing Hitler's baby" and "getting into fights with my partner over who has the better genetic material," I'm really not yet suited to be rearing offspring. (I'm sure you're all shocked by this news.)

But one day . . . one day, by God, I will be ready to rear. And, when that day comes, the world better look out. Because, for all the shit I'm going to have to go through to acquire them (regardless of how I choose to do so), my children are going to be fucking awesome.

Men in Cages" runs Friday afternoons. You can read more about Tori here.

8 Comments

Tori, straight couples still can (and do) blame defects on each other, whether they're just conjecturing ("We wouldn't be spending all of this money on braces if you're side of the family didn't have such ugly teeth!") or if its based on the fact that, like, the child has some congenital defect and the parents undergo genetic testing to find out who was the carrier.

Posted by: Lauren | September 07, 2007 at 02:23 PM