Johnny and Stefan are a gay couple. Thanks to an egg donor and surrogate mother, they are now also proud fathers of the twins Amalia and Aurelio. A family like any other, they say.
Egg donorship and surrogate motherhood are banned in Germany. But certain states in the US permit it. For Johnny and Stefan, it was the only way they could make their dream of having their own children come true. What’s their little family like - spanned across two continents? Between keeping their company afloat, arranging visits with the surrogate mother and taking the wishes of the conservative grandparents into account, the beginning was tricky - but worth it. We got to accompany the small family as they navigated the ups and downs of their first year together.
Lesbian and Gay Parenting
Lesbian and Gay Parenting
Introduction
The publication is provided for the use of clinicians, researchers, students, lawyers and parents involved in legal and policy issues related to lesbian and gay parenting. "Lesbian and Gay Parenting" is the successor to "Lesbian and Gay Parenting: A Resource for Psychologists" (1995).
It is divided into three parts.
Part I is a summary of research findings on lesbian mothers, gay fathers, and their children written by Charlotte J. Patterson, PhD.
Part II is an annotated bibliography of the literature cited in the summary.
Part III provides some additional resources relevant to lesbian and gay parenting in the forensic context: APA amicus briefs, professional association policies, and contact information for relevant organizations.
Documenting gay dads: seven documentaries about gay fatherhood in North America-
Gay men started contributing to the 'gayby boom' in North America about a decade after lesbian women set it in motion. As one gay dad put it, 'In the seventies we were expressing ourselves sexually, in the eighties we were coupling up, and in the nineties we are having families' (quoted in Mallon, 2003: 29). By the beginning of the twenty-first century, filmmakers were documenting the various paths to what anthropologist Ellen Lewin calls 'intentional gay fatherhood' as opposed to those who, in centuries past, would have had no options but to have children within the confines of a heterosexual marriage. The seven films described here present a wide range of gay dads, from those who adopt passels of the most at-risk, hard-to-place children to wealthy couples who choose egg donors and gestational surrogates to produce 'designer' babies of their own .
Daddy and Papa (2002), a Sundance and Emmy award-nominated, 60-minute PBS documentary by San Francisco-based filmmaker, Johnny Symons, tells the story of four gay families, three of which (including his own) are interracial. The film is beautifully crafted and brimming with love. Not only is the issue of how gay fathers are perceived and treated by the straight world addressed, but so too is the awkward fit, at least for these pioneers, into established urban gay culture – for example, in the Castro District of San Francisco – and the ambivalence of gay men who leave that bohemian milieu for the suburbs. Also addressed is the internalized homophobia two of the dads confront when their son starts dressing up in a neighbour’s high-heeled shoes. The film shows parents, grandparents, and children grappling with so many social differences, one comes to see that sexual orientation is just one factor, and not necessarily the most important one, that shapes these lives. The children in three of the families are African-American boys. Two brothers, who were adopted by Kelly Wallace, a single, white, gay man when they were 2 and 3 years old, had been living in separate foster homes their entire lives. Johnny and his biracial partner (African-American and white) adopt an African-American toddler, Zach, and extend their new family to include the woman who had fostered him. African-American and a devout Christian, she was dubious of homosexuals but conceded that her wish that Zach would have a father had been more than met. When they got a call asking if they’d like to adopt his newborn half-brother, their family expanded again. Doug Houghton, a white, single, nurse practitioner in Miami, first met his son, Oscar, as a patient and raised him from the age of three, when his father abandoned him. Houghton was one of the plaintiffs in an American Civil Liberties Union suit against the state of Florida to overturn the ban on gay adoption put into place in 1977 as a result of the ironically titled ‘Save Our Children’ campaign headed by anti-gay activist Anita Bryant. The law was not repealed until 2015.
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