Mother…..or Father’s Other?

Recently, a photograph of American Brad Fister kissing his 23-day old baby daughter, born in Hyderabad to a surrogate mother, caught my attention. It was a picture meant to warm the cockles of every heart worth its beat!

But there was a blot on this perfect picture. The baby’s mom was missing! Delving into details revealed the dynamics of a modern day ( but –very- gay) couple, in a stable relationship.

Brad Fister and his gay partner Michael wanted a baby. Fister would donate the sperm but they also needed a female’s egg . They decided to go for egg donation and surrogacy – and the baby was finally born.

The story of gamete donation and surrogacy is all too familiar to many. But in Fister’s case, the concept of motherhood is shrunk into a single cell immersed in a canister of liquid nitrogen!

Being gay is fine….if u have to be! I am not for, or against, same- sex couples. However, it is bewildering to know that there now exist sizeable numbers of what was once considered a “fringe group”. They seem to be peeping out of every cupboard and crevice, with their burgeoning demands and requirements.

Yes, they were marginalized (for reasons little understood) but I don’t understand the hiss, fuss and rant associated with them. For example, there are writers and gay writers, singers and gay singers and every other day someone is going public with his ‘true sexual identity’!!

Recently I read an article by a ‘gay writer and poet’ who froths at the mouth at anything he sees as a slight on gays. This writer was waxing galore on the 12 dalliances that he was concurrently engaged in and about the possible 12 more in the waiting! Even as I salivate at the columnist’s enviable existence, I hate the pomposity with which he throws his audacious coquetry at the general public.

Give us a break, dudes, get on with your lives and don’t try to bulldoze us with your ‘sex-life and sensibilities’.

Sorry for meandering away……

Coming back to Brad and Michael …their daughter has a dad, alright, but what about a mother? This child, who would probably be breast- fed till her surrogate’s contract expires, has been deliberately denied a mother for all her life.

The same parental denial would apply to kids of lesbian couples who would have to live their life without a father .

Now you can drown me with your arguments….yes I know there is a lot of imperfection in many heterosexual families but do we really need to add to the existing mayhem within the diaspora of family prototypes?

Everyone talks of rights –the gay lobby has been one of the most perseverant the world over ! But what about the rights of the unborn and the just- born?

Don’t they deserve a mother ( I mean a regular mother) or is it just a life with the “father’s other???”