The "New" Normal?

It seems like all I am blogging about these days is TV.  RNC?....DNC?...who needs all that? I mean....granted there was a couple rather historic speeches that spoke as LGBT people as *gasp* worthy of equal respect, dignity, and the equal treatment of the law...but we're not talking about that today....nope.

Today I finally got to see the series pilot for NBC's The New Normal. And I need to be upfront...I was kind of dreading this show. While on the surface it's a good thing to have representations of gay people on TV...on the other hand, those representations tend to cater more to peoples expectations of gay people than the reality of who we are....especially the ultra sanitized and stereotypical version of gay life favored by network execs.  For example,I know everyone LOVES modern family and Cam and Mitchell, and that's exactly what I expected in terms of how we would be shown. All entertainment...no reality.

But I did watch and I have to admit that I am still processing what I saw. For you guys that means that I will be figuring it out as I am writing this....lucky you. I am having a mixed set of emotions and I guess that must mean that the show got to me on some level and altered my preconceptions of it. Thats good right? Well...pour yourself something cold and lets talk about it....

A Parents Worst Nightmare...Justice For Peter and Laurent

Meet Peter and Laurent...two men who remind me very much of my husband and myself. The are two men who decided to have a family and researched all their options...and finally deciding on surrogacy. They found an agency that they trusted to help them through the process and eventually connected with a surrogate mother in the Ukraine...leading to the birth of their son Samuel. The problem?...Belgium won't let them bring their son home. Since Belgium has no laws regulating surrogacy, they will not issue any official papers for the child. Peter and Laurent have been going through a bureaucratic nightmare trying to get any Belgian official to help them bring their child home...who is now three and languishing in an orphanage.

Check it out for yourself and don't forget to click the CC button for English subtitles...

I can't help but think how I would feel if I was in their shoes...gutted...devastated...willing to do just about anything to see this thing through. That's how I would feel and seems to sum up the emotions I see in Perter and Laurent. That is heartbreaking and appalling. I can't believe that Belgian lawmakers would rather see this little boy sit in an orphanage while they dither about surrogacy laws. If there are no laws forbidding surrogacy then there should not be so much resistance to allowing these men to bring their son home. I hope these two men NEVER give up. Don't let the dream die gentlemen that little boy will know that he was loved and wanted by his two dads who love him very much...that's something we can never give up hope on.

Facebook pages in English and in French have been created to help support these men and an online petition has been launched to help these men bring their son home. find the petition here. Lets hope we can bring enough pressure to make someone in the Belgian government stand up and help this family. I hope their family can be whole again someday soon.

Until next time dear readers.....

Same-Sex Reproduction...A Not So Far Off Possibility?

As much as anti-gay pundits bang the drum that gays cannot biologically reproduce, we are no strangers to the process. Many gay couples are raising children from previous marriages and others may have built their family with surrogacy or invitro Fertilization. Their are plenty of same-sex families out their raising children biologically related to at least one partner....but what if you could have a child that is biologically, a product of BOTH partners...think it can't be done? Well, not so fast...science might be catching up with us.

Surrogacy vs Adoption

By: Craig Rigby
As you may or may not be aware my partner Jake and I have decided to adopt. We are currently desperately trying to pay off everything we owe to anyone so that one of us can give up work when the time comes.


When we were considering children, we had to...like all gay people, make a choice. We had to choose between surrogacy and adoption. Here in the UK surrogacy is not really possible locally. It is not legal for a mother to sign away all rights to her child, she can always assert them. People who want an absent surrogate and egg donor for the child have to go to the USA.

There was recently a documentary made by Channel 4 about a gay couple in the UK who first had children by surrogate and egg donor 10 years ago called “My Weird and Wonderful Family”. It followed their story as they followed the process again to add twins to their family.