Take that, Fred Phelps

God loves gay people and I have proof.

My cousin J. is a middle-aged single man living in New York. The only people in the family to be surprised when he came out were his parents and my grandfather. (The other member of the oldest generation, my grandmother, took it with characteristic aplomb, but then I can't be sure she really understood what he meant. My grandmother is a shining exemplar of the power of peaceful denial.)

The rest of us sort of rolled our eyes and said, "Well, yeah, and...?"

J. is going to have a baby. He found a surrogate who lives in the Midwest, provided her with the necessary biological product — sorry, I can't really think about a family member's semen without cloaking it in several layers of protective euphemisms — and, voilà! 40 weeks later, he's going to be a father.

See how easy that was?

Now it's true that individual gay people are just as prone to infertility as breeders. (Get it? Infertility? Breeders? Hah? Hah?!) In fact, PCOS seems to be twice as common in lesbians. But in any given gay couple, what are the odds that both partners will be infertile?

If you're a lesbian with blocked tubes, your partner could still conceive a child. If you're a gay man with a low sperm count, it's probable that your partner has no such handicap. Let's face it, with two sets of ovaries at your disposal, you can afford to cherry-pick. With four testicles in play, your specimen cup runneth over.

In either case, you're still going to need to involve a third party, so the necessity for ART is a foregone conclusion. That third party is likely to be healthy and fertile — he or she wouldn't be in the running otherwise. And needing medical intervention of some kind doesn't exactly come as a shock when, you know, we're talking two men or two women.

Straight people in monogamous relationships don't have these advantages. First, you just have one set of each flavor of gonads. If my ovaries are tapped out, I can't really turn to my husband and ask him if I can borrow his. Second, the notion of turning to a person outside your partnership for help is an awkward one for many couples. Third, we're brought up to believe that any man and any woman can reproduce, and we grow up expecting we'll be no different.

Imagine our surprise and delight.

Now, according to the people who make my holiness their business, aren't straight married couples supposed to be favored by God? Aren't we supposed to receive all sorts of divine fringe benefits because of our unimpeachable piety? If God's so crazy about us hetero marrieds, shouldn't he be giving us the cosmic high-five every time we do it on cycle day 14 — or at least every time we turn, defeated, to infertility treatment?

But noooo. It's gay people who have the reproductive advantage!

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that God actually prefers gay couples. He loves them so much, He wants them to be fruitful and multiply. I just knew the homophobes were wrong.

Update: J.'s baby was born on January 27. Beautiful, beautiful family.

Posted by Julie at 10:16:39 AM in I've learned a lot...but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Comments

Take that, Fred Phelps

God loves gay people and I have proof.

My cousin J. is a middle-aged single man living in New York. The only people in the family to be surprised when he came out were his parents and my grandfather. (The other member of the oldest generation, my grandmother, took it with characteristic aplomb, but then I can't be sure she really understood what he meant. My grandmother is a shining exemplar of the power of peaceful denial.)

The rest of us sort of rolled our eyes and said, "Well, yeah, and...?"

J. is going to have a baby. He found a surrogate who lives in the Midwest, provided her with the necessary biological product — sorry, I can't really think about a family member's semen without cloaking it in several layers of protective euphemisms — and, voilà! 40 weeks later, he's going to be a father.

See how easy that was?

Now it's true that individual gay people are just as prone to infertility as breeders. (Get it? Infertility? Breeders? Hah? Hah?!) In fact, PCOS seems to be twice as common in lesbians. But in any given gay couple, what are the odds that both partners will be infertile?

If you're a lesbian with blocked tubes, your partner could still conceive a child. If you're a gay man with a low sperm count, it's probable that your partner has no such handicap. Let's face it, with two sets of ovaries at your disposal, you can afford to cherry-pick. With four testicles in play, your specimen cup runneth over.

In either case, you're still going to need to involve a third party, so the necessity for ART is a foregone conclusion. That third party is likely to be healthy and fertile — he or she wouldn't be in the running otherwise. And needing medical intervention of some kind doesn't exactly come as a shock when, you know, we're talking two men or two women.

Straight people in monogamous relationships don't have these advantages. First, you just have one set of each flavor of gonads. If my ovaries are tapped out, I can't really turn to my husband and ask him if I can borrow his. Second, the notion of turning to a person outside your partnership for help is an awkward one for many couples. Third, we're brought up to believe that any man and any woman can reproduce, and we grow up expecting we'll be no different.

Imagine our surprise and delight.

Now, according to the people who make my holiness their business, aren't straight married couples supposed to be favored by God? Aren't we supposed to receive all sorts of divine fringe benefits because of our unimpeachable piety? If God's so crazy about us hetero marrieds, shouldn't he be giving us the cosmic high-five every time we do it on cycle day 14 — or at least every time we turn, defeated, to infertility treatment?

But noooo. It's gay people who have the reproductive advantage!

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that God actually prefers gay couples. He loves them so much, He wants them to be fruitful and multiply. I just knew the homophobes were wrong.

Update: J.'s baby was born on January 27. Beautiful, beautiful family.