Growing Generations: Growing Babies for Gays

"There's a quiet revolution going on, a revolution that's changing a fundamental unit of our society: the family."

So opens a recent piece by Matthew Hetznecker for Alternative Family Magazine, lauding the progress of a Los Angeles business that provides babies for homosexual couples.

Growing Generations, Inc., uses egg donors and surrogate mothers to deliver babies to homosexuals. It prides itself on being "the first and only gay-owned surrogacy" ( www.growinggenerations.com) and has been described by New York University sociologist Dr. Judith Stacey as "an assisted procreation agency for gay couples" (Fellow Families).

Since its founding in 1996, Growing Generations has handled 268 "cases" resulting in 196 babies. Two methods are employed:

• A surrogate mother, using her own eggs, is artificially inseminated with the sperm of the gay father.
  
• One woman donates an egg, another serves as a surrogate, the egg is fertilized in vitro and implanted in the surrogate, who carries the child to term.

Fees paid to first-time surrogates start at $20,000, increasing with each baby a woman carries. "Intended parents" also pay for medical, legal, and psychological costs associated with surrogacy, as well as maternity clothing, additional medical procedures, the surrogate's lost wages, travel allowance, insurance, etc. — the final fee may total $50,000 or more. There are also fees for legal services to finalize the adoption of the baby; these fees are not paid to Growing Generations but to lawyers in their "growing referral network."

"Our customers come from every state in the union, as well as many other countries," said a Growing Generations staffer. "Surrogacy is illegal in most states, so people come here."

State laws on surrogacy conform to no pattern. Many states have no surrogacy laws at all. Others, like New York and New Jersey, have seen their courts rule that surrogacy contracts are unconstitutional and unenforceable. Some recognize surrogacy under certain, specific circumstances. Arizona has tried to criminalize surrogacy, but a court has overturned that legislation.

State laws on surrogacy are constantly changing, according to the American Surrogacy Center. California, however, has "case law" — not laws passed by the legislature — which constitute that state's surrogacy laws.

Growing Generations' chief executive officer, attorney Will Halm, went to the California Superior Court in 1998 to have himself and his partner declared the legal parents of their son, who was at the time still being carried by a surrogate mother. "Until this decision," Hetznecker wrote, "gay couples using a surrogate to create and carry children were forced to petition the court for co-parent adoption after the birth for the non-biological parent to be legally recognized as a parent … [N]ow other gay couples can avoid the adoption process."

What motivates this enterprise?

According to Growing Generations, surrogate mothers are "special women who have chosen to help the gay community realize the joys that a child can bring to life." The website includes a testimonial from "Michelle," a surrogate mother who rejoiced, "I was having a baby for a single gay man."

But there is more to it than that. In the words of Paula Ettelbrick, founder of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (a legal advocacy group currently suing to establish "gay marriage" in New Jersey), now director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, "Being queer means pushing the envelope … radically reordering society's view of reality … transforming the very fiber of society" (Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Law, 1993).

It's all part of "a quiet revolution."

"These are children, and we're playing with them," said Amy Koons, legislative liaison for the Capital Resource Institute (CRI), a California Christian think tank. "We don't believe it's ethical, subjecting children to a radical new social experiment. No human society, until now, has ever recognized homosexuality as a valid basis on which to build a family."

Why in California, and not in other states?

"The family is under attack in California," Koons said. "We do have conservative Christians in California, but they don't vote much anymore.

"When it comes to the issue of homosexuality, the people are so saturated with the gay rights message that many of them don't even question it anymore. And a lot of people are afraid to question it. Our conservative politicians know how ruthless the radical gays are, and they're afraid to speak out."

Although the CRI has no official position on surrogacy per se, Koons said, "Growing Generations has taken surrogacy to another level— that of trafficking in human beings.

"If we use human life on a whim, for whatever we want to use it for, whatever's convenient, then human life is cheapened," she said. "We have a problem there."

CRI, she added, is trying to change California's social policies at the grass roots level — going to school board meetings, sending out mailings to Christian voters, and meeting with local media. "We also lobby with the legislature, but with the liberal Democratic majority there, we can't do much."

The Center for Christian Bioethics at Loma Linda University, operated by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, in a policy statement, described surrogacy in general as an option "best avoided" and noted that "Christians may seek medically assisted reproduction only within the bounds of the fidelity and permanence of marriage."

Their stand on the use of surrogacy to provide babies for homosexuals is somewhat softer than CRI's. A spokesman for the Center, Mark Carr, said the "problematic ethics" of Growing Generations should be addressed "without resorting to inflammatory or exaggerated language."

Commentary
Thanks to the political power of homosexuals and the machinations of California courts, Growing Generations is able to traffic in human beings with no interference from the state. In most states, such an enterprise would not be legal.

These babies are called into being for one reason and one reason only: to be given to homosexuals. The babies would otherwise never be conceived or born. Along the way, money changes hands. The "parents" pay fees to the agency, to the surrogate mothers, and to lawyers, and go home with a baby. To say they have not bought a baby is sheer sophistry.
No one in America can pay money and walk off with a five-year-old. Why, then, can they purchase a newborn in California?

The reason is political. Radical gays, feminists, and lawyers are determined to redesign American life. They have a lock on the California power structure, and conservative legislators are afraid to oppose them. Why sponsor a bill restricting or outlawing surrogacy, knowing that the Democrat super-majority in the legislature will never pass it? Why sponsor a voter initiative, knowing that if the voters do approve it, an activist judge will only strike it down? Why speak up on the issue at all, knowing that any politician who does so will be systematically demonized and, if possible, driven from office?

Meanwhile, Growing Generations has created almost 200 babies and consigned them to homes without a mother and father-a less than optimal family situation, according to a preponderance of the evidence. They do so knowingly and on purpose as part of a design to re-engineer society.

Who will have the courage to speak up for these children?