U.S. campaigners against surrogate motherhood have told Breitbart News they are not at all surprised by the controversy swirling around two gay millionaires who became the first LGBT men to have their names entered on the birth certificate of children born from gestational surrogacy.
After adopting a child, the gay couple Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow went on the have several other children through surrogacy and have become celebrities as the stars of a reality TV show.
Britain’s “first gay dads” also threatened to sue the Anglican and other churches in England to force them to perform same-sex weddings, even though such weddings are against their doctrinal teachings.
The Drewitt-Barlows went on to set up their own gestational surrogacy agency and are now being sued by an American woman who said the agency abused her and owes her money.
Megan Hofner, who carried twins for a gay couple in Australia, now claims the surrogacy agency has stiffed her to the tune of $90,000 for unpaid hospital bills. Her complaint includes blistering and sometimes vulgar emails sent by the Drewitt-Barlows.
One email said, “I advised your Ips (Intended Parents) NOT to pay you anything at all because you are a crazy bitch who deserves to be locked up! Your Ips will not be paying you one more penny! I am so happy that they ran from you!’
Another said, “U should be ashamed of urself you utterly selfish cow! You are just trailer trash woman and I want nothing more to do with u! I will dig up all ur dirt including all the lawyers u p****d off on this case! You will not get one more penny, let’s face it ur contract will not stand up in any court in Brazil! Lol.”
Americans Robert Oscar Lopez, Jennifer Lahl, and Alana Newman each came to the issue of surrogacy and assisted reproductive technologies from different directions.
Lopez is a bisexual man, a professor of English at a California university, who was raised by lesbians and who has become a public campaigner against same-sex parenting and especially gestational surrogacy by anyone, especially gay men.
Jennifer Lahl runs an NGO that focuses on these issues and has made several documentary films on the topic.
Alana Newman is a child of sperm donation and has become a public advocate against assisted reproductive technologies.
Each of them spoke exclusively to Breitbart News.
Lopez, who runs a blog on children’s rights called English Manif, said:
The poor treatment of carrier mothers, and let’s not forget gamete donors as well, is the direct result of problems in the fight for same-sex marriage. The groups who argued for gay marriage decided they needed simultaneously to argue for same-sex parenting. This conflation was disingenuous and harmful—two people who build a life together do not infringe on anyone else’s rights, but two people who need to acquire the biomaterials for a child from someone else are stepping on tons of other people’s rights: the child, the child’s birth parents, the child’s biological kin, and the larger community that’s forced to perform a charade of equivalence.
Jennifer Lahl, who runs the Center for Bioethics and Culture, told Breitbart:
When we released our latest documentary film on surrogacy, titled ‘Breeders: A Subclass of Women?,’ we got a lot of criticism for the title because people think it is demeaning to call women ‘breeders.’ But stories like this only serve to highlight our concern for the treatment, exploitation, and commodification of women. The disdain this gay couple has for the mother… is disgusting.
Alana Newman, who runs a website called Anonymous Us that gives a platform to children born from assisted reproductive technologies, told Breitbart:
The Drewitt-Barlows are not unique in the level of misogyny they exuded with their recent surrogacy scandal. But they think they are above God at this point, and thus are unique in their lack of discretion in revealing their misogyny to the public. The fertility industry and commissioning parents alike repeat endlessly ‘love is what makes a family,’ yet it is their hatred and selfishness that stand out the most. Even on the trailer for their TV show, the Drewitt-Barlows ridicule their own son, hissing in his tween-age face, ‘I paid for a gorgeous, designer child with straight hair, not curly. I paid for a kid with green eyes, olive skin, and straight blonde hair!’ I hope desperately the feminists bring some press to this case.
UN delegations are hosting a Jennifer Lahl Film Festival in March during the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Her documentaries Breeders and Anonymous Father’s Day will be shown to UN diplomats and non-governmental organizations. Both Lahl and Newman will speak on the accompanying panel.
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