However, I imagine the great majority of people, upon hearing surrogacy, thinks immediately of an infertile couple turning to a woman to carry a baby for them when the wife cannot. While this is indeed still the majority of cases of surrogacy, it's far from the only situation. Today, surrogacy is also evolving into a way to create families for gay couples and single men who desire a child without a partner.
When I first began looking into surrogacy (spring, 1999), everything I found was geared towards married couples battling infertility. I just assumed this was the way I would go. Then a woman on the SMO email list I belong to wrote about her Intended Fathers. I kind of blinked the first time I read that... Intended Fathers?? I thought it was the most amazing thing; I'm a big proponent of gay rights - including the right to a family, and this seemed a wonderful way to put that into action.
Unfortunately, from things I'd read (among them, and perhaps most notably, Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart by Ragone), married heterosexual couples were the only clients served by agencies, and I'd decided already I could not pursue an independent surrogacy. What I've since found, happily, is the tide is changing since that book was written, and more and more agencies do match single men and male couples with surrogates; however, they are still typically in the minority. My big breakthrough was finding an agency (Growing Generations) that works almost exclusively with gay clients. I knew I'd found my agency, and began my journey through surrogacy.
As I said earlier, I'm a strong believer in gay rights. I was raised in a liberal family and grew up to believe that with whom a person has sex has little to do with any other part of their life. Unfortunately, this quaint view isn't entirely true in today's society - people are judged by their sexuality. I know I can't change that alone, but my hope is that my surrogacy is both a support of the rights of those of a different sexual orientation AND a way to open the eyes of some acquaintances that families come in different packages than one wrapped in a mother and father.
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