My name is Vincenzo. I am Italian and I’m gay.
Normally I don’t feel this need to label myself because I think sexuality is simply a detail. On this planet we are men and women- people- that’s all. But on the topic of surrogacy it’s important to specify my sexuality because I must shatter the myth that all gay men are in favor of this horrendous practice.
Recently the Italian movement “Se Non Ora Quando” (translated, “If not now when?) launched a survey to determine what Italians think about surrogacy. It’s no coincidence that Se Non Ora Quando, which is concerned with violence against women, conducted this first-time-ever national survey on surrogacy in my country.
I wasn’t surprised that the results revealed that 48 percent of Italians oppose surrogacy in all cases while 41 per cent are in favor- but only in some cases. Of those in favor, 70% of Italians would allow surrogacy only for heterosexual couples because to us, the idea of a child being raised by two men with no mother at all is horrifying. Of those Italians who approve of surrogacy, 23% say they only support payment-free “altruistic surrogacy,” to ensure that the woman is not being exploited because of her economic need. But even in those two cases- the heterosexual couple or the cases where there is no exploitation, I still have to ask, “what about the child?”
In Italy it’s illegal to remove a puppy from its mother prior to the 60th day of life. That’s because we recognize the importance of motherhood even for newborn animals. If the bond matters this greatly for puppies, how much more so for human children? A child is not a dog who just needs shelter, some food, and some cuddles. A child is a person, and his or her rights come first. Specifically, the right to their father *and* mother. Why do we pass laws requiring puppies to be with their mothers for 60 days, yet encourage practices like surrogacy which require human babies to lose their mother on day one?
When I was living abroad in London and Australia, I was shocked to meet many people who are in favor of what I consider to be a form of human trafficking. One which sees children as items to be purchased and women as incubators for rich infertile heterosexual couples, gay men or even single straight men. The case of Ronaldo, the footballer who had his children basically shipped to his home from America, comes to mind. Ronaldo doesn’t seem to understand that women should not be for rent. And children should not be for sale.
In Italy, attitudes are different. Not because Italians are homophobic or bigots or live in the dark age, though I’ve heard these stereotypes promoted by the gay lobby during my stay in London. Our attitudes are different because Italians place great importance on children’s rights. Here, children are not considered by most people as “things” which can be bought. Children are seen as citizens, as people. And the even more- the most vulnerable people of all.
Another thing that sets Italy apart is that we consider the mother/child bond to be sacred. We know that little babies want and need their mum in a way that they do not need their dad. It’s a biological thing. It’s not about dads being inferior or needing to compete with the mother. Their paternal role is equally important but in the early stages of life, it’s the mother/child bond that is vital. To the baby, mum is the most important person in the world. He recognizes her voice alone, he has heard her heartbeat for 40 weeks. He knows her smell. In Italy we say, “La mamma è sempre la mamma” or, “mother is always mother.” The role of mother is revered in almost a divine sense. You say “Oh God!” And we say “Mama Mia!” In Italy, women can’t be rented and motherhood cannot be sold.
Another thing I was shocked to learn while living abroad is that most gay men support surrogacy. In fact, it’s seen as strange for a gay man to be against it. But in Italy we have loads of famous gay celebrities who have spoken out against this practice that reduces women to instruments and treats children as products. From singer Cristiano Malgioglio who said, “the word “mum” cannot be erased,” to Dolce and Gabbana who have withstood vicious attacks from foreign gay men like Elton John for their stand against artificial conception, it’s the norm for Italian gay men to reject surrogacy. Overseas gays could learn a thing or two from Italian gays. Namely, that a child is not a “right,” a child is a person.
I would have never wanted to be raised by two men. Especially by two men who manufactured me using the genetic material from one mother and then who paid another mother to give me up. It’s absurd. The LGBTQI lobby seeks to hide the terrible consequences that this practice inflicts on the human child. Children don’t stay children forever. They grow up. And the burden of being bought like an expensive car and sold by their mothers will have a detrimental effect on them. Here’s one boy born of surrogacy who shares his perspective:
Hi…I’m a boy of 14.
I live with 2 dads…one of them is my biological dad and one of them isn’t.
My biological mother (who gave my dads her ovum for my birth…) comes my house often. She’s 38 and my dads’ long time best friend…I want to call her my mom but my dads always get mad when I try…actually I’ve already call her mom when my dads are not around and she liked it…she and I have lots of connections with each other…
I hate my dads so much…WHY didn’t they just adopt some baby instead use ovum donor and surrogate mother? Don’t you think gay people who want to get a baby by ovum donor and surrogate mother are horrible? I think they are horrible as hell…even my biological dad is being gay. She’s a mother of mine, even my surrogate mother also exist, but dads don’t want me to get so close to my biological mother…
We all know that a baby would never abandon his mother. Italians oppose surrogacy because it requires a mother to abandon her child. And that’s incredibly cruel. Even as a gay man, especially because I’m a gay man, I condemn surrogacy out of love for children.
Rock-solid perspective, Vincenzo. You are a good man for sharing this.
Rock-solid prejudice.
That’s what I thought. Fake story, linking to a fake comment in yahoo answers. Wow. Great things you’ve done with your life.
Why would it be fake? Do you think it’s abnormal for children, who naturally are created by a male and a female, to yearn to know and be known by both parents? Why do you get to decide how children would feel about the arrangement of their upbringing? Do we say to the child whose mother has died, “Suck it up, you never needed a mother anyway”?
“WHY didn’t they just adopt some baby” … I deeply sympathize with this boy’s turmoil. His human rights were violated to please the needs of adults.
If you truly care about children’s human rights, however, you must also face the truth about adoption. Many people, including adults, have no clue about what adoption does to people. This is hardly surprising as the media stories about adoption are dominated by the voices of adoptive parents, of adoption agencies, and of influential Hollywood-celebrities. The voices of dissenting adult adoptees or first families, by contrast, are oppressed and silenced.
Some clarifications:
Adoption isn’t some kind of humanitarian act. Adoption, in essence, is an ownership transaction. It turns children into commodities and erases their true identity from their birth certificates to make the product more attractive to the customers, that is, the adoptive parents. It’s a a business and a profitable one. (Governments also save a lot of money by supporting adoption rather than family preservation.) Most adoptees aren’t “orphans” and most first mothers do not give up their children because they want to but lose their children to adoption due to poverty, isolation and lack of social support.*
It’s incredibly traumatic for the child and first family, so it’s hardly surprising that adoptees, who are expected to be thankful for the (in most cases unnecessary loss of their entire family), are four times more likely to kill themselves than non-adoptees.** But these are costs adoption agencies don’t have to pay.
If you truly care about children than you don’t build your own family based on the destruction of another. If you truly care about children, you support family preservation rather than satisfying your “need” for a child with other people’s children. And if these people are truly incapable for taking care of their children, you support kinship care, and if the child truly is an orphan, guardianship. Guardianship, in contrast to adoption, respects the true identity of the child, whereas adoption robs children of their medical history, their blood line, their cultural heritage, their very identity. In that way, adoption violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, i.e. “to know and be cared for by his or her parents”.*** Guardian makes you the guardian of a child, given that child truly is an orphan. Adoption makes you the owner. This is one of the many puzzling things adoption has in common with slavery.
This is why, if Them Before Us truly cares about child rights, it will not only fight against surrogacy and “donor insemination”, which it rightfully does, but against adoption as well – just like growing numbers of dissenting adult adoptees that have come out of the adoption fog, the constant indoctrination with adoption ideology and the constant adoption propaganda, do. All human beings want to know where they come from and to erase that knowledge is a crime against humanity. And, dear adoption propagandists, future generations will judge you for it. You are on the wrong side of history.
In short, adoption is inter-generational theft. Rather than facing up to the existential questions that come up with childlessness, as true adults would do, people fill their inner void with the money and power that enables them to adopt. Their pain then is transferred to the child and it’s a pain that will last for generations.
*
https://theestablishment.co/adoption-is-a-feminist-issue-but-not-for-the-reasons-you-think-93ba3824bcbb
**
https://ellecuardaigh.com/2014/10/07/adoptee-suicide-2/
***
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx
So for you Natasha, everything is bad, adoption is bad and surrogates is bad.
You don’t care about kids, you just care about your beliefs. Adopt a kid or have a kid with a surrogate mum is not like buy a car or a dog. What you describe is slavery, own a person is slavery. We are talking here about love, and love is what it matters. As the UN said: “to know and be cared for by his or her parents”, when you adopt a kid and MAKE him/her part of your live and heart, you are his/her parent. When they cry, you will cry, when they laugh you laugh…. they are part of you and you are part of them.
From your point of view, is better to keep a children where they are not loved/wanted, rather than with a family that really loves them and cares about them.
That’s not “Them before us”, that’s “my beliefs before anyone”.
Natasha,
A Guardian is a legalized babysitter who after the child is 18 is no longer there for the child thus goes into adulthood with no family.
PS: I mean “then you don’t build your own family” of course.
Hi Vincenzo,
Everyone have its point of view, from my perspective I respect your opinion but I think that is an “old fashion” viewpoint.
I’m gay and I will love to have kids, and compare a baby with a dog is a bit over the top. Anyway, a puppy must be with his/her mum because may stop eating, after 6-8 weeks the puppy is eating almost everything so is independent. Today we have a huge and wide range of prepared milks for babies (but I must agree that the mum’s milk is the best). The other fact is that normally those dog mums are used just for business, getting pregnant constantly to squeeze every single penny. In UK, ladies, normally women that are already mums, offer themselves as a surrogates to let others experience the magic and the miracle of life, they are not exploited they are revered.
We are talking about the instinct of became a father, that is natural, some people feel it some doesn’t; but for those having that feeling, the surrogacy is the only way. You talk about those babies as “products”, but those babies are 100% wanted and loved, the processes and challenges that a gay man need to do to to became a father are huge. Before you ban or criticise those gay parents looking for a child, you must first tackle those couples or girls having a baby after a crazy and alcoholic night (check the abortion rate in Italy due an unwanted pregnancy, almost the worst in Europe). Before you ban a babies loved by two men, you should focus on unwanted and unloved babies, living a miserable live where there are treated as “the problem in their parent’s life”.
The example of that “14 years old” troll, is not helpful at all and is damaging those gay people that want to have a baby. As a gay man looking for became a father the first thing that I thought about what will happen with my kid, what he/she will think about, if he will be happy, etc.
I’m starting the process of became a father and I know that my kids will have lots of love and support from me and my family, and that’s the most important fact.
@javier
As you pursue having children will you allow them to have a motherly relationship with their biological mother? Or will you tell them that they don’t have a mother, or choose an anonymous egg seller so that your own parenthood doesn’t feel threatened?
Love from your fathers isn’t enough to make up for being sold/given away by your mother. I was conceived using a “donor” and no amount of love from the parents who raised me will ever be enough to heal the wounds caused by my biological father selling his rights to raise and love me. Love from one side simply cannot do that.
You are wrong
Natasha you sound very stupid and selfish. I suggest you consider adoption when you want to start your family, you’re fortunate you can get up the stick without any effort. If you don’t need your womb donate it to someone who does and stick to adoption as in your case I think it will work better for the rest of us.
This article is based in pure prejudice and the points made have been thoroughly scientifically debunked, amongst others by tt research of the University of Cambridge under Professor Susan Golombok, summarised in this book, which I highly recommend https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/modern-families/B133ECA09685B46DAA5D116CF2AB2743
My suspicion is that this article is totally fake:
1. The author is Kate Faust, not “Vincenzo” the mysterious Italian gay man.
2. The photograph is a free stock photo (https://pixabay.com/en/guy-man-male-young-adult-handsome-912234/)
3. The alleged quote from the 14-year-old is from a Yahoo feed and as one of the comments correctly said, the language and choice of words is extremely odd and unlikely to come from a 14-year-old in that situation (https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110908013701AAqKDOM#)
4. Apart from one link to a Daily Mail article (not a serious newspaper) about Ronaldo, all others are to the same website or other anti-surrogacy websites.
5. The “survey” the article starts off with was commissioned by an Italian anti-surrogacy group with no details about their methodology etc.
Should the author claim otherwise, I am prepared in my capacity as a lawyer and under my confidentiality duties to verify her sources and the identity of “Vincenzo”.
Also, I don’t know if the whole article is fake as well, check that guy, apparently is spanish:
http://clinicainjertocapilar.com/cuidado-cabello/cuidado-cura-verano-calor-vacaciones/
This is so powerful. Thank you for sharing. The arguments are clear, truthful and simply common sense. We all know of the extreme efforts and extent of the lobbyists to distort truth, science for self-serving purposes. Only those who haven’t studied the issue or cared enough for justice, can be blinded from the rational that adults wants should never replace children’s needs.
Broad strokes of absolute hasty generalizations. Simple minded thinking in action. This way of thinking leaves no room for exceptions or anomalies. The impression that I have of the participants in this organization is that they are excessive control freaks, mostly women that must feel insecure in their need to take charge and stay in charge, of the poor males that they happenstance into entrapment in their den of iniquity. How do the participants of this group deal and react to a child’s human rights to express their sexual orientation of homosexuality?? I am going to take a good guess that their answer to that question would be Conversion Therapy. If they have children that are gay I feel sorry for them. God help those children. It is quite interesting how fate works. I am sure that this entry will be deleted by this group as I feel that they do not have the courage to allow for a dissenting voice. Just a reminder, it’s all about feelings of insecurity and control.
As someone who has spent several years in Italy, this article rings true. There is no reason to doubt its authenticity if you come to the issue with an open mind and not a strong, partial opinion. The way he writes (and even one or two little mistakes) sounds like an Italian and no-one can argue that women and children are elevated in Italian society – almost idolized. That is why I was not surprised when I read before about Dolce and Gabbana’s stance on adoption. And Vincenzo quotes statistics which do not surprise me either. Italians are VERY attached to their mothers, over and beyond other cultures. It is a matriarchal society so people from patriarchal societies cannot understand their culture easily. But hey, this is the age of “tolerance”, right?? Are he and his compatriots not allowed an opinion? So many people who have visited Italy from other countries tell me how much attention their kids got and how it doesn’t compare to anywhere else. Children are so valued and so adored. It is amazing how little tolerance there is often from LGBT people. Rupert Everett and other gay celebrities in the UK came out againts gay “marriage” and they were torn to shreds for it by many in their own “community”. Free speech is so much under threat. By the way, to answer Andreas’s comment, many publications use stock photos when the person wishes to remain anonymous. Or when the person writes an email or letter. And the Daily Mail IS regarded as a serious newspaper by those in the industry in the UK. Its online version is separate but the paper itself employs many lawyers to make sure their stories are true. Libel laws are strict and papers (almost all of which run at a loss due to changing reading habits) simply cannot afford to print false or unsubstantiated stories. And in any case, the Ronaldo story was reported by many publications.
Natasha, adoption can be very Biblical, kind, and needed.
According to Christian theology, God himself adopts us into his family when we turn to him. We inherit his blessings by his generosity. Adoption, for the right reasons, and in the right way, is a reflection of the heart of God.
To leave a child desolate, on the streets, or tossed around in foster care is cruel. To relieve his deep need to be wanted and loved is kind.
There are children who need a loving parent. Some have no family at all to turn to. My best friend adopted two babies born to mothers who had used crack cocaine while pregnant. Two different mothers, no connection. Neither child had any birth family willing to take them. They needed intensive medical attention, and my friend adopted them and her and her husband gave them everything they could. They are lovely young women today, and adore their parents.
I think the stronger points made by this website are very important as there is a breakdown of family and parenting in our culture.
Adoption as a whole is not the problem. The “how” and “why” is.
Thank you for your article!
Thank you for this article! The world has lost its common sense and I hope that we regain that. We must uphold traditional marriage and family of one man and one woman. Children deserve to be nurtured by their biological parents.