Anti-trans activist Kellie-Jean Keen-Minshull aka Posie Parker has stopped haranguing trans people and now appears to have a new target – gay men involved in surrogate parenthood.
Surrogacy has always been a subject of contention. Opinions range from acceptance that it involves a contractual relationship between a surrogate birth mother and sperm donor to have a baby for lesbians, gay men or infertile straight couples, to concerns about exploitative surrogacy regimes that turn surrogate mothers into brood mares across natural boundaries; to those who believe that the practice of surrogacy itself exploits women and should therefore be banned as oppressive.
Keen-Minshull announced that she believes that all surrogacy was exploitative in a meeting with anti-transgender conservative Christian and pseudofeminist activists in the United Kingdom in April 2024. Two months later, she declared her outrage at Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black’s use of a surrogate mother to parent their two children, Robert Ray (6) and Phoenix Rose (1).
Black and Daley have been married since 2017 and are clearly in a long-term stable relationship and are mature and responsible enough to exercise parental responsibilities. By its nature, same-sex parenting is a deliberative and conscientious process, so what is Keen-Minshull’s problem? Incidentally, the surrogate mother in this context has regular access to the children that she birthed. So, why target a gay male couple instead of a childless affluent straight couple?
This isn’t the only time a transphobe has revealed lateral homophobia either. Has-been former Irish “comedian” Graham Linehan has called for the defunding of the UK LGBTQI+ lobby group Stonewall, a registered charity, because of the thought crime of transgender inclusion.
In New Zealand, surrogacy is regulated through the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2004. This renders surrogacy relationships legal but the relationships involved are unenforceable, nor can financial assistance be offered as an inducement apart from within the usual expenses incurred in the context of pregnancy and birth. Once the child is born, the Adoption Act 1955 applies. This has historically specified adoption occurs within marital relationships, which includes same-sex marriage after the advent of marriage equality in 2013.
This means that all surrogate relationships are necessarily altruistic and must not be commercial. Legislative amendments to deal with the specific situation of lesbian or gay couples in this context have been circulating for the last five years since former Labour MP Tamati Coffey suggested them and produced a private members bill on the issue during the Ardern/Hipkins administrations.
If a New Zealand citizen or couple is tempted to try commercial overseas surrogacy, Oranga Tamariki has issued warnings about Cambodia, India, Mexico, Nepal and Thailand in this context.
Article | Craig Young.
Craig Young (He/Him) has been a fixture within the LGBTQIA+ community and other social movements for over forty years. He is a former Politics and Religion correspondent for Gaynz.com (2002-2017).
