The Pope: old and new wounds

The blessing of same-sex unions' boomerang effect

Disclaimer: my ten-year-old twins were born thanks to surrogacy.

A few friends texted me asking why I did not write a “breaking news” post about Gabriel Attal’s nomination this week. I responded that I was too busy, annoyed by the Pope’s comments on surrogacy and the apathy of LGBTQ+ organizations in replying to them despite the fact that many gay men in the U.S. go through surrogacy to have children.

A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract. Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally.

I do not question the role of the Church in guiding the faithful in matters of moral issues or the necessity to regulate surrogacy. But I do question the timing, the Church’s motives, and the carelessness with which it raises the topic.

The timing of the Pope’s virulent denunciation of surrogacy during his foreign policy address to diplomats feels opportunistic and political rather than pastoral. His recent decision to authorize the blessing of same-sex unions, while applauded by LGBTQ+ people and their allies, led to a rebellion in some conservative dioceses (see today’s article in the Washington Post). Francis needed to appease them by shifting the attention to another conservative crusade: surrogacy.

I observed the same dynamics operate in France when the anti-gay-marriage movement – la Manif Pour Tous - developed a sudden interest in children born through surrogacy after same-sex marriage was approved in 2013. Six years ago, they ran a campaign comparing surrogacy babies to GMO vegetables, which was extremely hurtful. That same year, Valeurs Actuelles ran a horrendous article titled “The Unsavory Envoy of the United Nations,” attacking my family based on the fact that I had children via surrogacy and split from their other father,

"After GMO vegetables, children with just one parent?" 2017

Calling all surrogacy “despicable” is offensive to existing children and their families. It stigmatizes them. To add insult to injury, those are often children of LGBTQ+ people whom the Church continues to describe as "intrinsically disordered.”

In his blanket condemnation, Francis intentionally ignored the existence of ethical surrogacy in which all parties, including the surrogate mother, are known, respected, and have a place in the child's life. My children have met our surrogate, and I am in touch with her and feel immense gratitude for the fact that she carried the twins. He also did not mention the couples who went through multiple egg retrievals and embryo transfers only to rely on a surrogate for a successful pregnancy. Instead, he tactically focused on the exploitation of financially vulnerable women, especially in poorer countries, which only represent a portion of the estimated 20,000  annual surrogacies. Of course, regulation is needed, but a blanket ban on surrogacy would be dramatic for many people who cannot have children in any other way.

USAToday had an article this morning about a woman from Indiana who has been mourning the loss of her children in a car accident for the last five years and is now welcoming the surrogacy birth of her son. After car wreck took 3 kids, surrogacy allowed her to become a mom again. Is that “despicable”?

Francis also peddles the dangerous narrative that having children is only a beautiful act of selflessness for straight, fertile people. In contrast, for people suffering from infertility, physiological or social, having children is a selfish endeavor.

Finally, there is a sad irony in condemning surrogacy arrangements when the Church is complicit in the much more frequent situations where women are forced to carry pregnancies against their will, sometimes with fatal consequences. This approach is entwined with its historical efforts to exert control over individual body autonomy and to impose restrictions on reproductive rights.

Highlighting this enduring stance, Pope Francis recently equated 'gender theory' with the cataclysmic threats of nuclear war and genetic manipulation.

This new crusades against surrogacy and trans identities, on the heel of its defeat over homosexuality, raise the question of whether the Church is sincere when it apologizes for casualties of its quest for survival, whether it is justifying colonialism or slavery or persecuting Jews or victims of the Inquisition, Crusades, or Reformation.

Apologies without behavior change constitute manipulation.

At some point, the Church must learn that it can perdure without constantly undermining the dignity of specific groups. How weak is one’s faith that it must rely on denouncing others as evil or, in 2023 lingua Vaticana, “despicable”? Until then, LGBTQ+ people should keep it at bay, something I had already written about in 2015 when some LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. welcomed the papal visit.

As Larry Kramer said in 2007 “[LGBT people] are not crumbs, [they] must not accept crumbs”.