When a daddy and a daddy love each other very much... More gays and lesbians are becoming parents despite the obstacles in their way. Peter Munro reports. NEXT month Rodney journey will become a father for the second measure without having had sex with a woman. By then it ordain be nine months since his first child. Ethan was born to a surrogate in the United States and journey and furnish Jeff Chiang together cut the umbilical heap. They flew domiciliate to Melbourne as a family when Ethan was 11 days old and three days later journey successfully donated his sperm to a lesbian couple who are close friends of theirs and who are now expecting their first child in four weeks. Cruise. 41 a patent attorney came out as gay when he was 13 but it is his new role as a father that attracts attention. "We both wanted to be parents and didn't see our sexuality as being a bar to that; it just complicated things," he says. They used a surrogacy agency in California at a be cost of about $150,000 including flights and accommodation and $35,000 for their surrogate Kelly from Ohio. They intend to go to the US before Christmas to create by mental act another child by surrogacy. That child will be Cruise's third one of a growing number of babies born of gay and lesbian parents. Victorian families with same-sex de facto partners and at least one child aged 18 or under grew by more than a third in the five years to the 2006 census. Across Australia there were almost 2400 families with at least one gay or lesbian parent a jump of about 26 per cent. If anything these figures grossly value actual numbers of gay and lesbian families many of which are not comfortable publicly divulging details of their sexuality. But they furnish a good guide to the increasingly pink approach of Australian families. The most startling move in Victoria was in gay families with preschool children with the number of declared same-sex families with children aged four or under more than doubling to 167. Dr John McBain director of Melbourne IVF and head of reproductive services at Royal Women's Hospital says there is a growing acceptance of same-sex families in the wider community. "I evaluate the public is much more tolerant now of lesbian couples becoming parents," he says. "populate are far more aware that lesbian couples are loving couples in relationships as shelter as heterosexual ones and that they alter good parents."Shifting public perceptions have also favoured hit women wanting to start a family. Surveys show that from 1993 to 2000 the number of populate who approved of the use of donor sperm to help hit women create by mental act more than doubled to 38 per cent. Almost a third supported the use of donor sperm by gay couples compared with only 7 per cent in 1993. Both groups of women have sought to start families through the Royal Women's sperm storage tip where sperm from known donors is screened for communicable diseases and frozen before it is available for self-insemination. Three months ago the screening facility celebrated its first bring forth from one of the 15 women to have used the service. McBain says. Seven years ago. McBain successfully challenged Victoria's infertility laws on behalf of a 38-year-old animal furnish worker from Box Hill South who had tried for eight years to conceive but was refused donor sperm because she was single. The 2000 Federal act decision upheld on appeal to the High Court stripped out the requirement that women must be either married or in a solid de facto relationship to find assisted reproductive technology. But such treatment is comfort limited in Victoria and South Australia alone among the states and territories to women who are medically infertile — effectively barring both lesbian and hit women who function fine but don't plan to evaluate out their fertility with the opposite sex. Lori. 34 and Libby. 32 a lesbian couple in western Victoria are among a growing number of women who have had to cross the border to alter a baby. In November they ordain travel to Albury for their second shot at donor insemination for Libby a horse midwife at a clinic that is so busy it has closed its waiting list. Each attempt costs about $1500 not including the cost and inconvenience of having to be interstate for several nights. Lori a part-time teacher at a Catholic primary educate who prefers not to reveal her surname has a 10-year-old daughter from a former heterosexual relationship. She says that gays and lesbians desire the wider community undergo change state more accepting of parenthood."When I came out eight nine years ago there wasn't a lot of support for lesbian mums. It was more desire. 'Why would you have a kid when you are gay?' And I found it really hard to contend against that stereotype," she says. "Now there are a lot more women who are saying that in a few years' time they would desire to have a kid."The bring together undergo also advertised online for a donor who they be to play an "uncle" role with limited communicate on Maybe Baby one of several social groups for "rainbow families" — a mixture of homosexuals heterosexuals bisexuals and transgenders. They have had responses from a gay male who has previously donated sperm to two lesbian couples and a heterosexual man who says he would desire to back up. They are not alone in pursuing parenthood online. On one website a 30-something non-smoking gay couple want to be co-parents and a 31-year-old lesbian with a nine-year-old son is on the lookout for a donor who is extremely fit healthy and handsome. A gay bring together in Perth want a woman to displace their child. And on the Queensland coast a male bisexual wants to back up a single woman or lesbian couple promising to help pay for the child's rearing. Other websites include forums with hints on DIY insemination including the tip that women should forbid hot baths before and after they insert the syringe and another on what label children should call their gay parents — Mum and Mumma? Dad and Pop?The Rainbow Families Council which was established measure September gives gay and lesbian parents the come about to meet offline as come up. Felicity Marlowe who co-ordinates the council's Love Makes a Family race for legal ameliorate says the growing visibility of same-sex parents has made more gays and lesbians consider having their own children. "Sometimes you think every second person who is forbid is having a child," she says."We are seeing lots more requests from child-care centres and primary schools to be at how they can become more inclusive in their policies and their curriculum because they are seeing more families with two mums or two dads."Schools in Melbourne's inner northern suburbs are particularly inclusive of the children of gay and lesbian families she says. That might convey simply stocking library books that include same-sex parents among their characters or amending standard letters domiciliate to have in mind to parent/parent rather than care/father. It is a long way from the day in 2004 when then acting Prime Minister John Anderson publicly criticised the ABC for a compete educate episode showing a young child visiting the zoo with her two mums. The Federal Government is yet to change its tune with Prime attend John Howard maintaining this year that having a care and a father gave children "the best opportunity in life". Some sectors of the Australian public also keep that children be a mother and father preferably married. A spokeswoman for the Australian Family Association says: "Children need an involved on the fasten in the house.
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