HomoQuotable - Robert Oscar Lopez

"Market demand is a powerful thing, and it is growing because of the increase in LGBT couples as well as the cultural messages convincing young gays that they will be given children or else society is oppressing them. Here in Los Angeles, I've seen the eerie proliferation of designer babies in gayborhoods, and the increasingly anesthetized reaction of gay couples' friends. People go to third-world getaways to pick out babies, place ads for surrogates who can give them a certain eye color, and even collaborate with human trafficking.

"Never forgetful of my own pains as a lesbian's son in the 1970s, I see the faces of these gay couple's children, and sometimes, I have to run away and cry. I know the dazed glare, the powerlessness of these children, their helpless desire to please their parents, their fear of showing their parents any sign that the arrangement has been hurtful. We are staring into the dawn of a new slave trade. Rather than let the Middle Passage happen and then spend centuries trying to exonerate our nation, we must be 'on the right side of history.' Stop gay marriage -- not because of hate for gay people, but because the machine that is turning people into chattel must be stopped. The only way to break the cycle and wake everyone up is stop gay marriage." - "Ex-gay" activist and NOM ally Robert Oscar Lopez, writing for American Thinker.

The Gayken Got $500K For Gayby Pics

Things can't be that bad if People Magazine paid Clay Aiken $500,000 for exclusive photos of his gayby. Clearly, we've still got our priorities right.

LOGO: The Money's In The Gaybies

Cable network LOGO has issued a press release touting what it calls a "striking shift" in gay demographics. According to LOGO, most young gays now want to live in the suburbs and raise kids. The full release:

LOGO RESEARCH REVEALS STRIKING SHIFT IN GAY DEMOGRAPHIC

NEW YORK, NY – August 5, 2008 – Logo, a division of Viacom Inc.’s (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) MTV Networks, today revealed groundbreaking research developed in partnership with Simmons and TRU, that shows a vast generational shift among LGBT people. Findings from the months-long national project conducted earlier this year indicate a greater expectation by LGBT people to lead an integrated life raising families in suburbs or small towns, ultimately living life the way they choose while maintaining their identity and sense of community.

Among the key findings of the national qualitative and quantitative research:

· A vast majority (79 percent) of gay people think it’s important to integrate into the greater culture and 64 percent are open about their sexual orientation to at least their family members.
· Less than half of gay people want to live in the city and a majority want to live in suburbia or small-town America. Regardless of where they want to live, 58 percent want to live closer to other gay people.
· Two-thirds of younger gay people expect to be partnered with kids at some point in their adulthood, while less than a third of gays 35 and older expect the same.
· Younger gay people have an even mix of gay and straight friends.
· Overall, gay people rank marriage equality as the number one issue about which they’re passionate, followed by the environment, health care and the economy.

“We’re trading in West Hollywood for West Texas and big disposable incomes for disposable diapers,” said Lisa Sherman, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Logo. “Most important, we’re integrating without abandoning our community or sense of identity. These developments are good for LGBT people and good for America.”

The research also found that despite gay people’s love for mainstream media, they want entertainment that speaks to their uniquely gay lives and experiences. This finding supports Logo’s efforts to develop programming like the recent Sordid Lives: The Series that tell authentic LGBT stories, sometimes with many LGBT characters and sometimes only a few.

Logo’s research was concluded earlier this year and involved a qualitative study in partnership with TRU Research of 21-45 year olds in New York and Dallas as well as a qualitative national survey in partnership with Simmons of 1,800 21-59 LGBT people.

Trading disposable income for disposable diapers? I don't know how that's inherently good for gay culture. Unless, of course, you feel that a wholesale aping of the white picket fence lifestyle is, by definition, good. It's fine for the folks that want it, and the fact that gay folks who want a subdivision life now feel more comfortable pursuing it, yeah that is good. But it's merely a different life, not a better one.

My buddy Rod Townsend, the Manhattan Offender, notes:

LOGO, the CBS for gays, released a press release today addressing research that essentially shows a younger generation of gays that don't really see a need for LOGO. Granted, the data is parsed in an intriguing way to prove the network's need to exist, but when a company pays out to a research company to create such data, they often receive back information tailored to make the company return to that research company again. By needing to study their demographics though, LOGO is really telling us, "We have no inherent feel for our viewer, but some dude with an MBA in the marketing department thinks this might help."

With gay nightlife shuttering nationwide and gaybies on every block, you really have to wonder what this life is going to look like in ten years. I guess LOGO better cut back on the Queer As Folk reruns and start booking gay versions of Leave It To Beaver.

Details Mag: Single Gay Dads Are Hot

Details Magazine blogs about the gayby boom. Interesting story overall, but with a few "Oh, brother" moments, one of which I've bolded below.

Evidence of the gayby boom is everywhere. It isn't just the strollers in gay neighborhoods. Some Halloween parties at lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community centers now brim with gay dads showing off their immaculately costumed progeny. And participants in New York City's Gay Pride Parade have turned down the volume of the music in order to be more accommodating to kids.

"They're even talking about having a family week on Fire Island this summer," says Ron Poole-Dayan, a marketing consultant who runs a biological-parent support group in Manhattan and has 7-year-old twins with his partner, Gregory Poole-Dayan. "So that tells you something."

Ten years ago, if you were a gay couple who wanted a baby through in vitro fertilization you were likely to go to Southern California, which embraced IVF early on and has many specialist agencies. Today these clinics are pretty much all over the country.

And it's not just gay couples who are investigating IVF. Many homosexual men have decided to go it alone, which provides at least one tangible bonus: While single parenthood can be a turnoff on the heterosexual dating scene, being a single gay dad is—there's really no other word for it—hot.

"In the gay community, having a child as a single man is a sign of assertiveness," Ron Poole-Dayan says. "It's also appealing to know this is a gay man who isn't afraid of commitment." Poole-Dayan says he's seen six out of the seven single gay dads he knows pair off after the births of their children.

That's what happened to B.J. Holt, 40, a general manager for Broadway stage productions. "I worried about being a single father," Holt says. "But sure enough, as soon as I started the process with a surrogate mother, I met my future partner." Today Holt and his partner, who asked that his name be withheld, are raising Christina, who is 7 months old.

Darek DeFreece, 36, an investment-banking attorney who lives in the Bay Area, was aware of the possible consequences of being a single father. "I worried about the workload, about having enough time to give to my family and my personal life," he says. But those concerns seemed relatively trivial when he looked at the long term. "It was especially important for me to have children as a single man. I looked at myself in the future, and being a single, older man without kids didn't seem like a desirable place to be." (DeFreece no longer has to worry about being on his own—he and his partner have 9-month-old twins, Jake and Riley Catherine.)

In other words, if you really want a husband - get a baby. Next week on Maury Povich.

A few years ago when I called out a friend on his habit of cruising men with infants, he sheepishly admitted that he found young fathers "hot". I drew him out further on why he felt that way and he said that a man with a baby in his arms was holding physical proof of his heterosexuality, his very masculinity, and that, therefore, made him "hot". Hotter, by definition of his status as a breeder, than any gay man. Nothing new in that, much of gay porn launches from the same conceit.

I've run into this "hot father" mindset a few other times and I'm quite certain that some of these gay men acquiring babies are merely using them as a gentler, 21st century version of past masculizing devices: muscles, tattoos, trucker wear, etc. However, I am very aware that my own utter lack of interest in parenting may cause me to project these suspicions onto those who are completely undeserving.

Of course, how this gayby boom plays into the increasing straightifying of gay culture in another issue entirely. Any gay person that wants to be a parent should pursue that dream - I just worry that some of these dreams are coming from the wrong place. Still, as a commenter here said recently, even we old-school queers have to consider that perhaps by having children, these queer parents are the true transgressives of the movement. Let's hope that most of them are doing it for the right reasons.