While this nation's adoption industry has been heavily regulated – and rightfully so – the engineering of children through the purchase of gametes and the rental of wombs remains the wild, wild west.  In some states, anything goes.

Any infertile couple working with a reputable adoption agency knows that the window of opportunity for adopting newborns closes as you approach forty years of age.  After that, you're cut off and must start considering adopting older children.  In fact, agencies prefer that there be a comfortable distance between you and the big four-oh.

But for white gay males, there are no rules, only endless options for accessorizing their lives with human beings they have the means to acquire.  They choose to purchase children because they are unwilling to create children in the natural way, and are unwilling to commit to a woman in order to form a family to nurture children.

So now we have a growing population of children who must pay the price for their Two Dads' neglected functionality, or perhaps dysfunctionality, by foregoing a mom.  Creating children is the most natural thing in the world, except for gays and lesbians, who disqualify themselves from nature's ample provision for procreation.

In a recent New York Times Sunday Magazine feature, entitled "And Baby Makes Three," parenthood is viewed as a "natural progression" for gay married males.  The only problem is that there is nothing natural about it.

But in recent years, it has been growing among gay men, who, in a fundamentally conservative embrace of family values, see having children and building a family as the logical next step after getting married.

“Not to be cliché, but you know how the phrase goes – first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby and the baby carriage."

However, for gay couples, marital sexual acts bring no children.  Babies do not come from these relationships.  They must be engineered through extreme medical measures accompanying the purchase of genetic material and surrogacy services.  In fact, there is absolutely nothing natural here at all, so the baby carriage rhyme applies only if you insert "egg donors, surrogates, doctors, and attorneys" into the poem.

The New York Times, just like most every other media outlet, is fixated on creating new rights for gays and lesbians to procure children, while totally ignoring the rights and needs of the children created for those relationships.  Zero empathy for motherless or fatherless children used to be a callous, regressive trait scorned by society.  Now it's a badge of sophistication, nonpareil.

Rivka Edelman, a college professor raised by two lesbian mothers, writes at English Manif:

 Let’s not kid ourselves about the cute photograph affixed to this New York Times article: That kid is not related to both of the “Daddies.” That child has been denied one parent so that men could prove that two men can play at baby-making – and ironically the men needed two women to do it. ...

Well, that dog doesn’t hunt. I grew up in a gay household and I know the arguments better than I know the pledge of allegiance. So save it. All of it – the missives, the threats. Don’t prove my point to people about loving the gay community. They will turn and tear their own to shreds in a heartbeat. Because the fragile narrative has to be protected at all costs. Family is a photo op. And children are props. 

The trend of older gay couples purchasing the parts and the labor to engineer children warrants immediate review by the states.  The couple featured in the New York Times piece are ages 48 and 47.

In 2012, Gucci mastermind Tom Ford decided he wanted to have a child.  He was 51 years old.  His longtime partner, Richard Buckley, was 64.  Their son doesn't have parents; he has a grandfather and a great-grandfather.  When he graduates college, Ford will be 73, and Buckley will be 86 – that is, if either is still alive.

For Hoylman-Sigal, they too are very easily old enough to be their daughter's granddads.  They will be in their mid-sixties when she's in high school, and around seventy when she graduates college – if she makes it to college.  A massive study by Douglas W. Allen of Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada (High School Graduation rates Among Children of Same-Sex Households), found that "daughters raised by gay men are only 15% as likely to graduate" high school, compared to children raised in a home by their mother and father.

Last year, The New York Times ran an op-ed written by a gay father entitled "The Misnomer of ‘Motherless’ Parenting."  The piece concluded:

Still, the overarching idea behind parenting by gay men should be that it is great for a child to have one or two dads, and that not having a mom in your daily life can be hard. And that it is O.K. to long for a soft cheek instead of a stubbly one.

No, it is not OK.  Especially if that stubby cheek belongs to an old man.  Children deserve biological parents – a mom and a dad – not two middle-aged guys approaching old age when the kids are infants, and years beyond receiving their first Social Security checks when they are teenagers.

Desperation to maintain the image of youthfulness comes in many forms, and it supports a multi-billion-dollar industry in this country: Botox, plastic surgery, liposuction, gym memberships.  Now we can supplement the list with kids, whose presence gives the aura of youthful vitality to aging gays – an aura supplied by commodified children.  Unlike a sporty red Miata, which can be purchased either from a showroom or out of the classifieds, children are human beings, and it matters a lot how they come into the world.

Just ask the growing number of donor-conceived children, now adults, who have a sperm bank for half their family tree.  Many of them, like Alana Newman, feel that parent-child relationships have been corrupted and that their humanity has been disrespected.

The primary intent of the New York Times article was to normalize the notion of surrogacy (as well as the buying and selling of gametes) and thereby garner support and suppress dissent in the Empire State.

I don't know about you, but my empathy goes to kids who will be denied a mom, not to graying gay men hoping in vain for a fountain of youth.