Saturday, March 23, 2013

Finding a Baby in a Subway, and Becoming Gay Parents

In the past few months, I followed the various ways lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) individuals and couples welcome children into their lives. While I became a dad when I was married to the mother of my children, others choose in vitro fertilization, adoption, foster parenting, or surrogacy. One thing that seems obvious is that for most LGBTQ people, having a baby is rarely an “oops” moment, a result of a night when birth control didn’t work, or when birth control measures simply weren’t in the cards.
Because many LGBTQ people who want a baby have to think carefully about why they want to a baby, the story of the couple who found their baby on the A/C/E subway exit on Eighth Ave in New York City, by luck, happenstance, or coincidence is incredible … and in the long run, magical. The story was initially run in the New York Times, written by Peter Mercurio, one of the dads. He and his husband Danny were recently married in July 2012, with their son Kevin (12 years old) in attendance.
Danny was the one who found the baby in the subway station, left on the ground in a corner by one of the turnstiles, wrapped in an oversize black sweatshirt. The baby was nicknamed “ACE” and was taken into custody by one of the family courts in NYC. Mercurio writes about this beautiful unexpected story: “Danny had not just saved an abandoned infant; he had found our son.”
The baby spent three months in the custody of the family court system, but no one claimed him as their own. At the day of the hearing about the baby’s future, the judge asked Danny, “Would you be interested in adopting this baby?” Danny’s response? “Yes.” Within a few weeks, slowly but surely, baby “ACE” became “Kevin.”

Read more here: http://www.parentsociety.com/todays-family/adoption-parenting/gay-couple-finds-baby-in-subway-and-gets-to-keep-him/

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