Two men and a baby: Israel's gay community experiencing a baby boom

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b]Last update - 13:27 28/05/2009

Two men and a baby: Israel's gay community experiencing a baby boom

By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Correspondent

On Saturdays, the employees of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Community Center in Tel Aviv's Gan Meir put the basket of free condoms that normally sits near the entrance to the park out of sight. The six-color Gay Pride flag still flies over the building, but anyone sitting in a nearby cafe might think he'd stumbled upon the children's activity corner in the mall. Unlike similar sites in Berlin or Amsterdam, visitors here will not encounter mustachioed men in leather pants or chatty transgender women. Instead, they will see a lot of babies and little kids running around. The place's family feel is a manifestation of one of the unique characteristics of Israel's gay culture: the impressive insistence on fulfilling the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply."

Lesbian couples raising children together could be found in Israel nearly a decade ago, but in the last few years, quite a few gay men have decided to become parents and raise a child together. In Israel, single-sex couples cannot employ the services of a surrogate mother, but the possibility of doing so in another country, which has been gaining popularity of late, has helped make parenthood an attractive option for them, too. Three years after the first child was born this way to Israeli parents, there are now dozens of gay male couples who have become parents. They join the thousands of lesbian and gay couples who have already had children through more traditional methods.

Three years ago, Ben, 35, felt the time had come. "I got to the point where I felt like my insides were starting to shake and act up because of it," he says. "I really felt it on a physical level, that I wanted to be a father. It was like an animal instinct, a primal need. Something in nature calling out to me." Ben has been in a relationship for nine years with Yossi, 44, with whom he lives in Tel Aviv.

At first, they considered joint parenthood with a woman, but after a few dates they decided on surrogacy. After an Internet search, they found that they could do so in the United States, through an agency that arranges the connection in return for a fee. "When we started the process two years ago, surrogacy was a fairly radical thing to do," says Ben. "But we liked the idea, because it meant that the children would come from our sperm."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1088730.html