In my country, it is well regarded to insult me, me and my whole family, and singers, actors and journalists do it, pretending to be modern and progressive in newspapers and television, I am also disrespected by the woman who is talking in the supermarket, the postman, the politicians (from the left and the right) and the Ministry of Equality. There is an unprecedented media campaign in which everyone has come together to decide that sinking my honor is modern and feminist and everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and the more they attack and are outraged, the better people they think they are. They all offend me, without anesthesia, without remorse, they disrespect me and call my husband and me abusers.
My daughter, even though she is a minor, is not respected either, they insist on giving speeches, in which they say that she is going to live traumatized all her life, because her creation, according to them, is marked by traumatic episodes, when in reality, it is the result of love and her only trauma will be to endure that in Spain they lie about her origin. And why do I know that they are lying and can affirm it so categorically? Because I, unlike them, have been part of a surrogacy process and I know, firsthand, that at least in the country where I have carried it out, the USA, it is perfectly regulated since the 80s and abusive situations do not occur. American women are free to decide and the one who wants to be generous and help others does not have a Ministry of Equality that censors her and tells her that she cannot be charitable and help her neighbor.
At first it hurt. I was saddened when I heard debates and the ugly things they said about us, I didn't understand why they attacked and lied, but in the end my husband, who always manages to make me stop and reflect, gave me the explanation "Why does it hurt so much that they attack you?" he asked me "Haven't you been gay in the nineties?" And he was right. After talking to him I meditated and realized that it is not the first time that this country hates me, when in my adolescence I discovered that I was gay, I heard jokes that ridiculed faggots on TV, sermons from priests in which they said that we represented evil and I also had to assume that we were responsible for AIDS. The hatred towards me and my group is recurrent. In the agreements of the Town Halls, the political parties, with their eagerness to govern, accept to cut our rights to please a minority and capture their vote.
They remove books from schools that talk about families like mine as if it were a shame.
I have to listen to certain sectors think that my marriage is not comparable to a heterosexual one, as if their opinion mattered or I had to ask them for the right to love or legitimize it. Not long ago they also blamed us for monkeypox.
Thousands of hoaxes to point out a minority that has always been characterized by something that scares them, uniting to defend their rights. They attack us because they are afraid of us.
My country hates me but fortunately over the years I have developed tools with which I have learned that if I am doing things right I don't have to be offended, I am gay, I love my husband and I have a beautiful girl, I have carried out a surrogacy process and my relationship with my surrogate has been wonderful. Why am I writing this letter then? Simply because now I am a father, responsible for a minor who when she grows up will have to listen to the same nonsense that I do. At home we will work with her, and my little one will be able to talk about it with her surrogate because we maintain the relationship, but...
Is it fair that she has to hear it? Where is the defense of the minor? Does it not apply to my daughter? The debate that should be taking place at this moment is this: Who defends children by surrogacy from the interests of politicians who seek to win the feminist vote by creating threats that do not really exist?
Dear politicians, if in these elections you want to win your share of power, I beg you, please do not do it at the cost of taking away rights and symbols from the LGTBI+ community and also stigmatizing children with hate speeches lacking foundation. There are many families formed by surrogacy in Spain, heterosexual and homosexual, and these families are tired of being used as political instruments for certain people to hang medals that do not correspond to them. Legislate, that is what you have to do. Regulate. That is the way, that is the solution. Although it seems crazy, governing a country consists of that, in looking for tools to reconcile, protect and evolve thinking about the common good, it is not looking for scapegoats to distract attention and avoid, that while, your mistakes are talked about.