There’s a story making the rounds about a Dallas couple, Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs. Adorable couple. Let me see if I can explain what’s giving them trouble. Hanna and Riggs got hitched in D.C., where gay marriages are legal. They came back to Dallas. They wanted kids. Why they would want to screw up their lives by 1) getting married and 2) having kids is a discussion for another post. I’m going to focus on the logistics. They find an egg donor. They find a surrogate mother, who in April bears them twins, Lucas and Ethan. And — this is the wild part — each of the men is a biological father to one of the babies, meaning, I gather, that two embryos were implanted. It makes my head spin.
But here’s where the trouble comes in: because Texas doesn’t recognize Hanna and Riggs’ marriage, neither of the men’s names appears on either of the kiddos’ birth certificates. Only the surrogate mother’s name appears on the birth certificates, and, remember, she has no biological relationship to the babies (well, except for that nine months of gestation, which is a pretty intense relationship).
It’s a big mess, and I feel certain that Glenn is going to offer some encouraging words to the couple in the comments.
