Comment and Painting by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
News of Elton John and his partner having a baby has meandered its way over to Unleashed for commentary. As usual the real grist of the discussion is on reproductive rights for gay people, usually described as equal rights versus discrimination, and as usual I’m disturbed by it. Disturbed enough to comment, my comment disturbing enough to receive critical responses. Those critical responses have me rocking back on my seat once again. Is there real cause for my comments, or are they coming from my own biases?

There is something good about these situations, I have to say. They give us cause to reconsider. I remember the case of a woman in her 60’s giving birth a few years ago through reproductive technologies. But I doubt I’d be quite as against it as I am against this. It may not have been a natural thing, but at least the baby developed in the body of the woman who would be it’s mother. But it’s a murky murky thing. What is a right body, and is every body that gives birth going to be accompanied by a woman capable of being a mother? And does it matter, that someone doesn’t have a mother?

What I find myself thinking is this. It doesn’t seem right to me, this situation. And I think I have reason to feel uncomfortable, so I am happy enough with my gut feeling and happy enough to speak out. I think it’s necessary to highlight the ways in which heterosexual people have been pushing the boundaries of reproductive and birth rights for so long. I think we need to take a good long hard look at the laws and loopholes and clean them up – from long ago. Straight people have always done what they wanted if they had the means, and people have always turned a blind eye. So why shouldn’t gay people – isn’t that the way a lot of the the arguments go? And they have a point. We need to clean up the discrepancies now that we can see them.

How does a society define what’s best for people? I really have no idea. All I know is that having a mother seems to matter to animals. A lot. So why doesn’t it matter to us?