Concept 2

Just spent 4 days in Paris. What a beautiful city: amazing pastries, grand architecture, complex history, bolungrie, patisserie, velib, metro, Louvre, Pompidou and so much more. We walked into this amazing store - a temple of decorative food. You could find so many kinds of food but the emphasis is on aesthetics, beauty; a total experience for all senses. While being amazed by this beauty I was also thinking about the bums in the street sleeping in their cardboard boxes. The thought that came to my mind was how hypocritical we have to be to ignore others' sorrow, loneliness and suffering while roaming the air conditioned aisles of this temple of decadence. At the same time I was at awe of this miraculous place.

All this has nothing to do with the second concept of being a gay dad. The second concept revolves around the question of whether or not gay people should raise kids at all. If I link this to the previous post I would say something like this: if I am able to set aside the general debate about bringing kids into this world at all despite of all the negative I see in the world, then why should two men who technically cannot have kids, "cheat" their way into having kids. Perhaps nature intends that this shouldn't happen. I think that being gay is not something you choose but something that you are by nature. In the greater scheme of things, being gay might be a choice of nature to reduce population, to slow down the natural procreation of the species. I know this is a rather radical thought and it may not necessarily be right but it is a thought. This thought goes hand in hand with the idea that plague and disease are also means of diluting the world's population. Radical again; I know. But still, when searching for answers, I bumped into many thoughts. Some blew away with the wind and some stayed, lingered in my mind and finally sank in. These thoughts may not reflect the truth – if a single truth exists – but they suggest an option, a possibility. That was enough grounds to set a contemplation going, a train of thought that dragged me along for some time.

When finally I got off that train, I felt that even though I cannot reproduce on my own, I can provide a loving caring home for kids and raising a family together with my husband will be a realization of so many aspects of me while neglecting this aspiration will be a betrayal of something so basic in me: the family connection that is imprinted in me.

This may sound as a fickle reason for overcoming such a deep and meaningful conflict but I've learned that sometimes, comparing two things is not as easy as you would think. How can you weigh the inner call for reproduction – a concept that you grow up with, being fed with, inhaling & breathing it from the moment you are born – against the idea that having kids as a gay parent I s not nature's call? What has a stronger influence on you? How can you tell what is the correct path for you? It's funny but I don't really know – still – how to make that call because both ideas have a strong grip on me. Yet, eventually, our choice was to bring kids into the world and I have to say that I simply set aside my thoughts about nature's choice and stuck with my basic internal instinct; I could not find a reasonable logical solution for this conflict. I guess I will have to try becoming a parent first and then I might have an answer.

On the way to being a dad - concept 1

it's been something like 4 years and a week since i started this journey together with avner. it was a long debate on the "how-to-do" which finally led us here to san diego.
sounds simple? not at all.
the general idea was that we wanted to have kids in the house. for me, it was always there; i always knew that i want to have kids and be a dad. i come from a big family that has always kept close and warm relationships so i did not have a question mark at the end of this idea. how ever, as years flew by, questions did start popping up in my mind about the essence of my desire to have kids.
these questions or actually thoughts revolve around several concepts. the concept of me as a man, part of humanity, a member of society in the 21st century. i found myself in an endless loop, thinking that it would be a bad idea to raise children in the world we have created. the basic theme of nature: the survival of the fittest is on the one hand an amazingly powerful an efficient tool we call evolution while on the other hand, we as mankind consume our planet and it's resources, kill people and nature. the cost of being on the stronger side is tremendous: you have to be born in the right color, on the correct land, with the right name. to be able to buy the right clothes, to have the moral right to kill the bad people on the wrong side, to expel man and animal from their land in order to claim it your own. it seems to me that we could have had things in a different way. while bragging that we are the only species that is self aware, i would expect that the urge to kill and destroy lesser beings would diminish and be reduced, finally replaced by the understanding that working together is a better idea that will serve mankind purposes better. so, yeah. this first concept brings up the question of why bring kids into this world if all they have to do is struggle. struggle for food, for a place in "the right" kindergarten, in the better school, the best university, the land, the money, the rights to feel and think differently, to be loved, to love, to be desired, to consume, to have a greener lawn. why is it a good idea to have children witness evil, wars, television, violence, crime, drugs, killing, death, loss, pollution and so on? just so that they could also witness beauty? love? passion? what are the positives that balance out the so many negatives? generally speaking, i think that not existing in the first place, rules out the need to try and create this balance, while being aware that i might be totally wrong in my desire for balance.