CHILDREN - AND WHO SHOULD HAVE THEM?

Anyone who knows me will be aware that I am very traditional in my view on parenting.  I suspect it comes from being born in an era when common sense was as rife as rickets and there was a universal assumption that children needed a 'mummy bear' and a 'daddy bear'.  Despite calls for multiple classifications of 'sexes' to be recognised throughout the world, those with even a modicum of intelligence will agree that there are only two sexes - male or female, or for the sake of gender equality - female or male.  Why do these unnatural couplings wish to 'own' a child?  Is he, she or 'it' a trophy to be bandied about in their cloistered little world?  Will they become outcasts if 'without child'?  Will they be considered 'odd' if they don't become a family - like 'normal people' - because the one thing they are not, is normal!  

It does not make for easy reading, learning that the likes of Tom Daley has two children with his 'other half', an American film-maker by the name of Dustin Lance Black,  20 years his senior.  No reason to mention it, but I did anyway.  I find it uncomfortable at best and  disgusted and queasy at worst that any man has a 'husband'!  It doesn't sit right - any more than a woman having a 'wife'.  As discussed in previous missives and indeed any or all Anthony Mann  books, homosexuals and lesbians have been around since the evolution of man and woman kind.   Adam or Eve could have preferred sex with someone of their own gender given the choice, problem is, there wasn't any,  so they had to make do with what they had - a bit like rationing - and in their case it was each other!  GET OVER IT - or her in his case!  (That is if you are a believer in such complete bollocks, otherwise it's all just an imaginative relationship written by some unknown scribe in order to start a chapter in that book of fairytales and myths - or 'The Bible' as its more commonly known). And you have to give credit where credit is due, it has sold a few copies since first published, helped in no small way by that Mr. Gideon who went round selling copies to a whole host of hotels across the four corners of the earth.  Bet he was glad of a bed after a day's traipsing the streets seeking out out a Premier Inn or Travelodge in deepest Darfur, the wetlands of Brazil or the drug-ridden alleys of Croydon - wonder if he got a discount or a free coffee?

We Brits care about our NHS.  We will moan about it, we will complain about the time we have to wait for an appointment, but we will defend it to the nth degree when someone else criticises our national treasure. What is indefensible is the obvious waste within the system.  The Nurse Letby case where hospital management is falling over backwards in order to apologise for not listening to consultants and doctors about concerns raised, ignored and/or met with a deafening silence as any action would impinge on the 'good name' of the hospital and repercussions for all who sail in her - especially those at the high-end of the salary structure who could be the first to be affected should an inquiry be forthcoming.  Agency nurses, consultants covering shifts for others who were on strike have cost the NHS an absolute fortune and in the case of the former continue to do so, day in, day out. 

Whilst I was aware of same-sex couples illogical and frankly appalling ability to adopt children. I wasn't aware of their being offered IVF on the NHS - or taxpayer funded, as many of us see it!  What a bloody cheek and what an insult to 'normal' couples!   I spent some time researching the subject.  Well, OK, I googled 'IVF for same-sex couples' and an avalanche of options cascaded before me in a manner not dissimilar to when I was seeking statistics on crime committted by black and other ethnically-toned non-natives in the UK!  

Top of the advertisements/contacts is a company called Care Fertility.  Entering their site and scrolling down brings you face to side-face with a black woman sporting semi-shaved head and dressed in what could be an Emu or a mop, not quite sure.  Moving down their page the reader views two female couples, one couple appearing to be excruciatingly happy to the point of silliness and the other couple blissfully happy in a sort of 'come-to-bed' manner.  The company provides IVF for both NHS patients or those who can afford to go private.  Their site is followed by many more companies and clinics perversely going where none would have been necessary in days of yore. 

Worryingly, taxpayers are funding adverts promoting all manner of services available on the NHS.  Having read their blurb on their website, they are positively falling over themselves in order to widen the already banal idea that same-sex surrogacy is normal and acceptable in wider society when in my view it is anything but.  I await a survey in a decades time when researchers talk to these children about the upbringing, their social life and their own sexual preferences, not to mention asking if the 'two mummy's'  that of traditional couples.  I suspect that just as religious beliefs are handed down from generation to generation, same-sex parents will be very single-minded in their surragate, fostered, adopted child's approach to relationships. Will Martha wish to date Arthur - or will she prefer Bertha?  Will Lily desire Willy or will Willy wish to become Lily?  Or will Lily fall for Milly, maybe Willy will court Billy?   Time will tell...