4 Reasons The Gaineses Shouldn’t ‘Normalize’ Gay Surrogacy

Chip and Joanna Gaines’ controversial new series, Back to the Frontier, platforming an attention-seeking gay couple who commissioned and bought two boys is something that should concern all people of good will, regardless of your faith or politics.

Proper concerns expressed about this selection have been falsely framed as a hating-on-the-gays story, specifically by Chip Gaines. But anyone with a keyboard can dig into this story. How Joe Riggs and Jason Hanna of Dallas, Texas, obtained the boys should deeply concern everyone who cares about the dignity of women, the integrity of creating human life, and the fundamental needs of children.

The compelling four reasons for concern are graphically detailed in a splashy Dallas Morning News feature on how Riggs and Hanna bought their way into obtaining the boys, titled “To Each, His Own.” A fitting title because the profile is all about their dramatic, narcissistic wish fulfillment.

Exploiting and Commodifying Women

First, “families” like this should never be celebrated because they exploited and commodified two women in the commissioning and purchase of the two boys.

The first woman was a 22-year-old anonymous Texan from whom Riggs and Hanna extracted at least 43 eggs for cash, all of which they fertilized through a Fort Worth fertility facility. She was nothing more than an egg machine for two gay men and their money. Many young women who would never commodify themselves with porn or prostitution believe giving over their eggs to strangers for cash is harmless, even virtuous. Those who have tell a very different story.

Riggs and Hanna’s biological contribution to the creation of these 43 tiny humans was a trunk load of cash and masturbating to gay porn at their fertility facility. The Dallas Morning News profile gives a whole uncomfortable paragraph to this disturbing fact.

The second woman they exploited for cash provided her womb for nine months as an incubator. This “gestational carrier,” as the Morning News calls her, was married to a man, and they had a 10-year-old son. She had gestated babies for three other strangers before she was hired by Riggs and Hanna, saying surrogacy was her “part-time job.”

Pimping out the feminine beauty and power of her maternity to gay men for money and the false reward of bringing two intentionally motherless boys into the world — talk about The Handmaid’s Tale.

Creating Motherless Children

Second, this couple contractually commissioned two boys who will intentionally and forever be deprived of the love, care, and essential maternal influence of their own biological mother, the woman who gave them half of their identity and existence.

This fact further relegates the power and necessity of the feminine and maternal in human parentage. Motherhood becomes mere utility and preference, a terrible misogyny. And these designer motherless children must bury the gaping maternal hole in their souls in service to gay pride and allegiance.

Normalizing What Isn’t Normal

This brings us to the third reason no good person should ever platform and celebrate the gay “family.” Riggs and Hanna told Queerty they decided to join the Gaines’ Frontier series because it was a “great, amazing opportunity to normalize same-sex couples and same-sex families.” 

Note their profound confession. Heterosexual couples never need to “normalize” their families because they are normal. It was Aristotle who said in the first book of his Politics that the male/female marital and familial union was the literal nucleus of the polis, human civilization. (See Book One, Part II.)

Same-sex couples must always seek to “normalize” their families for the very reason they are not normal and never will be. They are a political and ideological fabrication. What is ironic in this story is that Riggs and Hanna’s “family” shouldn’t exist in the Gaineses’ series because their “family” could never exist on the natural prairie.

Dehumanizing the Unborn

The fourth reason such families should never be celebrated is their callous disregard for the value of human life. Riggs and Hanna fertilized 43 eggs from that 22-year-old anonymous woman to ensure the designer boys they desired, bought, and paid for. The remaining 41 tiny human beings are most likely now relegated, frozen, and warehoused somewhere. More commodification.

These are the most compelling reasons why Chip and Joanna Gaines’ platforming of this ideological couple is so ethically compromised. Stating this is certainly not bigotry, hatred, or judgment. 

It is all about defending the dignity of the feminine and the maternal. It’s about the rights of children never to be commissioned, bought, sold, and intentionally deprived of their own biological mother’s essential love and presence.

These are the reasons why opposition to such “families” matters and why all good people should unapologetically speak up against them.

Glenn T. Stanton is the director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family and the author of “The Myth of the Dying Church.”