Strong Is He With Talent

...but not that strong. Sir Elton John is extremely talented. I appreciate his work as an artist. He makes it look and sound like he could write ten catchy hit songs in his sleep, and seems to have more talent in his smallest toe on his average day than so many in pop music can muster in their entire lives. I also appreciate that he has publicly stated his satisfaction with a civil union, and affirmed the distinction between a civil union and a marriage.

I am, however, very disappointed that John and his partner have used a surrogate to intentionally create a situation where a child will be deprived of his mother. Neither one is strong enough with their talents to overcome nature and be a mother. In addition to this very selfish aspect of their actions, they have compounded the problem as John is 62 and his partner, Mr. Furnish, is 48. This means that Furnish will be 66 when the child is 18, and John, if he is alive (God willing), will be 80.

I previously wrote about a similar action by Neil Patrick Harris and his partner, although at least they are younger. Although we can expect the children will be well supported financially, I can't be anything but dismayed when anyone, wealthy or not, makes decisions that deprive a child of a mother or a father, whether there will be one man or two men, one woman or two women raising the child.

It is interesting that both this Associated Press article and this AFP article say that John and Furnish "married". Not that the news media is biased to the point of perpetuating factual errors, or anything.

Also from the AFP article:

The star tried to adopt a 14-month-old boy he met while visiting an orphanage in Ukraine last year, but his attempt was blocked because Ukrainian law does not permit couples in same-sex marriages to adopt.

The singer admitted at the time that while Furnish had always wanted to adopt a child, he himself believed parenthood was incompatible with his lifestyle but changed his mind after the Ukrainian boy "stole my heart".

I can support the idea of a same-sex couple adopting a child, especially an older child, if the alternative is ongoing institutionalization. Having hired help raise the children isn't much better than institutionalization, however.

By turning to a surrogate mother, John has followed in the footsteps of "Sex in the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker and her actor husband Matthew Broderick who had twin girls by a surrogate mother in 2009.

I'm not opposed to married couples using technology, as long as they are only going to allow the conception of as many human beings as they are willing to give a reasonable chance at life. In other words, I have serious objections to creating "extra" embryos. Each human embryo is a human being, just like every toddler is a human being.

Latino pop star Ricky Martin used a surrogate to have twin boys before announcing he was gay.

And whatever Michael Jackson's sexuality, assuming he was actually innocent of molestation charges, and however his children were bought into the world, I still didn't like the way he set up a situation that deprived his children of having a mother. Or that he risked - and lost - his life the way he did when he had children in his care. With parenthood comes enormous responsibility. Our desires, as adults, have to stand aside when in conflict with the needs of a child. Don't make them if you're not going to raise them, and raise them with both a mother and a father.