Giles Elgood
London - A British bishop said on Thursday a gay male couple who won the right to be named as parents of twin surrogate babies were guilty of creating "designer children".
Anglican Bishop Tom Butler of the London diocese of Southwark said experiments in different forms of family life were producing a generation of children who were confused and insecure about their identities.
Following a ruling by the Los Angeles Superior Court, Essex businessmen Barrie Drewitt, 30, and Tony Barlow, 35, will become the legal parents of twins to be born to American surrogate mother Rosalind Bellamy, 32, in December.
The couple, who have been together for 11 years, spent £200 000 (R2-million) to arrange the birth after an application to adopt a child in Britain was rejected.
The surrogate mother, recruited through an adoption agency, was implanted with eggs fertilised in a laboratory with both men's sperm.
Butler said he could understand the couple's excitement, but added in an interview with BBC radio: "It's adults designing children for the benefit of adults.
"We are producing a generation of children mixed up and insecure, not because they are wanting for anything in a material sense, but because they are totally confused about their identity, because family life is in turmoil."
Butler said he was worried about experiments with different forms of family life.
Children are casualties
"At the end of the day when things go wrong it is the children who are the casualties, not the adults."
Children needed a family in which parents loved one another in a stable relationship until they grew up.
"What we also know through thousands of years of experience is that children flourish best where there is a mother and father. And frankly we are experimenting now with a generation of children."
Veronica Drewitt, mother of one of the men, said the family were "very, very happy for Barrie and Tony about this decision".
Most of the family would be going to the United States to bring the children home. They would be accompanied by representatives of a Sunday newspaper, to whom Drewiit and Barlow had sold exclusive rights to their story.
Mrs Drewitt said the couple had no misgivings about selling their story even though they did not need the money.
But asked why they had done so if they did not need the cash on offer from the Mail on Sunday, she said: "I don't know. They don't need the money. The children are going to want for nothing....They are just so excited, they just can't wait."
Asked what the children would be told when they were old enough to wonder why they did not have a mother, she said:
"We will just explain to them. There are people in England now that have only got one parent. With two fathers they are going to want for nothing."
She added: "There is lots and lots of love." - Reuters