Mail columnist: Gay man doesn’t have the ‘right’ to have children, kids should have a mother and father
A columnist in the Daily Mail has ripped in to a gay man who had child via surrogacy – claiming children should be raised by “a mother and a father”.
Last week, Kyle Casson opened up about being the first single man to be granted parental rights through surrogacy, after his own mother agreed to carry an egg from an anonymous donor.
Mail pundit Amanda Platell – who was previously press secretary to William Hague when he was Tory leader – savaged Mr Casson in an article, dismissing his yearning to have children.
She wrote: “It is a story so unusual, it’s almost hard to get your head around it — and one that, quite frankly, leaves me feeling deeply queasy.
“What is so disturbing is Kyle’s sense of entitlement. Why should his ‘right to be a parent’ be inalienable? What about the rights of an unborn child and its future happiness?”
She claimed that ‘research’ has shown children are better off with straight parents, adding: “All the recent research shows that children have the best life outcomes if they are raised by two parents in a traditional marriage, with a mother and father.
“And the farther away from that ideal we move, the more risk to the child it inevitably entails.
“The conclusion of a study by the Centre For Family Research in 2013 was that surrogate-born children were more likely to suffer from behavioural and emotional problems, and depression, than those carried by their biological mother.”
The study she refers to simply looks at children born via surrogacy – and does not evaluate the happiness of children raised by same-sex couples.
Elsewhere, she claimed: “Over the decades, bit by bit, we have unpicked the institution of marriage to suit the convenience of individuals and their ‘rights’.
“Under attack by feminists, minority groups, divorce lawyers, ‘progressive’ politicians and all manner of other self-interested parties, marriage is so degraded that it is no longer regarded as a bedrock of society.”
Ms Platell previously claimed that HIV-preventing drugs should not be available on the NHS – because it would “only encourage reckless behaviour”.
