Where Did You Get That Baby? 

The three of us had settled in and were dozing off on the flight from San Francisco to New York. A month earlier, our daughter, Julia, had been born to a surrogate in a small community just outside of Fresno, Calif. David, Julia, and I had spent an idyllic September in San Francisco, and now we were all headed home to New York. “Excuse me,” said the tall male flight attendant, leaning over our seats, “I have to ask. Where did you get that baby?” I must have looked alarmed as I mentally searched our carry-on bags for the temporary birth certificate that would allow us to claim our daughter from the federal marshals I imagined boarding the plane to take her away. (We had been warned about this sort of thing.) “Sorry,” he continued, now embarrassed. “I don’t mean to intrude. But you two are together, right? And this is your baby, right? I’d like to have a baby someday ... ”

When we decided to have a child, David and I decided that even though we were both instinctively private people, we would try to be ambassadors for gay dads everywhere and make an effort to come out in situations when it might otherwise be easy to avoid the subject. Mostly, opportunities for two-dad diplomacy happen when one of us is out alone with her, and somebody, almost always a woman, approaches with an icebreaker like “Did Mom get the day off today?” or the slightly more pointed “Where’s her mother?” The conversations that have followed have been usually pleasant, occasionally surprising, and often very satisfying.

Open hostility has been very rare. Most people who seem uncomfortable or disapproving just keep their distance or, after we tell them, politely end the conversation and back away, leaving little opportunity for diplomatic outreach. When reproach has come, though, it’s been from unexpected quarters, and it’s been pretty fierce.

Just before Julia’s first Christmas, we were all invited to a dinner party peopled mainly with New York media, fashion, and entertainment types. (Julia worked the room during the cocktail hour and then retired to an upstairs bedroom.) I was seated next to a handsome Englishwoman with a husky voice, a hearty laugh, and a theatrical manner, all perhaps enhanced by her enjoyment of the evening’s refreshments. I was optimistic about dinner conversation.