The new leader of Greece’s opposition has said he and his long-term male partner would like to become parents through surrogacy, a move that challenges taboo in the country.
The first elected official in Greece to openly declare he is gay, Stefanos Kasselakis last month achieved one of the biggest upsets in Greek political history by winning the leadership of Syriza, the left-wing main opposition party.
Until now a little-known former shipping exec and ex-Goldman Sachs trader, 35-year-old Kasselakis is in a civil partnership with American nurse Tyler McBeth.
“We would like to have two boys, Apollo and Elias… through a surrogate mother,” Kasselakis told Alpha TV late on Thursday.
“As a society, we need to provide complete equality,” he said.
“I hope my example will serve as a wake-up call for parents, to learn to talk to their children…and respect their will.”
The issue remains taboo in a country still built around the traditional family model, and where the powerful Orthodox Church frowns on same-sex relations.
Whilst in government in 2015, Syriza introduced same-sex civil partnerships in Greece. But marriage, adoption and surrogacy remain outside the law.
Last month, conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said full equality would be extended to same-sex couples during his next four years in power.
Following the interview thousands of Greek citizens took to social media to comment on the couple’s desire to have two boys with a surrogate.
Politicians, religious leaders, journalists and even followers complained that choosing the child’s gender is perpetuating misogyny and in a way it is flaunting privilege while being inconsiderate to the treatment of surrogate mothers in Greece following a recent scandal. Some people even compared the comment to “ordering dogs from a breeder” requesting an explanation from the leader of SYRIZA as to why he is showing preference to the biological gender of the children.
Stefanos Kasselakis posted a public explanation on Facebook that says:
“Love makes the family.
These are issues solved in other countries.
But not in Greece.
But that’s why I entered politics. To stir stagnant waters, to awaken consciences, not to caress them in their sleep.With my interview yesterday I opened a great debate with the aim of visibility:
To make visible to everyone and respected by everyone the desire of two people who love each other to have children.
Either through adoption an institution which must be modernised and strengthened in our country, or through a surrogate mother.
Surrogacy is legally protected; everything is done on the basis of a court decision.
The surrogate mother must choose you, not be chosen by you. It is a serious procedure with strict rules.
And, above all, it is a process that concerns the big picture of society: couples who cannot procreate, women who want to have a single-parent family but cannot have a child, and, of course, same-sex couples.
Why did I say in my interview ‘we want two boys’?
I expressed a wish.
But do I really prefer a particular gender of child?
I’ll be as clear as I always am:
This is not a matter of choice. It’s a matter of responsibility and empathy.
In every couple – heterosexual or same-sex – the goal is to be able to be a good parent.
There are wonderful pairs of dads raising wonderful girls.
In the case of our couple, we are in awe of that (womanhood).
Faced with a daughter, I still have unanswered questions about whether I will be able to educate her properly, to respond as a parent competently to her questions about puberty, menstruation, female sexuality – everything that makes up the uniqueness of womanhood.
“These things are learned along the way,” you might say. But let me allow myself the advance awareness of responsibility. Nothing is easy or taken for granted.
Honestly, (for us there is) no choice between daughter and son.
Only empathy.
Because the child is not about the continuation of our genes.
Nor our tool.
It is a soul.
Who wants miracles from both parents, not trauma.
Maybe this is a teaching moment for Tyler and me. We open our lives to all of you with open hearts and humility. And may all of our hearts be opened on the road to equality.
*And a word of advice to political opponents:
Don’t try to hide your homophobia behind sacred life issues.
We understand.
Just as we understand the mockery of thousands of couples who have heard the Prime Minister pledge to move immediately to marriage for all and now hesitate to bring in a bill to do so.
Societies are moved forward by people who take the risk, the responsibility of change, even if they have to be stonewalled in public.
Not by people who are afraid of displeasing their party’s majority/followers.
It’s a complex issue and I’m very proud of progressive people who dare to be on the right side of history. I will be with them on the front line.”
Kasselakis told Kathimerini daily in another interview last month, that as a student he had visited a monastery in Evia where had been baptised “and prayed not to be gay.”
Kasselakis said he was in a relationship with a woman in 2012 when he began struggling with his sexuality.
He eventually came out to his parents at the age of 31 four years ago, he said.
“Meeting Tyler urged me to express myself,” he said.
In the Alpha TV interview, he said he was “very wealthy” by Greek standards.
“In theory I have enough, to not need to work in my life again, though not enough to spend recklessly,” he said.
Kasselakis’ business background is anathema to many Syriza cadres, many of whom were in the 2015 Syriza government that unsuccessfully battled against the austerity imposed by Greece’s EU-IMF creditors during the country’s ten-year financial crisis.
*With AFP, ERT
