Lesbian lawmaker is surrogate mom

SALT LAKE CITY — Last April, Utah legislator Christine Johnson wrote an e-mail she titled "You may want to sit down." It was a long e-mail to two friends, and it boiled down to this: She would be honored to have their baby.

She would be willing to endure the varicose veins, she said, and the mood swings, and the questions that would certainly arise.

Johnson, a Democrat from Salt Lake City, serves in the Utah House of Representatives, one of two openly lesbian legislators. So the fact that she is unmarried and now pregnant will undoubtedly raise eyebrows, as will the fact that she is carrying this baby for two gay men.

She has chosen to speak publicly about the circumstances of her pregnancy now, before the Legislature convenes this month, in the hopes of preventing distraction during the serious work of the session, she says. She is now in her fifth month, and her slender body is starting to show a slight bulge.

She knows that it is hard, as a public official, to have a truly private life. But even beyond that, she says, "It's my goal to live my life authentically."

Johnson's decision to be artificially impregnated rose out of a dinner conversation with the two gay Utah men last spring. The men, who were married in California during the brief period when gay marriage there was legal, talked about how much they wanted a child. Adoption is out of the question, since in Utah there is this Catch-22: an unmarried couple can't adopt, and Utah does not recognize gay marriage.

Johnson, 41, has a 17-year-old daughter from a two-year marriage. She got her daughter's approval, and the support of her own mother and siblings, before making her decision to become the surrogate mother. She is not being paid to carry the baby. In the parlance of surrogacy law, Johnson is a "traditional surrogate" rather than a "gestational surrogate"; the latter is the term for mothers who carry a child but are not biologically related to it. Under Utah law, gestational surrogacy is allowed only for married couples.

The two men who will be the baby's fathers "will be wonderful parents," she predicts. To those who argue that a child does best with both a mother and a father, Johnson counters that "gender or sexual orientation is less important than children being welcomed into a supportive, loving home."

"This child is going to have an amazing life," she says about the baby. "It's going to have so much acceptance and love." To have a child who is wanted so much — "how can that be wrong?"