Ranae + Audrey
Hi I’m Ranae.
I’m the Co-founder and CEO of Equality for Children. I live in Dublin with my wife Audrey and our two daughters, Ava and Arya. Audrey and I met in college, both training to be actors. Anyone who knows Audrey now probably can’t picture her as an actress (she went into stage management instead), but I’m pretty sure there is video evidence somewhere of some pretty compelling performances. I ended up in a slightly different role of writing, presenting, podcasting and marketing! We started dating when I was 21, and within the first few months, I knew I’d be spending my life with her. And children were always going to be a part of that life together.
When we got married in early 2016, it was a beautiful time to be Irish. We made history in 2015 by being the first country in the world to bring in marriage equality by public vote. There was so much pride for our little country. And for both of us, we felt as though we had been accepted as equals in our own country.
When we said ‘I do’ in March of 2016, I was also 5 months pregnant. We had always wanted children and had done Reciprocal IVF. It seemed like everything was perfect. Marriage and a baby. It never even crossed our minds that we wouldn’t be considered a family once our baby was born. Naively, we thought that because Ireland had marriage equality, that parental equality would be a given.
How wrong we were.
In the months before I gave birth, we found out some hard truths. We found out that only I would have any rights to our children. Because I would give birth I would automatically be declared the birth and biological mother. And Audrey, the genetic parent of the child I was carrying, would have zero rights. We were in a state of shock. How could this be happening to us? Why were we not being treated like any other family?
We spent the first months of Avas’ life in a daze. Trying to get our head around being new parents as well as trying to contend with the fact that only one of us was actually considered a legal parent to our child. Since then we, and I personally, have spent a huge amount of my time trying to raise awareness of this issue. Forming Equality for Children in 2019 was a huge step forwards for us all, and really felt like something was finally happening.
The thing that gets said to me most often is “but we voted yes, how is this still an issue?” So many people still do not know about this, and if you are reading this, please do something about this. Tell your family and friends and get them to visit our website or socials to educate themselves on the reality that so many of us are living.
In May 2020 some new legislation came in, which is amazing for many families, including ours. Once we are able to get into court, we will be able to get our daughters birth certs amended to reflect the reality of their life. That they have two equal parents, and I am not a single parent to them. Who does it cover? Female couples who have done fertility treatment in an Irish clinic with an identifiable donor. If you have children conceived before May 2020 through a foreign clinic or anonymous donor, there is an ‘amnesty’ for those children.
So who does it exclude? Everyone else.
Let me make this clear. It’s still not equality. Because it’s not for everybody.
It does not apply to other female couples who did at home insemination, used a non-Irish clinic, have children born abroad, or used a known donor. It totally excludes male couples.
And while we are very lucky to be covered under the current legislation, in a bizarre twist of fate, if we choose to use our embryos that we have in a foreign clinic, any children conceived that way, will not be granted the same rights, so we’d be in the exact same situation all over again. But that’s a story for another day!
For anyone who fails to see this as an issue, let me put it simply:
Even with the introduction of new laws, many LGBTQ+ parents are still seen as legal strangers to their children. Some of these parents may be biologically related to their kids, and others may not. But biology in itself, does not a parent make. A parent is so much more than that. There are many different family make ups in the LGBTQ+ community- female couples who used a known donor, male couples who used a surrogate, families with a transgender parent, same sex families who have adopted abroad- we are a very diverse bunch of people. And no one family is worthy of recognition over another. All of us, and all of our children are deserving of the legal protection that comes from being viewed as a family under the law.
The early days of parenthood are tough enough without having to contend with all of this. And so many same sex couples are still unaware of the legal implications of having a family in Ireland and how that their method of conception may impact their legal standing in the future.
Ava and Arya are two of the happiest little girls in Ireland. There is so much love in our family. Ava just turned 5, and started big school. She loves drawing, dancing, singing and cycling around i nour family cargo bike. Arya is sunshine personified, people literally stop in their tracks when they see her. She just brings our family so much joy every day. They call us Mama and Mom Mom, those were the names that Ava picked, and they’ve stuck.
All I want is for all of the children born to LGBTQ+ families to be treated the same as yours. Our rainbow families are not asking for special treatment. We only want the same as any other family in Ireland. No more and no less. We are a family. We may be a modern one, but we are family all the same... and it’s time that our Irish laws recognised that.
