Continuing the international theme from yesterday: Israeli Health Minister Yael German has accepted a committee’s recommendations to equalize surrogacy laws for same-sex and different-sex couples as well as single people.
Currently, only different-sex married couples can use a paid surrogate within Israel. The new bill would open that up to unmarried people, including same-sex couples. It will come before the Knesset on January 15, reports Israel Hayom.
The bill may have a rough road ahead, though, as gay-right legislation has had a bad run recently.
A bill that would have given same-sex parents the same tax exemptions as different-sex ones was put on hold last week after the Habayit Hayehudi party reversed its agreement to support it. And two gay-rights bills failed on Sunday: one that would have banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and another that would have guaranteed equal treatment in mortgage benefits.
Israel allows same-sex couples to adopt. They cannot marry, but may gain some of the rights of marriage through the country’s unregistered cohabitation laws. As Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff reported recently after a trip to the country, though, LGBT rights there are “complicated.” Still, if shifts in popular culture come before political change, the TV show Mom and Dads may be telling. The show, about a gay couple raising a child with a single woman, airs on the HOT cable network and the rights have just been sold in France and the U.K.
