Gay Couple Buy Daughter Custom Mink Coat

I was reading about a gay couple who had spent a fortune on creating their own little family which is fair enough but then I also read that they bought their 10 year old daughter a custom made mink coat, saying to the 10 year old girl "I don't care who throws paint on you". Should these guys actually be in charge of children? Me thinks not! Here is the article in full.
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Couple with children

The family in My Weird and Wonderful Family (Channel 4) took a bit of getting my head around. They're more of an unclear family than a nuclear one. So there are gay dads Tony and Barrie. That's easy enough. And they have three kids – Saffron, Aspen and Orlando. Fine. The complicated bit is how these children came about, and I was quite relieved that even the kids themselves seem a bit muddled about it. Saffron says she's Aspen's twin sister, and the evidence certainly points that way – they came out of the same woman, at around about the same time.

They didn't get in there in the traditional way, though, as she wasn't their mum, but a surrogate. Their biological mother was an egg donor, chosen for her looks and her brain; one of them was fathered by Tony, and the other by Barrie. I don't think the kids have been told who's whose (we're not, anyway). To all of them, Tony is Dad and Barrie is Daddy, or possibly it's the other way around. What does that make Saffron and Aspen? Half-twins?

It gets more complicated. Because Aspen's egg split, and one half was put on ice, to be used later. So Aspen and Orlando are actually identical twins, even though Aspen is four years older. Orlando will always know what he's going to look like in four years' time: when he looks at his older brother, he is kind of looking into his own future. Freaky. Orlando says that if it hadn't been for Tony and Barrie, then he would have been a crocodile, but I don't think that's right. The three kids cost £250,000 to make.

With me so far? Good, because it gets better, or worse, depending on how you view all this. Three kids is so last year, now Tony and Barrie want more – another couple of half-twins, but with a different donor. This time they're going on looks alone, and have picked out a 6ft catwalk model from the biological mum catalogue. No one's allowed to know who she is, because it's just easier that way.

Saffron wants sisters, but she's out of luck: they both turn out to be male. By my calculations, one will be her half-brother, and the other won't be related to her at all, as they will have no common parents. But that's looking at it in a very narrow-minded, old-fashioned kind of way.

There is a small scare: one of the foetuses is showing a higher than normal risk of developing Down's syndrome. There is always the possibility of putting it up for adoption if it doesn't come out right, says Barrie. They're fine, though – two beautiful boys, Jasper and Dallas. Probably best to keep the receipts just in case. How long is the guarantee on a baby, I wonder? Now they can be brought back home to Essex (the baby-making takes place in California, where it's legal), one big happy family.

Well, there are a few little problems. Like the kids getting teased at school. And other parents complaining that Barrie has hijacked the school pantomime to showcase his own thespian talents as the Fairy Godmother. And Eamonn Holmes on breakfast television suggesting that what they're doing isn't natural. And the fact that pretty much everyone else in the country agrees with him.

Certainly some of their queeny behaviour, Barrie's especially, doesn't help. Like asking the kids who they prefer, him or Tony, Dad or Daddy. And getting Saffron a specially made mink coat for her 10th birthday, and declaring: "I don't care who throws paint on you." That's not really going to help.

(The Mink: From Farm To 10 year Old Girls Coat)

I'll leave all that to people who know right from wrong: outraged Daily Mail readers, God botherers, anxious liberals, people who have no problem at all with it. And you: let the debate begin.

As television, it's fabulous – one minute jaw-dropping, the next strangely touching. Daisy Asquith's film looks great, too; I like her trick of shooting them against a white background, like those photoshoots families do. She doesn't judge; her style is gently probing rather than confrontational. She gains their trust, and they give her – and us – what we want. The kids, too, because that's who we really want to hear from. They're certainly spoilt, precocious perhaps, and there is a touch of the Outnumbered monsters about them. Some of what they say sounds like it could have come straight from Barrie or Tony. Of course, it does – they're the parents, that's where language comes from. But they're nice. Normal even. Whatever normal is.

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