On a Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I was driving in my car, heading to a bodybuilding contest in Culver City, the NPC Los Angeles Championships, when I turned on KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica. On the radio, someone was reading a selection from his book. The author was a gay father having a conversation with his adopted son. I found the story very moving. As the story unfolded, I realized who the author was and I got quite choked up(*). I had read his previous book about the adoption of his son and now he has a new book coming out and the now the kid is six years old.
The author is Dan Savage, and his first book was The Kid : What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant. The book is very funny and moving, hopeful and uplifting. I enjoyed it thoroughly and tried to get everyone I knew to read it, including members of my family. (didn’t have too much luck there.)
One person who did read it was my roommate at the time, DJ David Knapp. David is a dance club DJ, somewhat of a celebrity in the dance club world, and is always referred to as DJ David Knapp. David had always thought about adopting, but didn’t know exactly how to go about it, or even whether it was even possible for a gay guy to be selected.
Dan Savage’s book told you exactly how to do it: open adoption. Open adoption is where the birth mother selects the family to adopt her child and the family selects the birth mother. Usually the two sides meet, decide whether they like each other and decide how much contact they want to have after the birth. When Dan wrote his book, only Oregon and Washington had open adoptions. But many more states are doing it now, including Georgia, where David and his partner Scott now live.
As with regular adoptions, it can take years to be selected by a birth mother, or it can happen in just a few months. In the book, Dan and his partner were selected in about six months. (if I remember correctly…its been a while since I read the book). David and Scott were selected very quickly too. David was there during delivery and even got to catch his son. Two years later they decided to do it again, and now they have a boy and a girl.
Adopting two kids has made David even more of a celebrity. Numerous articles have been written about him in the gay and straight press. Coming full circle, he’s even gotten to meet Dan Savage and David’s kids have played with Dan’s son.
Now Dan has a new book, The Commitment : Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family. It comes out next week and I’ve already pre-ordered my copy from amazon. I have a trip coming up and look forward to reading it on the plane.
Here is the Real Audio clip of what I heard in the car. The segment of Dan reading from The Commitment starts at 18:00.
Here is a pic of David and his daughter, from a recent issue of HX magazine.
* Lloré y Lloré
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