Surrogacy journey of a gay immigrant family

Hello!

Joseph Alcantara and Ryan Rebeca here, intended parents knocking on your loving hearts to support the beginning of our family's journey.

We have crossed borders and broken boundaries just to let love win. We spent half of our lives living, working, and traveling to countries where same-sex marriage is not legal, to some, even criminalized. Years of breathing air plagued with discrimination and grueling walks on eggshells led us to be hopeful as we became US immigrants.

During the 50th World Pride in NYC, we embraced this hope through a colossal and fearless proposal of love, pride, and acceptance. We got engaged in front of the monumental Stonewall at Christopher Street with help from the Netflix float, Fab 5, Queer Eye crew, and the estimated 5 million attendees.

Fast forward to 3 years, we are happily married and are active advocates for the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities as a volunteer speaker, trainer, and board member in SpeakOUT Boston, a non-profit organization, and in other DEIB initiatives. We've also self-published "Rainbows and Unicorns: Happiness After Coming Out," a memoir that chronicles our journey to inspire folks in the community and encourage others to be allies.

While these engagements allowed us to witness unconditional love in various forms and sizes and built strong networks in the community, it has also restored our hope toward our ultimate dream of growing our own family.

Although we live in a state that strives to be progressive and a front-runner in equality and inclusion, we are still years away from celebrating equal family benefits packages for both straight and gay marriages. We contemplate the journey of bringing up children amid many of our intersectionalities as we are more marginalized than privileged (immigrants, Asians, gay men). But we remain hopeful, our faith stronger, knowing that our love, passion, and commitment will allow us to be the best parents we can ever be.

Like you, we were surprised to know the numbers: agency - $35K, IVF - $80K, surrogate - $85K, insurance - $45K, legal - $10K, miscellaneous - $20K. These figures didn’t stop us; they propelled us to be more optimistic and resourceful and to get more excited about meeting little Josephs and Ryans soon.

We'd truly appreciate you taking the time to hear us out and extending any help to make this seemingly impossible dream an answered prayer (amplifying the reach of this page through shares and likes helps too!)

For more info, please check out our family website: https://happygayfamily.net/

Many thanks in advance. May your kind heart continue to be an inspiring spark of hope to everyone, and always remember…MAKE LOVE WIN!