A child sacrificed on the altar of bureaucracy

This is a disturbing story, one that leaves a child stuck in an orphanage when his loving father and partner have been trying for two years to bring him home. But heartless bureaucrats argue they have no regulations to cover the situation so they leave the child a legal orphan, though he has parents and a home waiting for him

Unless you are fluent in French and Dutch, I suggest you hit the "CC" at the bottom of the screen for English subtitles.

Laurent Ghilain, and his partner Peter Meurrens are a married gay couple who decided they wanted to have a child. Adoption for gay couples is technically legal in Belgium but they were told extremely difficult and unlikely. After some discussion they decide to go the surrogacy route. A surrogate was found in the Ukraine and Ghilain is the father. Upon the birth of the child, Samuel, Ghilain and Meurrens flew to the Ukraine to meet their new son.

Everything seemed fine until they went to the Belgian embassy. The embassy said that Belgium has no regulations regarding surrogacy. It isn't technically illegal either. But, with no regulations at all, the embassy said they would not give the couple a passport for their child, which means they can't take him home. Imagine that! Government officials were basically telling the couple to abandon their son because bureaucrats had not come up some regulations to cover the existence of the child. The couple hoped they could find a solution. They found a foster family that the paid to care for the child while they continued to work the heartless, perhaps brainless, bureaucracy.

Over and over they came to a dead end. Since the fucktwat bureaucrats never wrote regulations they acted as if the child were an illegal commodity. Apparently, in the absence of regulations, rights are ignored. The default state, in this theory, is that people have NO rights unless bureaucrats write out the regulations to control those rights. Disgusting!

Over and over the couple were told that they had to abandon their son. Like all decent, loving parents they continued to fight for Samuel. Then tragedy! The foster family told them that too much time had gone by and that if they didn't take Samuel they would abandon him at an orphanage. Desperate they flew to Ukraine with a female friend who went to drive across the border with Samuel, pretending he was her son. She was arrested. The couple bailed her out and she was released, but Samuel was confined in an orphanage.

Samuel has two fathers waiting for him, two fathers who love him. Yet he sits alone in the orphanage with no love, with no parents, only because cruel bureaucrats have no regulations regarding him. This is a shameful blot on the reputation of Belgium. It is the bureaucratic mentality gone made, sacrificing a child to the fetish of regulations.

Individuals are urged to write Jan Matthysen, the Belgian ambassador. A Facebook page for the couple is here.

Washington@diplobel.fed.be.

It also seems an appropriate time to repost this video from Dutch television.