The secular media has sniffed out the story -- another embarrassment for the Episcopal Church.

Not The Bee ran the news: Gay Episcopal priests pay for surrogate baby boy, say the phrase "protect children from priests" is "harmful" ...

As did Apex News: Two gay Episcopal priests welcomes a baby boy via surrogacy ...

Charisma Magazine doesn't mince words: Apostate Priests Use Surrogate to Have Baby ...

But this -- gay parenting -- is copacetic for the Episcopal Church. Through the years General Convention has worked itself up to accepting and accommodating sexual deviancy. The practice of using surrogacy to produce a child is no different. The LGBTQ revolution -- with its subset of moral deviations -- is in full flower within the Episcopal Church.

General Convention has worked in dealing with surrogate parenting for more than 40 years. In 1982 Resolution A066 Surrogate Maternal Parenthood and Resolution A068 Surrogate Paternal Parenthood were both rejected.

Three years later in 1985 Resolution A089 Surrogate Parenting was also rejected as was Resolution D006 Assisted Parenting in 1988.

Then in 2022 Resolution D049 -- Support of Public Policies for Adequate Surrogacy Protection -- sailed through.

Seven years before General Convention became giddy with joy when the Supreme Court ruled on June 26, 2015 ruled by a split vote of 5-4 on Obergefell v. Hodges thus legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the United States. There was dancing on the floor of Convention when the news broke.

The landmark decision gave same-sex couples the fundamental right to legally marry based upon the high Court's interpretation of the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.

Then on July 1 General Convention voted to make same-sex marriage a canonical reality in the Episcopal Church spreading so-called "marriage equality" throughout the church.

Less than a year later -- May 2015 -- Fr. Morris and Fr. Voets were "married" by Bishop Lawrence Provenzano (VIII Long Island) at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, New York. They are considered a "clergy couple" -- a growing number of deacons, priests, and bishops -- gay and straight -- whose spouse is also a clergy person. The clergy spouse does not even have to be an Episcopalian and, in some cases, is ordained in another denomination or religious tradition.

In June 2022 Father Morris and Father Voets became Daddy Kevin and Daddy Keith to Baby Robbie.

Kevin Morris received his MDiv from Yale and a DMin from Sewanee. He was ordained deacon and priest in 2004 by Bishop Leopold Frade (III Southeast Florida).

He has been at Church of the Ascension since 2012. The church was founded in 1885 and became the mother church of St. Andrew's in Oceanside, a hamlet on Long Island.

Keith Voets also received his MDiv in Anglican Studies from Yale. He was ordained deacon in June 2012 by Bishop James Curry (Connecticut-suffragan) and priest in December 2012 by Bishop Ian Douglas (XV Connecticut). In 2016 he first went to St. Alban-the-Martyr in St. Albans, New York as priest-in-charge. He was elevated to the rectorship in 2018.

In 1922 St. Alban's Episcopal Church was established as a daughter mission church of the historic Grace Church.

Grace's early roots go to 1693 when the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent a missionary minister to the Jamaica area of Queens on Long Island, in Colonial New York. Grace Church was firmly established in 1701 through a royal charter by King William III. It is the oldest Episcopal congregation on Long Island and one of the oldest in New York. Only St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery on Manhattan Island is older. St Mark's historical roots go back to 1660.

Another historic 17th century, Episcopal parish with colonial Anglican roots is: Trinity-Wall Street which dates back to 1696. It received a charter from William III in 1697 and a land grant from Queen Anne in 1705.

Obviously gay parenthood is complicated since same-sex couples -- gay or lesbian -- are going against God's intended method of procreation.

Either the same-sex couple chooses to adopt a child in need of a home, or go through the surrogacy route and "experience" the pregnancy and birth with their egg donor (biological mother) and gestational carrier (surrogate mother).

The Episcopal priests chose surrogacy while another high-profile gay Episcopalian chose adoption -- Pete Buttigieg, who is currently the Secretary of Transportation in the Biden Administration.

Secretary Pete, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a failed 2020 presidential candidate, is an Anglican/Episcopal convert from the Roman Catholic Church. He, along with his "husband" Chasten Glezman, adopted fraternal twins Joseph August and Penelope Rose in 2021. In keeping with social norms, the Buttigiegs were legally "married" in 2018 at St. James Episcopal Cathedral in South Bend.

The Buttigiegs were going through the arduous adoption screening process when "the call" came. They were unexpectedly faced with what they describe as a "surprise adoption scenario" -- a mother had just given birth and wanted to arrange an immediate adoption for her premie biracial twins -- a boy and a girl. And the babies were already experiencing early stages of premature newborn medical issues.

The question was: Would they accept the twin challenge?

Secretary Pete and his "husband" Chasten gave their fiat and they instantly became the gay parents to the fragile fraternal twins thus doubling basic single baby newborn issues, baby material needs and health concerns.

As Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg received flack when he took newborn parental leave as the country was being faced with serious across-the-board post COVID transportation issues. But he had twin newborns at home dealing with what could become life threatening health issues.

Meanwhile, the Long Island Episcopal priests' surrogacy story was highlighted in honor of National Infertility Awareness Week (April 21-27) on the Gay Parents To Be website. Gay Parents is a fertility and family-building partnering network designed to serve the LGBTQ+ community in its quest to achieve unnatural parenthood.

The two male priests ran into several hurdles in becoming same-sex parents.

First: Gay unions are not naturally fruitful. A child cannot be conceived as the result of traditional heterosexual marital relations.

Second: The priests had to decide whether to adopt and provide a living child with a "stable" home and two dads, or try for test tube baby-making via surrogacy. They opted to go the surrogacy route which is fraught with its own challenges including financial costs and finding a willing woman -- or women -- to part with their ovum and/or carry a pregnancy to term of a baby which has no genetic link to her and which she immediately gives up following birth. She leaves the hospital empty-handed.

Third: The priests had to determine if one of them would actually be the sperm donor -- the biological father of the baby. Then the sperm donor daddy had to undergo procedures to insure the viability and health of his sperm.

Fourth: They also had two major questions to answer. Who would be the egg donor (biological mother)? Who would be the gestational carrier (surrogate mother)? The term "mother" is scrubbed from both definitions -- God-given womanhood becomes erased. The whole conception process is reduced to the laboratory petri dish through assisted reproductive technology.

Fifth: Gay surrogacy is expensive -- from a low of $140,000 to a quarter of a million dollars per pregnancy much of which is out-of-pocket expenses and not covered by insurance especially for same-sex couples. And there is no guarantee of a viable pregnancy and successful delivery.

Now that the gay clergy couple have their first son, they plan on eventually increasing the size of their family.

"In the next few years, we hope to undergo another surrogacy journey," the daddy-priests posted on the Gay Parents To Be website.

Pray for this child and others like him -- such as the Buttigieg twins. Babies who have two daddies or two mommies will be challenged physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to Virtue Online