According to the Human Rights Campaign, 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in 2023 (as of August), but there are many communities where different sexual orientations and gender identities are accepted and valued. As that acceptance grows and archaic stereotypes weaken, same-sex people are becoming more normal to do “traditional” things like get married and have children.  

Five same-sex celebrity couples who are proud parents and raising children.

After decades together, Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, have become fathers.

When John became a father, he wasn’t ancient. He was 63 years old when his first son, Zachary Jackson Levon, was born in 2010. For Hollywood, that’s not even very strange. His husband, David Furnish, is 15 years younger than him.

In addition to Zachary, John and Furnish are parents to Elijah Joseph Daniel, born in 2013. The boys, who carry the Fernish-John surname, were born through surrogacy. 

After becoming fathers, John and Furnish have been together for over two decades. They first met at a dinner party in 1993, went on a date the next day, and have been together ever since. 2005, they entered into a civil partnership, but after same-sex marriage was legalized in the UK in 2014, they decided to get married.

Nate Berkus and her husband Jeremiah Brent have two children and a television career together.

National TV host Nate Berkus tragically lost his partner Fernando Bengoechea in 2004 when they were vacationing in Sri Lanka and were hit by a devastating tsunami. 

The interior designer, who opened his firm at the age of 24, fell in love with another designer, Jeremiah Brent, and the two not only started a family but also had a television career. 

Berkus and Brent met in 2012 while furniture shopping with their mutual friend Rachel Zoe, whom Brent worked for. The acquaintance was instant, and they were engaged less than a year later. Married in 2014, the couple decided to start a family quickly: they had a daughter, Poppy, in 2015 and a son, Oscar, in 2018. – son Oscar, both through surrogacy.  

The decision to adopt Deni O’Hare and her husband, Hugo Redwood, took seven years to make

O’Hare is a true family man who appears to be very caring and deeply committed to his work. The Tony Award-winning actor has lived with her husband, Hugo Redwood, for over two decades, since they met on an AOL chat room in 2000. They married in July 2011, four days after marriage equality was legalized in New York City, and in 2014, they adopted their son Declan, whom they raised from the age of five days old. After discovering that black boys were the hardest to place, the couple adopted a black boy expressly.

Although fatherhood was not part of the original plans, O’Hair and his husband gradually began to come around to the idea, but it took seven years.  

Ryan Murphy and his husband, David Miller, had their first son less than six months after marriage.

 

As one of Hollywood’s most prominent television producers and a gay man, Murphy has made it a habit to invite LGBTQ+ actors and members of other diverse groups to castings – and if you get in with him, you tend to be invited back again and again. Murphy and his husband have three children, all born through surrogacy.

Murphy first met his husband, David Miller, in a gay bar in the 1990s, but it took 15 years before they started dating. They came out to each other in 2012 and started a family very quickly, which wasn’t a massive surprise to Murphy’s fans, who may have noticed that he talked about having children in interviews leading up to the wedding. Murphy and Miller’s youngest son, Griffin Sullivan, was born in 2020 to brothers Logan Phineas and Ford Theodore (2012 and 2014).

Wanda Sykes was hesitant to have children until she met her spouse, Alex

Wanda Sykes first met her husband Alex in 2006 during a trip to Fire Island, where they were introduced by a mutual friend who had seen her on a ferry the day before. 

Before getting married, Alex made it clear she wanted to have children. 

Wanda apparently agreed quickly, as the couple had twins just six months after the wedding. In April 2009, Alex gave birth to their daughter Olivia Lou and son Lucas Claude. Over the years, Wanda has spoken openly about how she and Alex are raising their children and the challenges of having twins. ” As parents, we are a team. In any situation where I lack something, she has my back and vice versa. We always have each other’s backs, which has played a huge part in our relationship,” she told InStyle magazine in 2021.