Most of my friends don’t know that I once was an adoptive father. My two years with Chelsea were tragically cut short. I still get choked up talking about it. I had to give her up to another family after she peed on my boyfriend’s suit jacket. But it had to be done after we discovered that dry cleaning won’t remove the smell of cat urine.

My thoughts of real fatherhood have become more serious over the last few years — not so much for myself as for others. More of my friends and acquaintances seem to be adopting. One of them, Louis Bayard, wrote a wonderful novel a couple years ago about a lovable gay guy who foresaw his own family’s extinction if he did not rise to the calling of father, and grow a branch on the family tree.

In Endangered Species, young Nick Broome is standing with his parents and older, non-paternally-inclined brother and sister at the deathbed of his grandmother. At a crucial moment in the book, seeing the lineup of Broomes, Gran asks in an ailing voice, “Is this it?” From there, Nick’s fatherly instincts, coupled with his desire to carry on the family genes, come together in a hilarious and touching story.

Luckily for my family, such extinction is not likely. Both my older brothers have fathered their requisite two children each, and then promptly had vasectomies. With my being out to my family, this is the only remaining secret still not revealed to my very Catholic mother and father — because I would certainly hate to be the one to out my infertile brothers to my parents.

But I have not ruled out having a family of my own just yet. Just last month I received some information from “Growing Generations,” an LA-based organization that bills itself as the “oldest and largest surrogacy and egg donation firm dedicated to serving the gay and lesbian community.” This business, with its staff of “11 highly trained case managers and professionals” is owned by gay and lesbian parents who have managed over 265 cases and assisted with the births of more than 170 babies. So if the urge for midnight feedings, dirty diapers, parent/teacher conferences, college savings plans, and homemade, crayon-colored Father’s Day cards that say, “I luv you, Daddy!” gets strong enough, I know I’ve got someplace to turn.

With the anti-gay adoption standards that haunt would-be parents in Florida, Texas and other states, more and more gay men and lesbians are taking the plunge to be bio-parents. And it’s great that businesses catering to this need are growing to help families of choice. Making that choice to be a father was Eric, a gay man in New York City, with the help of his lesbian friend and roommate, Mary — willing to part with her egg to form a baby. This non-traditional family was portrayed in the recent world premiere of The F Word, a play by Jordan Beswick performed by D.C.’s Actors’ Theater of Washington.

After demonstrating as authentic a desire for a child as any straight man or woman could, Eric was still haunted about how to reveal his fatherly evolution to his family, (the “F” word of this play.) Straight brother Paul was a source of strength. But estranged, fundamentalist sister Cindy would be a different matter. The play exposes the growing pains we all must endure as we move between (or from) the world of still being child/brother/son to being an independent adult.

Eric wanted to show religiously bigoted Cindy that even though she still may not “approve” of his being gay, she must accept that he will be a father. She protests the merger of these qualities by asking, “You’re going to bring a child into this perversion?!” Still grappling with how to love her brother — who’s soon to be a father — Cindy claims, “It’s not that I don’t love you, because I do. It would just be hypocritical of me.”

And therein lies the illogical and harmful effects of un-Christian love at its finest. Thanks to playwright Beswick, Cindy showed a modern-day, demented demonstration of what really is hypocritical on this issue — people who expect to love the “sinner” while they hate the inextricable “sin.” Love is either unconditional or it isn’t love at all. The only thing hypocritical about Cindy was herself.

In The F Word, we never learn if Cindy really overcomes this hypocritical position with her brother Eric. Like so many real-life families estranged from their gay or lesbian relatives, we only hope that a gay brother capable of unconditional love of his child is worthy of the same from his sister. While we wait for the time when we won’t have to fertilize an egg to earn that same love, let’s wish gay dads everywhere a Happy Father’s Day.