Around Nate and Brenda's dinner table, Claire asks how David and Keith's adoption process is going. Well, Keith has been reading Child magazine, so that's obviously a sign of something. I should probably start doing that, now that my kid's eight months old. Keith and David say they have two home study interviews left before they can start waiting for a referral. Brenda, not down with the lingo, asks what that means. "A kid," Keith explains. Excited, Brenda asks how long they'll have to wait. "Anywhere from a week to many years," says David. That about covers it. My wife and I finished our home study about a year ago, and then started hoping to get a baby by this coming Christmas. Please see above to find out how that worked out. David says that sometimes being gay helps you get chosen faster, since birth parents have to browse through thousands of pictures straight white people. "So we kind of pop out," Keith understates. Claire opines ignorantly about what kind of person would go through all the trauma of labor and delivery, "and then not even want the kid? Who would do that?" Claire, on behalf of my son's birth parents, fuck you. Everyone rightly looks at her like she just crapped on the table. She waggles her ignorance around some more, saying, "They don't even get money, right?" David says that, as adoptive parents, they'll probably have to pay the hospital bills. "But that's where they can scam you," Keith says, referring to the risk of birth parents changing their minds. "That rarely happens," David says, correctly. But Keith continues: "It really makes you see the appeal of a surrogate." "It does?" David eyebrows at him. Keith says it's also a way to have "your own kid." "Your own" kid? Not that I don't know what he means, but if M. Tiny isn't my own, then whose the fuck is he? David points out that "there are so many kids who already exist who need homes. Why would we want to make another one?" Keith says it's for the same reason straight people do. Because they're horny, careless, and drunk? Seems like if that were the case, then David and Keith would have quite a brood by now.

Nate starts to look uncomfortable at the direction the discussion is taking. David presses, "But given that it's not quite as easy for us, why would we do something so extreme as--" Keith cuts that off, saying he doesn't think it's extreme. "Why should we be the ones who don't get to have our own kids? Just because we're gay?" David says that's not it, but he doesn't offer another reason, either. He says, "I just don't think a child has to have my genes for me to feel like it's mine." Nate plays the peacemaker role, saying, "I'm sure people love adopted kids as much as their own. I mean, obviously." I agree with every word Nate just said, except for the "obviously," which I would replace with "duh," "doy," or perhaps even the ultimately-potent-and-therefore-little-used "derr-hey." "Maybe," Keith says. "It's easy to say when you have your own." Oh, Keith, shut up. "I love Maya," Brenda says. "And you still wanted one of your own," Keith says. If he says "your own" one more time, I'm going to jump through the screen and thump him one. And then he says to David, "You just think you don't deserve to have what everyone else has," and I have to buy a new TV. Making ignorant comments is shitty enough, but then airing one of his deepest relationship issues with David in front of everyone is even worse. Happy, Claire? "Would anyone have more wine if I open another bottle?" she ventures, and the unanimous "yes" is heard miles away. I hope someone cuts Keith off, though.