The voice on the other end of the line was familiar enough. It was the message I was having trouble getting a grip on.

Suzy, one of my closest and oldest friends, was phoning from her Toronto home. “Matt, I don’t really know how to say this to you. But we’ve decided to go in another direction. I don’t feel like this is working out.”

It was a few sentences that were both simple and entirely complex. But the essence of it was easy enough to summarize: I was being dumped as a sperm donor.

Thus ended a nearly two-year effort on the part of Suzy, her wife, and me to get pregnant. It had never been my idea; Suzy and Jane, then just past their mid-thirties, had sat me down about two and a half years earlier for a talk. They proposed that since Suzy and I went so far back, and with a friendship that ran so deep, I would be the logical person to contribute my dna to their attempt to build a family. I was both honoured and thrilled; I’d never thought of myself as parent material per se, but the idea of helping Suzy and Jane have a baby — they were clearly going to be conscientious parents — while being on board as a godparent seemed appealing, to say the least.

At that moment, the break was extremely distressing. First, I had never really been heartbroken about not having offspring, but for more than two years I’d had plenty of time to daydream about just what sheer joy that might present. Second, the person who was saying it was one of my dearest friends. Suzy and I had met in high school. We were inseparable and told each other everything. She was the first person I ever told that I was gay. I gave a speech at her and Jane’s wedding. I was a pallbearer at her mother’s funeral.

I know that Martin Amis has scolded us about avoiding clichés, but there they were, storming my brain: knife through the heart, kicked in the head, crushed, dumbfounded, thunderstruck. But what I would learn in the ensuing weeks is that I was hardly alone. In fact, I was caught in the gears of the various new machinations emerging from the burgeoning number of queer families, and one particular decision faced by many lesbians aspiring to parenthood. They have the means, but they still need sperm to get the job done. There are two options at this fork in the road: do they go the anonymous sperm donor route, or do they harvest the sperm of a close friend (usually gay)? We might call it the plan A (anonymous donor) or plan B (close gay friend) conundrum.

This is but one piece of a gigantic, multi-dimensional puzzle that is the burgeoning universe of queer parenthood. Though there aren’t any statistics on the so-called “gayby boom,” the North American gay and alternative media have been following it for over a decade. A gaggle of articles has appeared about the growing rate of parenthood among same-sex couples. Statistics Canada, despite being one of the very best data-compiling bodies in the world, doesn’t keep such details, and some of the lesbian and gay parents I talked to for this article said that even if the government asked, they’re not sure they’d answer forthrightly, given the community’s long-standing mistrust of such authorities.

Still, according to the legal, medical, and activist experts, same-sex parenting is indeed a growth industry. While gay men, being wombless, are at an obvious disadvantage, lesbians are forging ahead into parental territory at a rapid rate. Mona Greenbaum, a Montreal-based lesbian and the founder of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Family Coalition, says she started the organization a decade ago when she decided to join the maternal sisterhood, precisely because at the time there were no resources, no role models, no one to offer any advice. “We really were isolated back then,” she says. “That was ten years ago. We were essentially alone, or it felt that way.” Not anymore: “Now we have over 900 families in our membership. We conduct workshops where people discuss the issues surrounding parenthood and what the legal boundaries are, and offer meetings where people can exchange notes When I started, this was a side gig. Now being coordinator has become a fulltime job.”

Beyond Greenbaum’s shift into full-time employment, the new emphasis on parenthood — which has moved forward in lockstep with the push for legal recognition of same-sex marriage — represents an epic and controversial change in the gay liberation movement. That term alone now sounds decidedly quaint, but old-time queer activists have expressed dismay at the new directions of emphasis and focus in the gay and lesbian struggle. In particular, consider the words of Jane Rule, the iconic lesbian author and activist, who died last year. She argued vehemently against the fight for same-sex marriage, stating that “what we are pleading for is the state to take greater control over our relationships. I am violently opposed to the common-law provisions.” She also remarked that “policing ourselves to be less offensive to the majority is to be part of our own oppression.” These sentiments now seem to come from an eternity ago. The new attitudes toward same-sex marriage and parenting in the gay and lesbian community are matched by changes in perspectives toward such issues among the larger heterosexual population. At its core, the gay liberation movement made the argument for full equality for all. Its most radical activists have now had their worst fears realized: in many respects, homosexuality has been normalized. Fights over public sex and aids funding have been supplanted by discussions of parental rights and daycare provisions.

Those fighting the hardest for same-sex marriage rights were in agreement on two issues their opponents were also adamant about: same-sex marriage represents a fundamental change to the institution, and it is about the children. The people who were wrong were the ones who thought that once same-sex marriage got through Parliament, the struggle would be over; gays and lesbians who wish to parent are now facing a broad range of legal and institutional challenges, and overcoming these obstacles represents the next battle for the movement.

The ways to parenthood are varied; some adopt, though adopting foreign children is often out of the question (for a time, China provided a great deal of product in the international baby trade — but the country banned gays and lesbians from participating). One prominent Toronto-based lesbian author reportedly dropped $50,000 for a baby from California, a price tag that puts this process out of reach for most. The most practical, common, and growing form of queer parenthood comes in the form of lesbian motherhood — a two-parent household led by two women.

Greenbaum has witnessed and been a part of this change in queer culture. She sighs in recognition when I tell her my own story and explain my status as an ex–sperm donor. As she points out, this has become a pivotal question for aspiring lesbian moms. She has held workshops and discussions on this very choice for lesbian couples, to help them make informed decisions on which path to take.

The pros and cons of plan A were clarified when I visited a Montreal lesbian couple earlier this year. Liliane, a forty-one-year-old stay-at-home mom, and her partner, Joyce, chose to go with an anonymous donor via a sperm bank. The result is their three-year-old son and a newborn. “We did consider the other option. We thought about getting a close friend to do this, but that didn’t last for long,” Liliane says. “We actually didn’t have a close friend we thought would be appropriate. It seemed like we’d really be forcing it if we tried to make a relationship fit the circumstance.” She and Joyce decided to go the anonymous sperm donor route, in particular because they felt having a known donor in the picture might make things too complicated: “We knew that in many regards this means you have a pseudo-parent around, beyond the two lesbian moms. How would that work out?”

But the sperm donor option has its own set of complications, as Liliane would soon find out. She liked the idea that when and if her offspring wanted to, they could make contact with their biological father or fathers. She and Joyce chose to buy sperm at a clinic where the donor had said he would be open to being contacted by the child once he or she turned eighteen.

Ironically enough, when considering plan A, many lesbians are forced to look south of the border for assistance — this despite the fact that Canada’s civil rights laws for gays and lesbians are considered light years ahead of their American counterparts: same-sex marriage, no ban on gays in the military, and immigration and refugee regulations that recognize oppression of gays abroad. But even so, most lesbian sperm seekers these days must go cross-border shopping. Canada’s laws surrounding assisted procreation have become far more restrictive than in America, where ideas of private enterprise and individual choices in the marketplace tend to eclipse government oversight.