re: Gay male couples face more challenges, higher costs to start a family

I don't have much problem with the "nanny-state" thing - I think the general welfare of a state/locality/nation includes some measure of action against moral decay.

TBH I don't know when or if we'll ever honestly look at the impacts of surrogacy, especially now that it'll be intertwined with LGBT issues. But I certainly can't say broadly that it won't impact the child. Adopted children struggle all the time with the idea that their birth mother abandoned them (in various forms). It doesn't mean they don't recover and thrive, but it's not generally something I want children to experience.

I don't think our society is going to be particularly inclined to assess/study how children are impacted when their "birth mother" was leased. And when you consider the amount of time and energy that the behavioral/mental health community spends on any number of other efforts to measure impacts on children, it's kind of nuts that something so significant wouldn't be a huge thing to examine. Maybe they are/will, I don't know. But if so, I strongly suspect they'll start with the goal of determining that there are no ill impacts, as you seem to believe.

I think the thing I find most disturbing about your response here is the way you are nonplussed because of the fair "transactional" nature of it. That's some dystopian stuff for me, but I'm not a libertarian.

At this rate, well within my lifetime (hell, we're close to there already), surrogacy will be a full on way for the wealthy to conveniently achieve their goals of accessorizing-via-parenthood via outsourcing without the messiness of pregnancy. It's the procreation version of moral hazard IMO.