While it is important to highlight fatherhood and those who shepherd their children into adult life, we frequently forget to ask a critical question: who gets the opportunity (and privilege) to be a father if desired? For many men who identify as queer, there is a delta between wanting a child and having one.

As this year draws to a close, we'd like to take a moment to reflect on the stories that helped make The Reckoning a must-visit site for unique and thoughtful stories about Black gay men and Atlanta's Black LGBTQ+ community in 2022.

As a gay Black man who one day wants a biological family, TreVaughn Roach-Carter long ago reconciled that his path to parenthood wouldn't be a typical one.

He's embraced it—so much that he wanted to help other queer families with their journey.

In 2019, the San Francisco resident began the journey to become a sperm donor, making it through the first of two initial appointments with The Sperm Bank of California before he hit a roadblock.

"They had invited me back for a second test just to make sure that everything is viable," Roach-Carter told The Reckoning in early November. "Before I could even make my appointment for the final test, I got the email that the FDA doesn't want gay sperm."

The incident, first highlighted in a Washington Post article that's gained national attention, has spotlighted what critics call an outdated, discriminatory policy that potentially impacts Black men – and would-be Black families – most of all.

That US Food & Drug Administration policy, enacted in 2005, restricts donations from men who have had sex with other men within the previous five years, citing HIV transmission risk. The ban drew widespread criticism as a misguided directive aimed at "stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight."

Ian L. Haddock, 35, Executive Director of The Normal Anamoly Initiative, vividly recalls the strange dichotomy of his late mother, Valerie Walker, hurling anti-gay slurs at him. But as hurtful as her colorful language could be, she was steadfast in her determination to keep him away from the illegal drug activities and prison sentences that consumed the lives of his two older brothers in Texas City, TX.

An effeminate Black queer child raised in a trap house with his mother and brothers, Haddock says he played football for a while to prove his masculinity. But he ultimately immersed himself in the Black church experience as one of two options given to Black boys in the football-centered Texas town as alternatives to the less desirable and dangerous elements chosen by many Black men in his orbit for survival.

"I knew I was different," Haddock says. "Showing up as any part of myself as a young kid was very difficult because I was really smart. But I was bullied for being a geek. I was bullied for being poor and dirty, and I was bullied for being feminine."

The bullying wasn't isolated to Haddock's experience with other students at LaMarque High School, where he attended. It was also a constant presence inside his home.

"My brothers tried to beat it out of me," he says. "My mother tried to ridicule it out of me. When I was younger, I was very much in fear of my brothers. My brothers would fight my mama. They didn't care. It was a very abusive situation."

From pampers and potties to pimples and proms, anyone who’s raised another human will tell you there are a lot of “Ps” that come along with parenting. Among the most useful “P," many would agree, is a partner—someone to nudge at night for their turn to bottle feed, take on soccer practice duties or handle any of the other million tasks that come with raising a child to adulthood.

And yet for Black gay men, the dearth of marriage-worthy partners has put the dream of a nuclear family far out of reach.

That’s changing.

This spring, millions of men will celebrate Father’s Day as single dads, part of a trend that has exploded over the past few decades. Among them are an increasingly visible number of gay men and male figures, many of them casting aside traditional timelines and methods of creating their family and redefining when and how one should become a parent.

They’re men like Alexander Langford, an Atlanta-based author and baby boomer who, at age 40, felt the importance of raising a Black child in America mattered more than whether he had a mate along for the ride. More than two decades later, adopted son Xee Langford is a thriving musician.

There was a bedtime and morning ritual in the Malebranche household. A kiss from the family patriarch to his son David and daughter Michelle that was so routine—his decision to replace David’s kiss with deafening silence—reverberated loudly throughout their home in Galway, NY, in the summer of 1992.

Despite being an exceptional student with degrees from Princeton, Emory, and Columbia Universities, Malebranche, now 53, had become accustomed to achieving a level of success that appeared to impress everyone but the Haitian-born surgeon he called dad. Yet he was not accustomed to being viewed as a disappointment by the man he idolized.

“Donna, is our son trying to tell us something?” Malebranche recalls his father asking his mother almost daily, particularly after getting his ears pierced, and choosing to wear an earring in the right ear only on this particular day, which in the early 90s was a cultural indicator that a man was not heterosexual.

“He would ask her that question every morning. He would not let it go,” Malebranche said. “So after the third or fourth morning, she'd say, ‘What do you want me to do? I can’t cover for you.’”

“I'm 23. If he's not man enough to ask me directly, he’s not man enough to hear it from me, so you tell him,” he said. “And so she did. Those three days that I was home, he didn’t speak to me at all.”

In June, Alphonso Mills, 30, and his fiance Ja’Mel Ware, 33, will become fathers. They shared the news of their expanding family in a short video posted on their respective social media accounts on Feb 22, marking the 22nd week of their baby’s development. While Black queer couples are frequently raising children that are both biological and adoptive, especially in the South, Ware, who identifies as a queer transmasculine man and was assigned female at birth is carrying the couple’s first child. On testosterone for over a decade, Ware says he never imagined that he’d one day have to decide to stop receiving gender-reinforcing hormones in order to conceive, but that was before he met Mills.

Ware proposed in October 2020, during a trip to Walt Disney World after dating Mills for two years. It was a surprise affirmation of their commitment to each other that Mills later reciprocated with a proposal of his own.

“There was just something about our connection that made me realize as long as I could do this, I would do it,” Ware says.

On television, the journey to fatherhood is blissfully straightforward: A few rough and tumble single years before finding ‘the one,’ welcoming a child or two, and settling down into cozy family life.

For Britt Chambliss, 33, the journey was similar up to a point. The Navy vet had restless years of self-discovery, found a wife, and even welcomed a daughter. Then he took a step toward an identity most fathers take for granted, shedding the female gender he was assigned at birth before stepping into his identity as a transgender man.

A decade ago lesbian moms Juana Mendenhall, 44, and Angel Mendenhall, 41, were just writing their love story. They’d both ended long-term relationships, and Angel, a flight attendant based in Ft. Lauderdale was living her best life on the beach and getting paid to travel—motherhood and a life in Atlanta with Juana, a scientist and college professor was not on her to-do list. In fact, on their first date, Angel says she wasted no time making one thing clear to the beautiful stranger sitting across from her at a Midtown Thai restaurant: “I hope you know, I will never move to Atlanta because I will never commute again.”

In 1997 I began the very personal journey of fully accepting my sexuality. In my case, at that time, bisexuality was transitional. I knew it, but I couldn't say "gay" yet to anyone. We were in the car. I had finally gotten up the nerve to tell him. Holding a big revelation like that in was beginning to take a mental toll on me. I'm strong, but something had to give, and soon. In that car, at that moment I said it - "Dad, I'm bisexual." That was a lie.