Country music singer and songwriter Shane McAnally and his husband Michael Baum have triggered outrage across the internet after posting a video of themselves mocking their surrogate-born baby for crying “mama.”
In the video, Michael Baum lies on a couch, playfully bouncing the baby on his stomach as he asks, “Who do you want, Dada or Pop?” When the baby says “Mama,” Baum says, “Nope! There is no mama,” causing the baby to pout and cry. Both men then laugh.
In another social media post, the couple posted a photo of their baby boy with the caption, “6 week old homophobic baby.”
According to LifeSiteNews, Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles reacted by declaring, “The most horrifying video I’ve ever seen in my life.” Joel Berry, former managing editor of The Babylon Bee, said, “This video is going to keep me up at night,” and demanded, “Congress, ban this abuse NOW.”
Surrogacy Concern asked, “Who films their child crying and uploads it to the internet? And who subjects a child to their pathetic vanity like this?” adding, “Babies need their birth mothers.” Children’s rights activist Chris Elston, known as Billboard Chris, wrote, “These men laugh as the baby cries and says ‘ma ma ma.’ They think it’s funny because ‘there is no mama.’ This baby was designed to never have a mother so that two men could satisfy their selfish desires.” He added, “It’s impossible for a normal person to watch this without instinctual disgust.”
Catholic commentator Peachy Keenan, according to LifeSiteNews, asserted, “Everyone involved is criminally liable in child emotional abuse: the egg donor, the surrogate, and the doctors.” Allie Beth Stuckey observed, “The gaslighting starts early,” and explained, “Babies instinctively want and need their moms.” She called it “beyond cruel – more cruelty than we allow for animals – that we purposely take them away from their mothers as infants in order to satisfy the desires of adult men.”
McAnally and Baum are also raising 12-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. According to LifeSiteNews, in an October interview with People Magazine, McAnally said, “I know things are changing all the time. And of course, since ours is a nontraditional family anyway, we don’t feel like those rules apply.”
For faithful Catholics, this episode is a stark demonstration of the profound disorder inherent in surrogacy and same-sex “parenting.” By design, these arrangements rob a child of the mother every human being naturally longs for from birth. The deliberate mockery of a baby’s innocent cry for “Mama” — whether through laughter or the “homophobic baby” label — is not comedy. It is emotional abuse that reveals a callous rejection of God’s plan for the family.
The Catholic Church has always taught that children have a fundamental right to both a mother and a father. No adult desire, no matter how fashionable, can override this truth. Surrogacy commodifies human life and creates wounded children to satisfy selfish ends. This public scandal should move every believer to oppose the entire industry and defend the dignity of every child and the sacred vocation of motherhood.
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As a mother of 4 and grandmother to 15, this is the most horrifying display of cruelty I have seen lately. 2 gay men think they can take the place of a Mother, then laugh & mock the baby they claim to care for because he asks for Momma out of instinct. How can our society think this is acceptable and promote this type of cruelty? I will pray for this baby that someone in his life will step up and inform these 2 clueless men that ‘mother nature’ is stronger than anything they have known. God please encourage those responsible for such an atrocity to fix this baby’s life before this innocent baby faces more cruelty. This is just unbelievable.