By Nicole Gregory, contributing writer
When two young men, Elad Davash, an Israeli citizen, and Andrew Banks, an American whose parents were born in Canada, got married in Toronto in 2010, they had several reasons for doing so. They were in love, they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together and, as a married couple in Canada, Andrew would be able to sponsor Elad for a U.S. visa, since at the time there was no federal recognition of gay marriage in the U.S.
Six years later they were delighted to become parents of twin baby boys. But their happy family life was threatened when they needed passports to move to the U.S. and the genetics of their twin sons was questioned.
The story is told in a new book by Cal State Fullerton professor of developmental psychology and the director of the Twin Studies Center Nancy L. Segal called “Gay Fathers, Twin Sons: The Citizenship Case That Captured the World.” Published in August by Roman & Littlefield, it’s a story full of legal twists and turns in law, surrogacy, and sometimes strange realities of twins.
A twin herself, Segal has authored many books about twins, including “Deliberately Divided,” about a New York City adoption agency that secretly separated twins and triplets in the 1960s.
In her new book, she recounts how Andrew and Elad Davash-Banks sought and found a young woman to be their egg donor through an agency and then located a surrogate mother. Through in vitro fertilization using sperm from both men and the donated eggs, the surrogate mother received viable embryos.
To the surprise of everyone, not one but two embryos were implanted and began to develop — and it was later discovered that one carried the genes of Andrew and the other carried the genes of Elad. This rare occurrence is called heteropaternal twins.
Two healthy baby boys, named Aiden and Ethan, were born minutes apart on Sept. 16, 2016. Their extended Israeli and American families were thrilled, and a month later the boys’ bris ceremony was held at Temple Sinai in Toronto.
Segal tracks the stunning events that unfolded when the couple planned a move to Los Angeles, a place where they hoped to live, work and raise their sons.
“They were going to the U.S. consulate in Toronto for the passports for their children because the children were born in Canada,” Segal explained. The men had with them their marriage certificate, the boys’ birth certificates and many other documents.
But the consul official questioned the men about how their sons were conceived and if they were genetically related — questions that would never have been asked to a married heterosexual couple.
The result was that Aiden, the baby with the genes of Andrew, the American, was allowed to get a U.S. passport, but baby Ethan could not — the consul officer decided that Ethan had no biological connection to an American parent.
“Despite their being twins, having shared a womb for seven months and being delivered just four minutes apart, their futures appeared quite different,” Segal wrote in the book. “Aiden was a U.S. citizen at birth and could live freely and indefinitely in California, while Ethan would stay a Canadian citizen and come to California only as a tourist. He would be allowed to remain in Los Angeles for no more than six months. The twins’ official acceptance and rejection letters, and Aiden’s passport, reached the family a month or two later, after they had left Canada.”
The couple searched for attorneys to represent them so that little Ethan would be able to become an American citizen. A New York City-based nonprofit called Immigration Equality that works to protect LGBTQ and HIV-positive immigrants and families took the case and initiated a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department for the family.
Segal, who is currently on sabbatical, learned about the story in 2018. “The case attracted me immediately because it had twinship and so many timely issues like egg donation and surrogacy and gay marriage and family,” she said.
Andrew and Elad were enthusiastic about her writing a book about them because “they were fighting for something bigger than themselves, and that’s why I applaud them,” she said.
Finally, the case was settled in favor of the family in October 2020. Bringing it into the public eye may have helped, but Segal said that the subject of twins has a particular emotional tug for people, and it fascinates them.
“Certainly, the idea of a child being separated from the parent is horrendous. But ideas of twins being separated really cuts another way,” she said. “And people have a difficult time dealing with that. That’s why twins are in the news. When twins are reunited, everybody celebrates. Even if you don’t know them, you celebrate because twins belong together.”
