June is the month when rainbows fill high streets, playlists lean joyfully camp and every brand dusts off its limited-edition Pride logo. Yet behind the glitter there is a quieter, more complicated story unfolding, one about queer people trying to become parents in a world still wired for a single, heterosexual blueprint.
For decades, LGBTQIA+ visibility has focused on the right to love openly. The next frontier is the right to raise openly: to build families without shame, obstruction or crippling expense. From egg freezing to adoption, from co-parenting arrangements to international surrogacy, the mosaic of queer family-building options has never been richer, nor more riddled with practical and emotional hurdles.
Take adoption. In Belgium, the average wait for a domestic placement can stretch beyond four years. Add the bias that still creeps into some agencies and the process becomes a test not just of patience but of self-worth. Surrogacy is no easier. European laws vary wildly, forcing many couples to look to the United States, Canada or Colombia, destinations where legal protection is stronger, but costs can exceed €100,000. Even assisted reproduction, theoretically available to all, is often filtered through heteronormative assumptions: clinic forms that insist on “mother” and “father,” or counselling sessions that treat same-sex couples as a curiosity rather than a norm.
Visibility helps, but infrastructure helps more. That’s why events like Wish for a Baby Brussels (taking place 21–22 June at Maison de la Poste, Tour & Taxis) are so crucial. Described as a free fertility and family-building expo, WFAB is quietly radical. Where many baby fairs still resemble pastel coloured hetero utopias, WFAB is deliberately intersectional: single attendees, trans parents-to-be, older hopefuls and rainbow families are not side notes but centre-stage.
Last month the organisers road-tested the formula with an intimate media brunch in Amsterdam. In the balcony room of a café, a mix of drag performers, influencers and grassroots advocates swapped stories over croissants. Mocca Boné, alumnus of Drag Race Belgique, described his three-and-a-half-year adoption odyssey, pausing only to check updates from Bogotá, where he’ll soon meet his children for the first time. Author and travel creator Maartje Hensen spoke of the grief that accompanied her search for a co-parent and the dad-duo behind Dads Miracles Babies shared the bureaucracy they faced just to secure basic parental rights.
None of these accounts were tragic; all were truthful. And truth, voiced collectively, becomes leverage. It reminds politicians that legislative gaps have human consequences. It nudges clinics to modernise their language. It reassures the newly diagnosed, newly out or newly single that there is a path forward, sometimes winding, always valid.
WFAB’s Brussels edition promises more of the same candour, multiplied. Over forty exhibitors, fertility clinics, surrogacy agencies, adoption specialists, mental-health professionals, will set up stalls. Panel sessions will unpick topics most of us Google in private: budgeting for trans-national surrogacy, navigating grief after a failed IVF cycle, telling your child their origin story. Crucially, every seminar is free. For a community accustomed to gatekeepers and paywalls, that alone feels revolutionary.
Of course, revolutions attract backlash. Since announcing the Brussels dates, WFAB’s social pages have been flooded with comments ranging from tired tropes (“think of the children”) to outright hate speech and even pleas to “bring back Hitler”. The organisers delete threats hourly. But the hate underscores the point: safe physical spaces are still radical, still necessary.
So what can allies and media do this Pride? Beyond rainbow avatars, we can amplify the practical resources that turn equality slogans into lived reality. We can profile the clinics that already welcome queer patients without caveats. We can ask legislators why a gay Belgian couple must fly 7,000 kilometres to meet a gestational carrier legally protected under contract.
Most of all, we can remember that Pride began as a demand, not a decorative flourish. The demand today is straightforward: let every would-be parent, regardless of identity, access the tools, knowledge and community they need to build the family they choose.
If you’re in (or near) Brussels this June, step into Wish for a Baby. Listen, learn, ask awkward questions. Bring your curiosity; leave with possibility. And if you can’t attend, signal-boost the stories. Because the future of Pride is not just who we love, it’s who we raise.
Register free at wishforababy.be.