Soon, having sex and having children will be utterly disconnected

What is tougher for a kid? To be born black in a predominantly white neighbourhood, or to be born to surrogate lesbian parents?

Payton Cramblett, aged three, is both. She lives in Uniontown, Ohio — a suburb of unlovely Akron, tyre capital of the United States. Her parents are the butch, crew-cut dyke Jennifer Cramblett and the slightly less identifiably lesbian Amanda Zinkon. They are not best pleased. They bought six vials of semen from a nearby sperm bank at a cost of $400 a pop. I don’t know how much of the stuff you get in a vial — I assume no more than a couple of quick squirts — but anyway, it was via this wholly natural and romantic conduit that little Payton was created. I am not entirely au fait with the process, I confess, but I am sure that it is deeply loving and romantic, no matter what complicated implements are required. And charged with great sexual tension, too, seeing as so much money is involved.

Anyway, for reasons best known to at least one brave little sperm, this holy act of lovemaking worked a treat and pretty soon Payton was conceived.

But when she came out, she was black. The parents were aghast, especially Jennifer. She is now suing the sperm bank because she specified on her application form that she wanted the donor to be white, blond-haired and blue-eyed. So we would seem to have a breach of contract.

Jennifer’s worries are many and multifarious. First, she says that she has no ‘cultural competency’ with African-Americans — which I think is modern parlance for not liking blacks. Second, there is the problem of sorting out little Payton’s hair, which is black and tightly curled. She has to drive a very long way in order to find a salon capable of dealing with black people’s hair, as there are none at all in Uniontown.