Gay hookup app Grindr lobbies Congress to make surrogacy tax deductible or let insurance pay

CEO George Arison told Politico that "being involved in making this possible matters a lot for our users. But I also think it's critical to realize that making surrogacy and fertility care more accessible to people benefits all Americans, regardless of whether they're gay or straight."

The two men penned an op ed in The Hill in August called "Building Families Shouldn't Be This Hard," where they talked about "the deeply personal decision of when and how to build a family," saying that "at the heart" of what's become "a national conversation" is the "profound hope" millions of American have to start their own families and hold their own children "for the first time."

Both Arison and Hickenlooper brought their children into the world using IVF, Hickenlooper with his wife and Arison using a surrogate mother who carried his children and then handed them over.

"For too many Americans," they wrote, "becoming a parent is far more difficult than it should be."

"No one should have to win the financial or legal lottery to become a parent," they said. "Yet today's system is too often defined by staggering costs, outdated policies and unnecessary legal uncertainty. Families and same-sex couples spend years navigating barriers that have little to do with medicine and everything to do with bureaucracy or politics. That should change."

They also wished to change the definition of "infertility" to not just mean a medical incapability of having children but to include sexual orientation, as well, so that gay men could be considered infertile because they do not wish to mate in the traditional sense with a woman.

Hickenlooper and Arison specify three "reforms" to enact these changes.

1. Make IVF and surrogacy "fully tax deductible for all Americans seeking to start a family."
2. Make it possible for health insurance companies to cover "fertility and surrogacy benefits." They note that many do cover IVF, but none cover the cost of renting out a woman to gestate children she will never mother.
3. Make sure that surrogates can make absolutely no claims on the child once they birth the baby by changing parentage laws so that a baby's birth certificate can list the parents who paid for the baby as the parents and not the woman who carried the baby to term. They write that laws should "let intended parents establish their legal rights before the baby is even born."

Politico reported in April that "The app has poured $1.6 million into its influence operation since it registered to lobby federal lawmakers in April 2025. In the first three months of 2026, Grindr spent $432,500 on its in-house lobbying operation, as well as an additional $120,000 across two large lobbying firms working on its behalf, according to disclosures published this week."

So far, Arison told Politico, "We haven't had a lot of Republicans willing to put their name on a bill yet."

Hickenlooper said he didn't think that that was an indication of their position, however. "I think both parties right now have certain topics where the main core of the party has staked out a strong and sometimes very extreme position that a lot of people in the party don't necessarily agree with, but at the same time they don't want to publicly go ahead and contradict it. In vitro is one of those things, at least for Republicans."