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Am I Okay if my Kids Are Gay?
April 25th, 2012
I have one daughter who is an avid tomboy. She loves Star Wars, trading baseball cards, shooting paintballs and wearing clothes only from the boy section of our local Gap kids. She is beautiful if I say so myself, but hates to get any attention for her looks. She likes being a stealth beauty.
I was just like her at her age with one minor exception. I was boy crazy from the word go. I administered my first sloppy kiss to a 4-year old boy when I was 18-months old and it really never stopped from there.
My tomboy could care less about boys. And she wonders why all the girls at school are starting to have crushes. She asked if it was okay that she didn’t have any crushes. (For the love of God, yes!). However, this brought my overly active imagination into gear. I wondered if my tomboy might grow up to be gay.
I romanticize gay people. I don’t think homosexuality is a choice. I think it’s genetic like eye color and height. But then I take it one step further. I have a tendency to see gay people as art. Heroic warriors deserving our admiration for the courage it takes to live in our society as openly gay. I don’t tend to see them as individuals with flaws, idiosyncrasies and just plain annoying personality traits like the rest of us. Which I suspect really annoys gay people. They don’t want to be deified and objectified, they just want to live their lives without discrimination for their sexual orientation, with the same rights as straight people.
So I wanted my tomboy to know gay is okay!
Oh, the opportunities I took to affirm that possibility. When my girly girl daughter talked about which boy from her 1st grade class she might marry (it changed every week), I piped up to both girls, “I just hope whatever boy — or girl — you decide to marry will make you feel good about yourself.”
They both looked at me quizzically, their hesitant pause my opportunity to launch into the subject of gay marriage. Not that anyone asked. I explained how their Aunt Barbara and Aunt Suzanne were married in the window before Prop 8 passed and explained what Prop 8 was and why it was so terrible and after a few minutes of droning on before their glazed, bored eyes one of them would say, “But can we have ice cream cake for dessert?”
When they were a little older I’d let them watch Glee with me. Oh, the lectures I launched into about Kurt and his public ostracization. How he had to leave the glee club because of a homophobic bully. ”But Mom, can you just rewind so we can see Gwyneth sing Forget You again?” (Gwyneth – my nemesis!)
Then the other night we were watching Dancing With The Stars (they watch Jeopardy with Henry which pretty much sums up our parenting styles), and when the ridiculously sumptuous William Levy took the floor with Cheryl Burke I said, “Oh, he’s got to be gay.”
How is this magnitude of gorgeous even possible?
I didn’t say it nicely. I said it in a way that echoed the homophobic generation before me and the assumption that all gorgeous men with muscles are gay (damn them).
That night while I was lying in bed next to my tomboy after we read our book she said, “You know Mommy, I don’t like it when you say things like ‘Oh, he’s got to be gay’ about William Levy. It sounded mean.”
I felt myself flush and my stomach turn. ”I know honey, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why did you say it?”
I stopped to think. Then I explained that when I was growing up I got messages that homosexuality was wrong and bad. That it was just the way things were back then and still are in many places today. I told her that some of those messages still live inside of me and that I have to be very conscious of them and that I don’t always succeed in re-writing them. I was about to make some overly-compensatory comment along the lines of — “for instance, I want you and your sister to know that I will support you no matter who you love.” (Which is true)
But I bit my tongue. Because frankly it really isn’t my business who they grow up to love. That’s for them to decide. My job is to help lay a foundation of self-esteem in the hopes that whoever they choose is worthy of them. My tomboy says if she must get married someday (a fate seemingly worse than death) she’ll probably marry her best friend who happens to be a boy.
Regardless, I want to continue to educate them as best I can about the courage it takes to be openly gay in our culture by setting a better example. And waiting until they ask.
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So his resemblence to Ricky Martin is in more ways than one?
sorry was that inappropriate?
seriously, I am right there with you, and I think you are doing a good job with your daughters.
I’m a TMI parent.
I love you fearless honesty! Your kids are lucky to have such a great mom.
Cristi thank you!
Oh Shannon…how I love ya, How I love ya!
Your girls will be amazing people because of you.
I love that you say what so many of us think.
I was a tomboy and athletic…I still am not a girly, girl. I had/have lesbian friends — and ran an office with a woman who was openly gay. I went to lunch with her and her friends every now and then. i would have a great time….but I just couldn’t imagine being with women all the time. In fact I asked Elizabeth that, “Don’t you get tired of being around women all the time?” She looked at me like …Hello. So all’s that to say is that when our children are adults…they will know. For me, I just want my children to talk to me about anything. If they have questions, hopefully they know that I will never reject them for anything. Except having unmarried sex before 45.
Oh yes, my children will have to be virgins until they’re 45. I’m just going to put them in cryogenic freeze.
i think you’re taking the right road! despite having lived a very open life, i still do find the echoes of past homophobia (not mine, but society’s) coming out of my mouth every now and then, and i hate myself for it. as long as your daughters know they can say something to you about how it hurts them, and you recognize that you don’t want them saying the same things, everything is going to be awesome!
I like to think I’m conscious of all my beliefs and am constantly humbled by how programmed I am by society, media etc.
You are doing a great job mama!
OMG Adriennes comment! Yes, the guy totally looks like Ricky Martin! Maybe that is why he does not appeal to me at all. Not my type.
Shannon I totally get what you’re saying about romanticizing gay people. I do it, too! I romanticize everything though- The mafia, the Emergency Room doctors, police officers…really you name it- I romanticize it.
I blame television and film for my unreal expectations of life.
Shannon, I so admire your honesty… you are teaching them to love and accept people… How many children don’t get that from their parents? You truly are doing a great job!
You are doing such a good job! You are teaching your girls to love and accept people..how many kids learn that these days? Great post!!
You are doing such a great job with your girls. You are teaching them to love and accept people….how many kids these days grow up with those important messages/lessons?
Great post! I often think about how I am going to talk about gay marriage to my children when they are older (they are 1 & 3 now). How I want to talk to them about accepting everyone, no matter their sexual orientation, color or religion. You did a great job.
http://2bestfriendschubbyroadtoskinny.blogspot.com/
I used to wonder if one of my twins was gay…would try leaving open ended conversations making it crystal clear that either one could come to me about ANYTHING and I’d listen.
Finally at the age of 16 that child did come to me with his coming out questions. And when I commented to him that I’d wondered if he were gay from the age of three he actually lamented “Why didn’t you tell me”!!
As if that was a normal question a parent would have asked. Sheesh.
I can see how people might romanticize being gay, yet as a parent I went through a short grieving process. It was like the death of a dream to what our society projects as “normal”. And the worries about how the child that you’ve tried to protect will now certainly be in harms way of people who believe differently from us.
More times than I can remember people have asked me when I “knew” my child was gay. I believe a parent “knows” the child is gay when that child tells you they are gay and not a second before.
I’m honored and proud to be a parent of a gay child…I believe the higher powers knew he’d be in safe hands.
Hi Debs — what a wonderful mom you are. And I appreciate your honesty. We all want our children to live a safe, charmed life and it’s hard to let that go. xo
I have an 8yo daughter who is a tomboy to the core. I worry about her being transgender rather than gay. And by “worry” I mean that I worry about the difficulties she’d face. I, too, take whatever opportunities I can to let her know that there’s nothing wrong with people who are gay or transgender. I was thrilled to see Chaz Bono on DWTS, just for that opportunity.
We’re so lucky our children are growing up now and this information is public. Kisses to you and your daughter.
[...] Other parents are too strict, too loose, too close, too far, too young, too old, too horizontal, too vertical, too latitudinal, too longitudinal, too flatulent, too constipated, too slavish, too supercilious, too supercalifragalisticexpialidocious. While Henry and I strike a perfect balance. [...]
[...] believe claiming one’s authentic self should be every human’s birthright. I hope one day very soon “gay rights” will simply be “human rights.” I [...]
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[...] Am I Okay If My Kids Are Gay? [...]
Being GLBT is definitely not a choice.