Happy National Coming Out Day. Much love to all the people in my life who have come out or supported someone who has.
You may have heard about the brouhaha at Scary Mommy's, where she published Texan Mama's guest post, "Is Gay Ok?" In it, Texan Mama talked about her concerns about her son's 4th grade teacher being a lesbian. The post is not hateful and this part resonated with me, "This post is not about what I’m going to DO about who my child is exposed to; it’s about how I FEEL about the people my child is exposed to. It’s also my inner monologue, bubbling out onto the blog page."
I was surprised that any part of the post resonated with me, as Texan Mama is a conservative Christian who doesn't even have cable, let alone gay friends and my kids like to watch RuPaul's Drag Race with me while asking if they can be in the wedding if my cousin marries his boyfriend. So, suffice to say, Texan Mama and I are not even in the same book about gay people.
But I thought the post was really about protecting or exposing your kids to stuff you don't like. And I responded to that, because we have certain family members who sometimes say things that I would rather my children didn't hear or even know exist. No one at all has responded to my comment.
Every comment on the post has been about how Texan Mama needs to accept gay people or homeschool her kids or how gay people are bad. There's even a big tangent on whether being gay is a choice. It's an interesting discussion, but it seems kind of pointless. No one is going to suddenly read one of the well-reasoned comments and change their minds - if that were possible, gay couples could marry and adopt in EVERY state by now.
This morning, I read the wonderful response at Pajamas and Coffee, Gay Is Better Than Ok. While it did provide lots more well-reasoned "stop being anti-gay" arguments, the main point was the author questioning whether Scary Mommy should have run the post at all. As she rightly pointed out, how would we have interpreted it if the post had said, "Is Being Jewish Ok?" or "Is Being Black Ok?"
I am torn. On the one hand, I don't like the idea of providing more space for the "gay is bad/scary/immoral/to be avoided" agenda. On the other hand, I found the post not to be so much anti-gay as so much dealing with what your kids are exposed to. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who read it that way, but in that vein I think it should have been posted. Because in our media-saturated, red vs. blue era our kids are going to be exposed to a lot of stuff we don't like and we're all going to have to learn how to deal with it.
What do you think?
12 comments:
hm, commenting w/o reading the original can be dangerous, but I'm risking it....I think if it was posted in the mindset of "what we expose our kids to" it is a hard world we expose any kid to. Maybe that is why I did homeschool my kids so long. not that I did not "want them exposed" necessarily, but that I wanted to be the voice who talked to them about what they were exposed to. meaning that I wanted our family's values heard while they were young and then when they were exposed to "these things" (whatever "these things" are) they can hear where we stand/come from and they can also see where others stand/come from. there is a lot we have to deal with, maybe those things differ from place to place, ( I am closer to Texan Mama's world than yours) but it is important that we talk honestly w/ our kids and help them learn from everything they are experiencing. no matter where a kid goes to school, there are people and situations they have to learn to deal with. I am glad that mom is working through her feelings so she can address the situation in a self-controlled, factual way w/ her kids.
@silken, You are exactly right.
@Texan Mama, Thanks for coming by when you must be feeling kind of overwhelmed. I don't blame you for avoiding a lot of the comments - I kept scrolling through looking for comments about the parenting aspect and I didn't find one. So sad. But thank you for putting your thoughts out there.
The world has become such a complicated and at some times and ugly place. i am all for talking to my kids and answering any and all of their questions. I do protect them from certain issues when possible like death and certain tragedies but as far as homosexuality or sexuality of any kind i believe in being open and honest and accepting.
I had friends growing up who were "questionable" and have since come out but they were my friends then and they are my friends now.
As the mother of a relatively successful 17 year old i attribute our successfull relationship to the fact that we talk to eachother ALL THE TIME! Do it! It will pay off in the end.
@Jersey Girl Gets Real, I love your advice - and will try to take it.
@Audra, Thank you for sharing - and for your great attitude.
Helpful blog, bookmarked the website with hopes to read more!
I just signed up to your blogs rss feed. Will you post more on this subject?
Greetings, this is a genuinely absorbing web blog and I have cherished studying many of the content and posts contained on the web site, keep up the outstanding work and desire to read a good deal more stimulating articles in the future.
This is such a complicated topic. I was sent to schools that did not share my family's values / culture and it both opened my eyes, and gave me a lot of grief as I struggled to fit in. For example, I had been raised by atheist parents who had never really exposed me to any spirituality or religion, but then at 8 years old I went to a Christian school. I remember being baffled that my classmates actually believed in God when there was no proof. I also remember one time in Grade 5 when I questioned my fundamentalist teacher about Noah's Ark, genuinely puzzled as to how the whole thing worked, 'because wouldn't there have been inbreeding and mutants?' She took it as me being a smart-arse and I got in trouble for it.
It was tough, because when you're very young, I think it's very hard to fit in with children or a school that holds very different assumptions and values from those you've been taught.
But as to whether it's a good thing to expose your children to other values, I respect my parents more for being open to me finding my own way. I didn't much warm to religion the entire time I was at school and uni, but more recently I have come to find a lot more value in it when it comes to questions of love, life, and community. I now consider myself a non-denominational Christian... something I doubt I would have come to believe in had I not been exposed to Christian ideas at school. I also think if you really are Christian you respect that every individual has to find their own relationship with Jesus - if you do it for them then it's meaningless. Isn't that what the prodigal son is all about?
I understand Scary Mama's position in terms of the idea of wanting to shape your child's environment to raise them a certain way. But the way she wants to shape that environment makes me sad. She wants to teach her children that gay people don't exist, and where they do exist they ought to be excluded, as such persons must have nothing to offer her child as a role model. Not once does she discuss whether the teacher in question is kind, compassionate, a good teacher, or how she approaches communicating values and ethics in the class room. She sees everything through the lens of her fear of homosexuality. It will be very sad if her child grows up to be gay, to know his mother will see that as a negative quality above all her other positive qualities.
(By the way, I really like your blog. I found it through the Top 50 Mom Blogs at Babble, and it is one of my favourites so far. I have just started doing a blog myself, if you are interested - http://gulliblenewparent.blogspot.com/)
I just signed up to your blogs rss feed. Will you post more on this subject?
@Texan Mama, Thanks for coming by when you must be feeling kind of overwhelmed. I don't blame you for avoiding a lot of the comments - I kept scrolling through looking for comments about the parenting aspect and I didn't find one. So sad. But thank you for putting your thoughts out there.
Post a Comment