After a day’s work, so much rests on the re-entry into the castle. Will it be all hugs and happiness, or quickly devolve into some kind of parent-child sinkhole, made worse by my exhaustion? So there I was the other night, getting more and more exasperated by my eight-year-old son’s excuse-filled resistance to join me to walk our dog, and then he came up with this whopper: “I’m not going outside in my pajamas. That would be so gay!”
How to parse my reaction? I think I began with a little too much shock and severity in my tone. “What did you say?” I asked, my voice rising. I settled down and tried to explain that it wasn’t nice or fair to say something like that because it makes fun of gay people in a very negative way. To make it more palpable, I reminded him how no one likes to be made fun of, especially for stuff they can’t change like their looks or feelings or anything else.
I undoubtedly didn’t explain it as best I could, but mostly I wanted to send a clear and immediate signal that this was wrong and he shouldn’t say it again. Beyond the words themselves, the prospect of where he got it from was also troubling. Not from my wife nor myself I don’t think. Not from TV I don’t think, though I guess he could have gotten it from Glee, which we watch as a family, with occasional fast-forwarding past parts that seem beyond age-appropriate. Since I never heard him say it before, I’m assuming it was a gift from summer camp as opposed to school, but who knows?
What we know is that eight-year-old boys are already kicking around the idea of gay as something weird and negative.
My wife and I believe that one’s sexual preferences are a normal fact of who one is, and should not be used as a point of discrimination in any way—especially not under the law. So far at least, our conscious messages and modeling to the kids is simply that gay is normal—and in that way, is no big deal.
When my now 12-year-old daughter was four, I remember her asking us if girls can marry each other when they’re older. Apparently it had been a source of debate at the play date with a few other girls.
“Sure, why not?” I answered, briefly and casually, submerging my interest in how she came to the topic. “Sometimes girls marry boys, and sometimes they marry girls. It’s all about who you love.”
The larger political issues could wait until she was older. I just wanted to plant the seeds of normalcy and acceptance and love.
I had hoped that Adam had gotten that message from us too, but apparently some elaboration was in order.
“Dad, can I ask you something?” he asked, after I had slammed him. “What does gay mean?”
Wow! He hadn’t the slightest clue of what was behind the slur—or that he had even said something that could be construed as one.
I overreact at everything, and often unfairly. We still had ourselves a little chat about gay and straight, however. Whatever else is out there, I want him to know how I feel.
–Eric Messinger
