Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 19:38:37 -0500 (EST) From: John Wesley Luther Subject: Happy V-Day! (fwd) A friend forwarded this to me and it is timely, has nothing to do with abortion, and only minimally touches on Republicans. Happy V-day! John Wesley *kiss* MOTHERING - A CHILD'S INSIGHT ABOUT GAY LOVE by Fern Kupfer. (Fern Kupfer is a novelist and writing professor at Iowa State University.) It was a February more than a decade ago that my daughter was reading aloud the Valentine messages listed in our local paper. She said, "Hey, Mom, is Gerald ever a girl's name?" I told her I didn't think so. Why? There she showed me - listed amid the cupids and poems in lacy hearts: To David. Happy Valentine's Day. I Love You. Gerald. Well, I offered, perhaps David and Gerald were brothers. Or friends joking around. Or maybe, David and Gerald were gay. There was no giggling into her hand, no puzzled look. Gabi knew about homosexuality. I had told her a few years before when she was in kindergarten. Kindergarten, you might say! Seems awfully young to talk about such a difficult topic. But it wasn't at all - not when I recall the moment. Three generations of my family were watching television and suddenly there it was - the "teachable moment" as we say in the education biz. There was a commercial asking to help save the children from the menace of homosexuality. Only the "H" word was not used. The voice-over simply asked that we help save the children and the schools from "people like these." On the screen were marchers from a Gay Pride parade - this particular clip showed men in garish makeup and costume. The police were holding back an angry crowd. "Why are those people so upset?" asked my daughter. It was not the flamboyantly dressed men who caught her attention but the hostile throng surrounding them. "They don't like the people in the parade," I said. "Who are the people in the parade?" Gabi asked. My explanation came as naturally as if she had asked about a Memorial Day parade of veterans. "Because the men walking together are gay. These men love each other and like to hug and kiss and be with each other in the way that Daddy and I like to hug and kiss and be with each other." "You mean like Judith and Anna?" Gabi asked. I was astonished that a 6-year-old had made the leap to two middle-aged Midwestern schoolteachers, whose home Gabi had been in only once. She recalled, too, that Judith and Anna had lots of cats and had given us a batch of chocolate-chip cookies. "Yes, like Judith and Anna," I said. "The way Judith and Anna love each other makes some people upset." Gabi looked confused. "What is it you don't understand?" I prodded. "Well, what I don't understand . . ." she began, her lip puffed out in concentration, "is why?" "Why what?" "Why would loving someone make anybody else mad?" Why indeed, I've thought over the years since. Since our cousin Jenny came out. Since one of the best teachers in the English department where I work is gay. Since two businessmen in our town adopted children who would have otherwise languished in a South American orphanage. There are some people who lump homosexuals together with child molesters, exhibitionists and garden-variety perverts. From this perspective homosexuals can pay taxes, but that's about it. They should not be found around our schools, our military, our ministry, our public restrooms. Others see homosexual behavior as not exactly criminal, but unnatural and sinful - and with God on your side, it doesn't sound as mean to deny others their civil rights. Then there's probably most of the middling population of heterosexual America: mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, colleagues and coworkers, moderate conservatives and uncomfortable liberals. Their version goes something like this: Whatever homosexuals do in the privacy of their own homes is all right . . . if it's kept strictly private, I don't see that it's anyone else's business as long as gay people are discreet. . . Ironically, it's this "don't-ask-don't-tell" view that's probably most confusing to children. For what does this example teach? That it's fine if we're uncomfortable about something to pretend that it doesn't exist? The thing is, whom you have sex with is not only what it means to be gay. Being gay also defines who sits across from you at dinner, whom you take your walks around the block with, whom you send valentines to. And "coming out" has less to do with sexual activity than it does to say to the world: "This is who I really am." To be gay means saying to well-meaning Aunt Helen, when she asks for the umpteenth time if you've found the right girl yet: "I'm not planning on finding the right girl - I date men." Coming out means that a coworker brings her female companion to the office Christmas party if everyone else is bringing a date. Being homosexual in America - unless you live within a cloistered gay community - means living so very "discreetly" that you end up living a lie. And that, for anyone, is a lousy way to live. Afraid for your job, your home, your safety. Having to "protect" your family from your secret life - as if you were a bank embezzler or a neo-Nazi. We owe it to our children to let them know that people are different in many ways, by choice or design, and differences are to be respected. Keeping gay people in the closet also keeps our children in the dark. And, oh, we do them no favor by nourishing the meanness that grows in those unlighted places.