Category Archives: blather

{interlude} What if one of my kids is gay?

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Having not one but two Supreme Court cases discussing issues around same-sex marriage or “gay marriage”, it seemed like a good time to have this chat. I don’t tend to get on my soapbox a lot, but when I do it’s because I really feel the need to say something. [Cases this week: Hollingsworth v Perry and United States v Windsor]

With my 3-1/2yo ds loving running around the house in a skirt – and even asking to wear it out – of course there’s always a question of, “Is this just dress up?” After all, doesn’t skirt-wearing and doll-playing automatically turn a boy gay? Er, no. And even if it did, SO EFFING WHAT?

Boys and girls like to play dress up. It’s utterly insane that girls can dress in “boy” clothes and people call them “tomboys”, while boys who dress in “girl” clothes are automatically labeled as “gay”. Is it because the clothes suggest femininity and any sign of femininity by a male connotes homosexuality? (Try telling that to the strapping lads of Scotland in their lovely kilts!) And since when is “gay” a bad thing? WHAT IS WRONG WITH BEING GAY?

Oh right, there’s NOTHING wrong with being gay. (or bi, or trans, for that matter)

Sure, there are people who have religious arguments against anyone who’s not heterosexual, but these arguments fall apart as you start to work into the basis of their theological structure. If one believes that a specific higher power is infallible and doesn’t make mistakes, then the variety in our society – including in sexual orientation – isn’t a mistake, either. Diversity is not a negative.

It’s completely unclear to me how one person being (or not being) gay harms someone who isn’t gay – especially when these individuals may never come into any contact with each other. Why should the idea of two gay people marrying in California be such a bugaboo for people who live in Utah? The truth is, this whole notion of “eroding traditional marriage” is nothing but complete and utter crap. It’s just a crap argument, period. My marriage to dh isn’t harmed or even remotely affected by gay residents of any state, including our own trailblazing Massachusetts, getting married to each other.

What bothers me so incredibly much about these court cases that have to be run past the Supremes is that you have people essentially arguing that it’s okay to create two classes of citizens: one that can have all the rights that are bestowed to married people and one that cannot. You have a new variant on the “separate but equal” concept espoused in the 1896 case of Plessy v Ferguson (which was overturned in 1954’s Brown v Board of Education). The basic premise of the Plessy decision was a complete fallacy: separate but equal may be separate but it’s never equal.

I heard a snippet tonight on NPR’s “All Things Considered”, where a protestor outside the Supreme Court talked about why gay marriage is a sign that our society is going in the wrong direction. It’s not what The Founders would have wanted, and it’s not what they intended. She’s absolutely right about the last point – the men who founded this country would be shocked by the idea of gay marriage. They’d probably also be having massive heart attacks about having a non-white President and having had female cabinet secretaries, since the documents on which they built our country and the society they designed accepted slavery as a perfectly normal way of life. Women weren’t allowed to vote until the 1900’s. Before we hold up the late 1700’s as a perfect example of how our society was constructed, perhaps we should make sure reflects the values our society has grown and evolved to accept.

And so, I eventually wrap around to the issue at hand: What if one of my kids is gay? What then? What do I do? What do I say?

For me, it’s a pretty easy answer. There are a few things I’d do right off the bat:

1) I would remind them that I love them.

2) I would remind them that I support them.

3) I would give them hugs.

4) I would congratulate and thank them for telling me.

That’s it. There’s no inner conflict for me.

There’s nothing wrong with being gay, just like there’s nothing wrong with not being gay. If I want my kids to be able to grow up in a world that’s even better than the one I was born into, it’s up to me (and dh) to give them the support they need to thrive and succeed. Being accepting of who they are – and reminding them that our love comes unconditionally – is part and parcel of being the kind of parents we want to be.

This isn’t rocket science. Hate isn’t cool. Ignorance isn’t cool. Separate but equal is nothing more than separate and unequal. Our society can only progress toward enlightenment through embracing our diversity. For me, that starts with embracing my kids.

So, regardless of what they may one day say – “Mom, I’m gay!”, “Mom, I’m bi!”, “Mom, I’m trans!”, or even…”Mom, I’m straight!” – I will love my kids and support them. Unconditionally.

TV is not rat poison

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Back when I was pregnant with dd, I spent quite a bit of time on the online discussion boards on BabyCenter. In one sense, this was a bad thing: too many hormonal pregnant women in any confined space (even if it’s online) is still a messload of hormones trapped, waiting to blow. In several other senses, it was a great thing: I got to meet a number of really fantastic women, some of whom I’ve had the good fortune to meet in real life. The women with whom I got along the best were the ones who respected and supported my choices, even when they weren’t 100% in step with their own. They understood that every parent has to choose what they feel is best for their own family.

One argument I recall from those online boards was the vehement opposition some moms had to baby formula. Some even likened it to rat poison, in their vitriolic rants about why it was breast or bust. Of course, formula isn’t rat poison. For some parents, formula is a necessary way to get through until the baby is old enough to be on solids 24/7. While many of them have slightly varying nutritionals, each one has to meet a minimum set of standards to be okay to distributed.

And then we get to TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy recommending no “screen time” for kids under the age of 2, based on the relationship identified between screen time and Body Mass Index (BMI). Medline provides more detailed recommendations about kids just over the age of 2, although there has to be a point at which their recommendations lose their freshness – probably by the time the kids hit their teens (at the latest). They don’t really give a cut-off for “kids”, so the harshest assumption is that they mean for readers to follow those guidelines through adolescence.

I definitely remember having a talk with dh before dd was born, discussing how we’d never be parents who let the TV raise our kids. And really, we do stick to that. So it’s funny that I’m writing this as I’m sitting in the den with ds, with “Cinderella” in the DVD player. There’s a part of me that gave in to the notion of letting the kiddos watch TV, potentially even on a daily basis, without freaking out. What we did to make sure that we could limit our own concerns, since we don’t want the kids to do what I did when I was younger (live on TV and become as sedentary as a turtle).

We bought some DVD’s and we strictly police the amount of time the kids can watch (usually 1 DVD or 1 show), whichever fits the time slot better. We also set up TiVo with season passes for PBS shows, like “Curious George”, “Dinosaur Train” and “The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That!” TV shows without ad breaks for things I don’t want them asking for – whether it be toys or unhealthy foods – just bother me something fierce. The joy of TiVo, especially with the power of ON DEMAND, is that there’s always something I can put on if they get a quick half-hour or a full-hour of time when we’re okay with them watching something.

Do I let the kid watch TV when I’m not in the room? Sure. If they’ve been good all through dinner and they’re ready for bed (in pajamas, teeth brushed, etc.), I’ll let them watch a half-hour show while I’m doing dishes. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I know the shows they put on because I put them on for them, and we don’t both queueing up things we have concerns about. Stuff with excess violence or ads automatically makes the “DO NOT SHOW” list, in our house.

Now, I know I can’t protect them from everything, but there are some things I don’t think are worth getting crazy about. TV, in limited quantities, provides them with an outlet to dream and to learn. Especially with the shows from PBS, there’s always some kind of educational message explicitly or subtly built into the delivery. Some of the other shows that the kids have taken to more recently come from Disney Jr. and were featured at a breakfast I attended at BlogHer ’12 – “Sofia the First” and “Doc McStuffins”. Watching these two on ON DEMAND reduces any potential for ads while still providing the kids with access to shows that have life lessons embedded in them.

At some point, I’m going to have to introduce them to the stuff that was my life blood when I was growing up, Warner Brothers cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny, the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and all the rest of the WB pantheon. I can’t imagine kids growing up without seeing all the silliness that involves anvils dropping on people’s heads with no real-world consequences.

And when it comes to movies, pretty much Disney is my go-to. The movies tend to be 2hrs or less (such as ds’ current favorite – “Cinderella”), and while each may have a scary moment, they aren’t typically violent or actually scary. Kids need to be given some measure of scare at some point, some challenge to that portion of their neural immune system, so they aren’t turned into complete fraidy cats later in life.

So sure, we limit their TV to typically no more than 1hr a day, 2hrs max (unless someone is sick, in which case all bets are off). And we limit what they can see by strictly controlling which shows are available to them. But we don’t keep them from TV, and I think that’s perfectly fine. It really isn’t rat poison, unless you let it be, and I don’t feel like any less of a responsible parent for letting them enjoy the fruits of someone else’s creative labors…with limits.

Post-election: tripping down memory lane

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Twenty years ago, I voted in my first election. It was the fall of 1992, and I was a junior at Penn State who’d found my niche in Political Science. Then-President George H.W. Bush had come to campus to campaign, and I was one of many who stood outside the penned in area, NOT PLEASED to find him there. I’d grown up in a solidly blue household in Suburban MD, just outside of DC, and as soon as I could register to vote, I did. I got my absentee ballot and I voted in the general election for the man who I’d supported in the primary – William Jefferson Clinton.

On election night, I sat in a large lecture hall with a number of other Poli Sci students watching election returns on a giant screen. We had snacks and drinks and we settled in for a long evening. When the election was called for Clinton, the majority of us left the building completely exhausted but totally elated. Not everyone supported Bill Clinton, of course, and I was friends with other students in the same program who supported President (H.W.) Bush. There are a couple of things that are interesting to me about that time.

First off, I was so excited that I got to vote. I couldn’t understand my fellow students who chose not to vote, who claimed that their vote didn’t count. If nothing else, I think the 2000 election taught us that it’s completely naive and foolish to claim that your “vote doesn’t count”. That’s just nonsense. I couldn’t wait to vote, and I still – to this day – don’t get the idea of just not bothering at all. OK, sure, the people who were hit hard by Superstorm Sandy that don’t know where their polling place is or who have more pressing concerns, like how to get through their day alive…they get a pass from me. But the others? I still don’t get it.

Second, Bill Clinton got in on the strength of the youth vote, and I was proud to be a part of that. We “rocked the vote” back in 1992, and that movement clearly had an impact on the election twenty years later, where the youth helped power President Obama to a second term. The higher emergence of other constituencies, such as Latino voters, also clearly had a positive impact on President Obama’s vote count. I feel like something changed in 1992, where the youth voice was suddenly IMPORTANT in a way that it hadn’t been in quite some time. I think that just happened again, with the youth and other constituencies outside the standard older, white male vote.

Third, and perhaps more importantly, we used to be able to have conversations and arguments where people eventually changed their minds or were willing to agree to disagree. I remember a time back in 1991, when I was having an argument before one of my Poli Sci classes with a fellow student and the other students were ready to start jumping in between us. Sitting in our desk chairs, we both looked at the others quizzically, and the interlopers explained that they were afraid we were about to start throwing punches. Sure, our voices rose a little, but that was it. Both he and I calmly told our fellow students, “We’re having a political discussion. We don’t agree. We’re allowed to not agree with each other and then argue it out.” They looked at us, dumbfounded, unsure how a clearly Democratic girl and Republican guy could A) have this type of discussion and B) still be friends. He and I ended up being friends for quite some time, united by our willingness to have this type of refreshing discourse. You’re never really challenged by people who only ever agree with you, and we both forced each other to defend our positions, confirm that we had solid reasoning for them, and be willing to stand firm on the things we believed in.

If you think about it, it’s never the easy times that really shape who you are. It’s always the adversity, no matter how small, that tests your faith and your commitment and shows whether or not you have the strength to survive. He and I helped shape each other’s ability to survive, and we strengthened each other, and I see such a terrible lack of this at the national stage it’s not even funny.

OK – so we made it through the seemingly never-ending season of robocalls, forest-destroying mailings, and blood-boiling TV ads. The election’s over. Now, wouldn’t it be nice if the people we elected actually put aside their own personal agendas and worked things out with each other LIKE ADULTS because that’s what we elected (and pay!) them to do? I’d hate to think that the mature actions of two college kids can’t be echoed and imitated by people twice that age.

I figure that, in forty years, I’ll probably be one of those old biddies at the polls, checking people in and giving them their ballots. If I didn’t have to work, I would’ve been outside the polls with a sign yesterday, rooting on the people I wanted to win. This stuff gets my blood flowing. With the election over, I’d like to see it keep flowing and not turn to boiling. Let’s hope the adults will rule the day. It certainly would be a nice change of pace.