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Welcome to the third annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day. If you click that graphic you'll be taken to the round up of participating blogs (which will be updated all day by the fabulous Dana of Mombian.)
Now that the easy part is out of the way I'm stuck with trying to figure out what my Blogging for LGBT Families Day post should look like this year. I don't do that whole "activist" thing very well because I'm a moderate conservative sort. I also don't do mommy blogging very well because I'm not the sentimental sort. Also, I blog about my family all of the time so it seems pretty redundant to do it again and call it a special "Blogging for LGBT Families" post.
So, what to say? I have to say something because it is important that LGBT Families blog together. It is important that people who support LGBT Families blog alongside of us. It's important because there are people who think it's ok to dress their kids in shirts like this one.
It's important because it isn't unusual to attend PRIDE festivals and find 10 year old children holding signs that say "AIDS - doing the job the government should do." It's important because children shouldn't have to defend their families.
We try to keep them away from the opinion pieces in the local paper, the signs on the church that say "Homosexuality is a sin. The wages of sin is death." We try to help them when they come home from school with stories about this kid calling that kid a faggot. So the LAST thing I'm going to do is INTENTIONALLY put them in a situation where they're going to have to either sit there and take it or defend themselves and their family constantly, from kids and adults. They're going to have enough of that to deal with when they're older.
Children shouldn't be frustrated at school on Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Then, yesterday, MG came home with a partly-finished "book" of pictures and writing for Mother's Day. When I glimpsed it in her backpack and coyly suggested that she might not want me to see it right away, she didn't scurry off to hide it until Sunday as I'd expected; instead, she flung it angrily onto the couch, then into the recycling, and started crying about how much she hated her teacher, how mean the teacher was, how the teacher yelled at her about not being able to finish her book, how the teacher didn't let her do two books or two projects but said she could do one for Mama for Mother's Day and one for me at Father's Day, and how she never wanted to look at that book, never never never ever again, how she knew it wasn't my fault but she was so upset she just HAD to yell and cry.
Children's emotional (and physical) well-being shouldn't be put in jeopardy in rural West Virginia.
So back to the question at hand, Will my being gay negatively affect my children? And the answer is….it might. And I know that. If we lived in gay Utopia off somewhere in La La land it might not. But I realize we live in RURAL America where bible thumpers and rednecks collide. Am I discreet? You bet your life. The community wouldn’t have any idea at all if the ex- father-in-law hadn’t spread a bunch of rumors about me. But he did and it is out there and the kids at some point may hear something from friends at school. And that thought distresses me. Not because of what people may say of me but what they may say to the kids.
I'm not a huge fan of GLBTQs who spend a lot of time saying "we're just like you!" but when it comes to families, we really are just like you - except some of you are teaching your children hatred and our families bear the brunt of that.
Check out the round up of people Blogging for LGBT Families, leave some comments that will help block some of the hate we're exposed to every day. Blog this topic, even if you aren't queer. No haters please.
~~Denise
Flamingo House Happenings
