What Are We Teaching Our Children?

Maggie Gallagher, President of NOM (National Organization for Marriage), was on Lou Dobbs the other night along with Tobias Wolff.  The topic was gay marriage.  One of the points that she, as well as all others who seek to deny gays and lesbians equality under the law, was making was that if we allow gay people to marry, it will have to be taught in schools.  Children, innocent, wide-eyed children will have homosexuality taught to them.  To be clear, no one is talking about this.  It's a tactic used to stir fear.  But it rarely gets examined.  Why is it such a potent assertion?  Why does the idea of teaching our children homosexuality create fear?  

There is a lot packed into this statement that lies just beneath the surface.  I want to dissect the statement and get to the core of that fear.  I also want to look at how destructive those ideas are; destructive that they are even presented as legitimate differences of opinion.

The first point I want to make is that fear of teaching our children about homosexuality is based on the notion that there are no homosexual children.  Somehow, when we talk about teaching our children in this debate, the gay ones get excluded.  They don't exist.  Following this logic, it's only reasonable to conclude that at some point we choose to become gay.  And continuing down that road, on the morality meter, the choice to be gay lies somewhere between destructive and downright evil.  In swoops Maggie and her ilk to protect protect protect - if we don't teach it, if we don't plant that seed in their heads, it will cease to exist.  And while the opponents of gay equality claim to be our friends and wish us well (albeit without all of the civil rights protections and responsibilities that they enjoy), it is a false claim.  Their goal is not simply to enshrine discrimination into our legal code, it is to eradicate homosexuality.

I'm here to say that gay children do exist.  I know this for a fact.  I was a gay child.  I knew I was gay as far back as I have memory.  I knew it before I had words for it.  I knew it before it was a particularly sexual thought.  I have been gay my entire life.  That includes childhood.  I might have found some comfort had someone taught me a little bit about it.  But in the 70's and 80's that was not an option.  I found myself very alone and very scared.

Why alone and scared?  I learned what Maggie Gallagher is teaching.  She spends sleepless nights worried about what these radical gay activists seeking equality in all civil matters are teaching our children.  I'm worried about what she and all of her peers who spew hate and call it love are teaching our children.

If I were a gay child today, these are a few things I might have learned this week alone.

I would have learned that to be gay, or even have to portray a gay person in a movie, is upsetting, disturbing and forces people to physically move away from you.  I assume for fear of catching it. 

I would have learned that homosexuality is akin to graffiti.  Funny, right?  Until you read the whole article which goes on to state that "both are warning signs that our society is very sick indeed, and may be entering its final crisis."  If you're a gay child, you've just been called sick and blamed for society's ills.  You're twelve.

Had I been in Steven Anderson's church in Tempe, AZ, I would have learned that homosexuals should be put to death.  TO DEATH.  But that's just one point in his sermon.  As you listen to him, keep in mind that his website describes his church as a "young, family-oriented church."

I might have learned that God sends tornados as punishment for homosexuality.

As the debate over whether gay people deserve the same set of rights as straight people rages on I want to make one more point.  The mere fact that the Maggie Gallaghers of the world are allowed to go to the news outlets and speak their opinion is destructive.  Her views incite hate and fear and have been repudiated by science over and over again.  I don't believe in censorship, but I also don't believe that all opinions are created equal.  I don't hear anyone on t.v. being given equal time to preach that the world is flat.  I also don't hear anyone on t.v. claiming that we should revert to slavery.  Using the same ideas that the opponents of marriage equality use, ideas of tradition and the bible, I could easily argue that slavery should be reinstated.  Indeed, the argument that the bible condones slavery was used by anti-abolitionists.  However, it has no place in our national discourse.

Neither does Maggie Gallagher.

The next time you see or hear untruths and hate; the next time see or hear someone "protecting our children," imagine that you are 6 or 7 or 13 or 17.  And imagine that you're watching CNN, listening to that debate with your parents.  And you know that you're gay.  And you know that you can't change it.  

What exactly have you been taught?