NO ONE TEACHES YOU HOW TO LIVE: Mark Barton replies to Eve

Eve: The sons say they had no one to teach them how to be men. The daughters say they had no one to teach them what to look for in a man, what role a man should play in the family.

Mark B.: I keep seeing the importance of role models emphasized. I think it's oversold, sometimes to an unhealthily chauvinistic degree, and I think it doesn't imply anything about SSM without some rather dubious auxiliary assumptions, but those aspects have been hashed out already.

Let me instead ask, what about role models for gay and lesbian kids? (Note that I'm using "gay and lesbian" in the mainstream sense of same-sex attracted, not the conservative Protestant sense of in the habit of having same-sex sex.)

Of course, the vast majority of gay and lesbian kids will continue to be born to straight parents in opposite-sex relationships, and there's not much we can do about that, but then neither is there much we need to. Growing up with straight parents is inevitably a little difficult for gay and lesbian kids, because they're not going to have the close-up example of a healthy same-sex relationship to draw on later. But just as the analogous problem for straight kids is oversold, it's by no means necessarily a big problem, and it's certainly not a problem worth ripping gay and lesbian kids away from their biological
parents for. What is a big problem is if visible examples of healthy same-sex relationships are also lacking in the surrounding community.

And not just healthy same-sex relationships, respected healthy same-sex relationships. Respected to the same degree that the relationships accessible to their straight siblings are respected, including being eligible for state endorsement via civil marriage.

I'm mindful here of my partner's family reunion. It was a huge gathering, including every sort of biracial couple and three gay couples. And in the middle of it was a girl of about fourteen, who was a friend of my partner's first cousin once removed. She was lesbian, and miserable, because she'd been getting a frosty reaction at home. And the cousin wanted her to see that life, and families, could be better than that.

Now the official Catholic and also the conservative Protestant position is that this is the whole point. Same-sex relationships are not just second-class, they're "gravely immoral," and the sooner gay and lesbian
kids learn that the better. The last thing we should be doing is offering role models of same-sex relationships. So I'm curious as to what extent Eve or Maggie would defend this.
posted by Eve at 7:38 PM VOTE

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