Potential article in HuffPo
Gay Voices in the not-so-distant future
Deconstructing Straight Parenting Privilege & Gay Adults Rearing Gay Youth, by Charles K. Hornmeister, Ph.D.
The systemic homophobia that paints gay people as insatiable sexual predators leads me to preface my essay: the gay community does
not condone pederasty or pedophilia. Centuries of painting us as degenerates has lead me to lead-off with this statement. Sexual contact with a person who has not yet reached their sexual majority is not consenual and is sexual assault. Period.
That disclaimer aside, one thing that pains me as a gay man is the ignorance of hetero parents. Gay kids don't get the privilege usually of being born to gay parents, they are born to -- at best -- clueless heteros who most likely have never questioned their unearned privilege of being straight. Parents can love their gay kids all they want, but love alone is not enough to understand the pain of a gay person in an all-too-straight world.
While America has come a long way -- and an even longer road lies ahead -- previous generations of gay people had to fight for our rights. Just to be seen, to be recognized and celebrated for our mere existence -- like straight people! -- was fought tooth and nail by gay people from Stonewall to
Lawerence v. Texas to current debates on gay parenting. These generations of gay people are strong, fierce and defiant as they have stood down the rank ignorance of religious bigots, closeted homophobes and the general heteroracist patriarchy that viciously oppresses anybody who isn't a white, heterosexual man.
As such, it should go without saying that these elder statespeople of the gay community have a vested and moral interest in gay youth, the people who will take up their mantles as revolutionaries and gender pioneers. They fought for visibility, they fought for rights. Now the fight shifts to the rearing of gay youth.
One of the most stubborn buttresses of heterosexual privilege is the privilege to raise gay youth. Yes, babies aren't born with little rainbow flag stickers proclaiming, "I'm gay and proud of it!," but it is painfully obvious that it is straight people who make gay babies. Since privilege blinds itself to those who have it, straight people haven't spent much time in their life obsessing over their sexual identity. When a gay child comes out to their straight parents, the straight parents lack the appropriate tools to empathize with their child due to heterosexual privilege.
Enter gay adults. Adults who have come to terms with their gender identity. Adults who are not blinded by the crushing weight of heterosexual privilege. In sum, adults who can care because they were forced to care because of heterosexual supremacy.
Social conversations on gay youth and their relations to older gay people needs to shift soon and dramatically. While a hug from your clueless hetero Mom might feel good, if she has never dated a woman openly, she is blinded to the emotions her daughter or son might be feeling. If the child is a daughter, she needs to talk to a gay woman, a woman who has been out and proud for many years of her life.
In New York or L.A., gay youth have the privilege to join organizations like
Gay Queens Empower Gay Princesses and
The Girl To Woman Gay Alliance aimed at erasing straight parenting privilege by providing gay youth adult mentors. While these organizations are important tools to dismantle heterosexual gender norms, they are insufficient because most every gay child does not come a supportive home and many do not live in large, progressive cities.
Thus, schools and state agencies should be the primary vehicles for gender transformation of straight parenting privilege. Mandatory inclusion of gay parents in youth literature, sex-positive education starting -- at the latest -- the general onset of puberty and stand-by gender officers who are versed in feminist gender theory and can handle any issues of homosexuality, bisexuality and any other gender-related concern. Compassion and love alone are insufficient vehicles to revolutionize heterogendered society, education and empowerment are the keys to this car, but not the final piece to cure this ill.
Gay adults need to be brought into directly in gay youth's lives. While tolerance and education are paramount, the final key is gay adults co-parenting gay youth with straight parents. Much like how the state comes along side parents to rear their young, gay people need to brought in as another type of co-parent. A gay teenage girl cannot be taught the norms around lesbian sex by her mother, much less her father who most likely objectifies lesbians in his pornography preferences.
I've danced around this a bit, but what true equality, empowerment and tolerance look like is gay people lifting up gay people. Straight parents can and should love and celebrate their gay children, but they are insufficient to reduce stigma around homosexuality and gender non-conformity. As family norms evolve, most likely gay youth will transition away from their straight parents when they come out as gay. Gay collectives might crop up in cities where gay children and teenagers can live away from their heterosexual parents and learn from actual gay people who understand them in a way their parents never will.
While my last suggestion may never come to pass, straight parents need to understand that gay adults -- perhaps their age -- will enter their child's lives and engage in parenting they are too privileged to do. This has been going on for centuries -- with heterosexuals pretending we are sodomizing their children -- and needs to be brought into the light of society.
Instead of assuming pedophilia, we need to assume the goodness of homosexuals. I shouldn't even have to shine the light on the bigotry of worrying over pedophilic homosexuals in 2017, but the norms and contours of heterosexual privilege are complex and highly resistant to deconstruction.
The oppression of homosexuals leads to introspection on gender and sexuality that results in a more complete and compassionate person. In an ironic twist, homophobia leads gay people to be better people than heterosexuals. It is doubly sad the straight people project what they perceive as perverse sexual desires onto gay people while denying our superior insight into morality and power.
This is a final and delicate point, but homosexuality can lead to our questioning about consent and age. Age of consent laws are based out of conservative and bigoted notions of who gets to have sex and fall in love and who does not. Bigots immediately retort that we are seeking to have sex with young boys or girls, but we are not. We respect our own but we also know what it was like to be a young teenage boy or girl with eyes for our teacher or friend of a parent. Professionals like teachers should never engage their clients as anything more than clients, but gay people understand, deeply, what it feels like to desire somebody you can't have.
To be sure, the complexity of gender and sexuality won't be solved in our lifetimes. Yet, we can slowly work towards an understanding of straight parenting privilege and empower the brave gay adults who came before gay youth. We can and should connect gay adults with gay youth and start to tug at the strictures of heterosexual parenting. We can challenge norms on parenting and foster more compassion and tolerance. We can also loosen conservative notions of sexual repression based out of fear, intolerance and bigotry. It starts with straight people sitting down, shutting up and letting gay people lead the conversation. It needs to start now.