Thursday, May 23, 2013

What are you teaching our children?

Overall, my trip to see the children was amazing. It was a long time coming and far too short, but it was the high point of my year thus far. Legal shenanigans and disputes aside, I have a pressing question: What are you teaching our children?

You squashed what I'm sure would have been a very flavorful and extended debate between myself and your resident male over gay marriage. Good for you, because a conversation like that is best not had in front of the children. Or is it?

I'm all for respect for the planet, communal ideology, living within your means, etc., but what of politics? What of equality? I honestly don't care what profession those little monsters take when they reach adulthood. I have my preferences, but first and foremost, I'm for their happiness. One thing I can't bring myself to imagine is them growing into people I can't stomach.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - hate starts at home. Whether it's against nationality, ethnicity, or sexuality, it has to be taught. "We have to toughen him up a bit." What if you don't? What if our son is exactly who he's supposed to be? What if he's gay? I'm not suggesting that he is, and I have no preference in the matter, but what if he is? How will his upbringing affect his psyche? And how do you suppose you'll toughen him up? I was beaten - not spanked, but beaten - as a child and it may have "toughened" me physically, but I'm creeping up on thirty and I'm still very emotionally weak.

Send them to whatever parochial schools you want, and teach them whatever superstitious nonsense you want, but please don't teach them hate. Don't teach them that two people's love is immoral or wrong. Asserting that any type of love is wrong is exactly that - it's wrong. No color or gender should get in the way of honest and heartfelt love. In a world where genocide and war are spreading like the flu on a submarine, is two men or women being happy and expressing their affection that threatening?

I used to think we were on the same page in all of this, but the lines have blurred now. Don't force the same childhood I had on our kids. Please. Don't program them to feel disgust when they see the picture up top. The only emotion being felt should be that of joy and admiration. Joy that we are in a time where people are free to be what they were born to be and not have to hide in unnecessary shame. Admiration of a feeling that so few of us are lucky enough to find.