Why the fear re: gay marriage?
Can anyone help me to understand this video?
I just don't get this. Why are these parents so afraid to talk to their seven year old about gay marriage? If my 6 year old came home from school talking about a book called "King and King", about two princes who married each other, I would consider that a priceless opportunity to talk about homosexuality and heterosexuality--about human sexuality, about safe bodies, about wise choices, etc. etc. Because to me this is a huge difficulty/danger zone for people in general, and the problems/dangers aren't really about homosexuality vs. heterosexuality. The problems are about boundaries, and clear communication, and the long term results of short term choices, and so forth.
I wish my parents, or some caring adult, had been willing to talk openly with me about human sexuality when I was six and seven years old, and when I was 8 and 9 and 10 and 11 and 12. I think such conversations would have prevented a lot of problems for me.
Do you understand this? Can you enlighten me a little. I wish I could sit down with this couple and just ask them lots of questions. It sounds like they are ... afraid about something. I want to know what that is. I'm curious as to whether their fear is justified, and whether it is effectively directed (that is: I wonder if their fear is really about what they think it's about.). They also seem to be under the impression that they can protect their children. But I agree with Dan Allender. We can't protect our children, we can only enstory them. I wish that this couple would focus less on protecting, and more on enstorying. Or maybe they aren't afraid at all--maybe it's something else. They seem like a fairly reasonable, nice couple. I just don't get what they are talking about.
4 comments:
I agree with you my love!
I think these discussions of human sexuality need to consider and honour those whom God has created with sexual traits from both genders. It must be so hard to be a hermaphrodite, or a ferm or a merm, and hear these narrow, black-and-white discussions, and just sometimes feel condemned for being who you are. Likewise a Gay or Lesbian person - why do we humans criticise each other so much when have enormous capacity for LOVE?! I LOVE YOU BENS!!
Gimme some of that homo maths!
This is the kind of hard hitting right wing argument that makes me instantly forgive all the grievances i feel towards the left.
Seren and I just had a wonderful and fascinating conversation, and she told me about this good group: http://www.isna.org/about/emeritus/
I think parents object to their children being taught something that is the very opposite of their values. Parents should of course be talking to their kids about sexuality but that does not mean by default that it has to present homosexuality as just another flavor on the menu. As someone who used to live in MA, my thoughts as I watched this were that there is no way that my kids would have gone to a public school there EVER. There would be so much time spent in damage control contradicting what they had been taught in school that at that point, you just figure you may as well be homeschooling. And that is a shame because I think for young kids esp. there is a lot of value to learning in a group because a lot of what they are learning isn't even academic at all. (I have entirely different thoughts about homeschooling teens but that has much less to do with morality and more to do with the dumbing down of high schools and that many of the smarter kids are just wasting their time...but I digress....)I do not think it is wrong for young adults (and that is what I consider teens: I respect them enough to consider them pretty darn close to adulthood and they should be treated as such) to be exposed to differing points of view and look at things critically and know how to rebut, even if it is only in their own spirit; the secular messages that are being served up today in our relativistic culture. I do not believe in sheltering teenagers so that the first time they encounter someone making bad choices they go off the deep end. BUT, what I object to and I think a lot of Christian parents (and traditional Jewish parents too, I would add) object to is INDOCTRINATING young children at an age where they pretty much believe anything that anyone that they have formed a bond with tells them. That is actually why a lot of these people go into teaching young kids: indoctrinate them while they are young and can't think critically. That isn't how they put it though, because that would sound too nasty and negative. They think they are "influencing people" This sounds all well and good but if you are "influencing' young impressionable children, you better be darn sure that you are right. AND that you are not deliberately overriding the parents wishes because you think you know better than they do.
I truly resent that making homosexuality a perfectly normal option gets classified in with teaching kids to treat others with dignity even if they are wrong. It is something people on all sides of various issues, myself included, could take a lesson in. And it is distinct from the issues themselves. One is not right just because they go about it in a decent way and one is not wrong just because they make a mistake of being an ass about it. Its about the issues themselves, not the emotional baggage.
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