Oh Noes! Little Kids Might Learn Gay People Exist!

So, I recently came upon a Family Research Council video from 2008. Yes, it’s a bit dated, but I watched it anyway. The entire thing was Tony Perkins talking with parents of two young elementary school students (one in kindergarten, one in second grade) whose teachers used age-appropriate materials to teach children about gay and lesbian individuals as part of coursework on diversity.

Perkins talked about how “confusing” it is for young children to be introduced to “homosexuality,” and the parents spoke tearfully of suddenly having to teach their children about the sin of homosexuality at an earlier age than they had hoped. One of the children had been read the book King and King, which apparently is a terrible horrible thing to read to a child. I should know, because I’ve read it to my own 5-year-old daughter Sally, and—she wasn’t bothered in the least. I was the one that found meaning and emotion in the book. She didn’t really care, so long as it was an entertaining story.

Parents of young children know that sometimes you have to tell a child something more than once before it actually clicks. I’ve read Sally several other books like King and King, and I’ve told her that sometimes boys fall in love with boys and girls fall in love with girls, and we’ve had gay friends over. But I think sometimes it can take a while for things to really sink in or be real.

Last week Sean, Sally, and I were watching the Torchwood episode where Jack Harkness and his sidekick Tosh get stuck in WWII London. Toward the end of the episode, right before leaving to return to the present, Jack and a WWII military captain exchange a passionate kiss. Sally was taken aback. I don’t think she’d seen a gay kiss before.

“A boy kissing a boy?” Sally said as she looked up in surprise. “That’s strange!”

Sally’s response was not one of judgement, and she wasn’t scarred by the incident. I suppose you could say that Sally was “confused”—or at least, momentarily confused. What she saw suggested that she needed to shift her frame of reference on who can kiss who. There are plenty of other points where she’ll change her frame of reference as she grows—she’ll eventually figure out that there’s a correlation between not putting her shoes where they belong and not being able to find them when we’re getting ready to head out the door, for instance.

Children are constantly revising their frame of reference as they learn new things, things that either confirm or contradict their current frame of reference. Children are like little scientists, gathering data and forming hypotheses about the world. Evangelicals want to keep certain data away from children because they are worried about the hypotheses children may draw from this data before they have been thoroughly taught the evangelical way of forming hypotheses—i.e., rejecting data that conflicts with preconceived notions about God and the Bible and filtering all data through the screen of the Bible before considering it.

Let’s be clear here. Learning that LGBTQ individuals exist, form their own families and communities, and live rich, meaningful lives will not scar children. Seriously. They won’t freak out. They’ll be fine. It’s the parents who seem to have the freaking out problem. If you watch Perkins’ video, you will notice that the parents were horrified that their children had learned about homosexuality, but that it doesn’t sound like their children were bothered by it at all.

These parents are viewing it as a sin issue while the school approaches it as a diversity issue. The school says “LGBTQ individuals exist, and are a part of our diverse society.” These parents hear “gather around children, so we can teach you some fascinating new ways to sin and be perverted!” For these parents, homosexuality is in the same category with unspeakable sexual crimes, such as pedophilia or bestiality. When the school tries to teach diversity, these parents hear them shoveling visions of sin into innocent young minds.

These parents would rather teach their children about the topic a different way. I was homeschooled in a conservative evangelical family. By the time I was seven, I knew full well what “homosexuality” was—it meant men “kissing on” other men, which was an abomination and made my mother shudder to even think about. As I grew, I was taught that gay and lesbian individuals are miserable sinners searching without success for meaning in life—meaning they can only find in Jesus. I was taught to tie homosexuality to drugs, AIDS, promiscuity, suicide, and crime. I didn’t knowingly meet my first gay person until I was in college, and when I did I stared as though I’d finally encountered a dangerous, demented, psychotic vampire or werewolf.

Learning that LGBTQ individuals exist does not scar children. Having to later unlearn two decades of lies about LGBTQ individuals just might.

I want to finish this post by opening the floor to stories—stories about how your children, other children you know, or you yourself as children learned about LGBTQ individuals. At what age, in what manner, and with what response? Let’s counter scare tactics with experiences.