Teen Sexuality: Hard Truths and Warm Love

I’m very pleased today to bring you a guest post by Lori Hahn, who has blogged at Hahn at Home for several years, and is now also a co-editor of the new GLBT blog Our Big Gayborhood.

Lori writes below of teen sexuality—an area in which I have no expertise as a parent. I’m grateful for hers.

I’ve marveled over the past few years as I grew my three beautiful, loving, delightful multi-racial adopted kids through their junior high years and then high school years, where one is gone and two are closing in on that mortarboard and tassel. Always knowing in my logical mind that sex and sexuality are part and parcel of parenting at this tumultuous age and there would be no denying it despite my desire at times curl into a fetal ball and wish it all away. Read the rest of this post »

Dazed and Confused

Amelie Gillette of The A.V. Club has a zinger of a post on the far-right and marriage equality. This qualifies as the quote of the week:

Now they’re saying that we can’t have gay marriage because it would confuse the kids. But you know what else confuses kids? Everything: Time zones. Books without pictures. Cargo pants. Certain hair colors. Jello molds. The magic trick with the quarter behind the ear. Mirrors. Mentadent toothpaste dispensers. Everything confuses kids, because they’re kids. So “Will it confuse kids?” is probably not the best litmus test for, well, anything besides toys and Spongebob plotlines (and even then, there’s a lot of leeway).

Go read the rest, because it’s great, too.

(Via David Badash of The New Civil Rights Movement.)

Who’s Your Daddy?

As promised, here is another in my series of quotes from Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting. I’ll be running them for a couple of weeks courtesy of the book’s editor, Rachel Epstein. I’m choosing the quotes I feel are most intriguing and thought provoking; I don’t always agree with the sentiments, but I hope they will spur some discussion in the comments and encourage you to seek out the book for yourselves.

For more on how to get this Canadian-published volume (and you should!), see my original post about it.

Today’s quote is from Laurie Bell, whose essay “Who’s Your Daddy? Reflections on Masculinity in Butch-Parented Sons” inspired the title for the volume: Read the rest of this post »

No Surprises Here

From the “fun with scientific conclusions” department:

A new study in the journal Child Development has found that babies who are the result of unplanned or mistimed pregnancies “had fewer resources [including parental support and learning materials] than intended siblings” and “Parents’ emotional resources to older children decreased after the birth of a mistimed sibling.” (H/t, Lilsugar.)

Given that most lesbian pregnancies are planned with more logistics than it takes to move an Army battalion (yet another reason they should welcome us in the military!), wouldn’t it follow that the children of lesbians have way more parental support and other resources than children of opposite-sex couples?

The Importance of Role Models

From the official White House Flickr site, via teacherken at DailyKos, who draws our attention to the caption:

President Barack Obama bends over so the son of a White House staff member can pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster wanted to see if the President’s haircut felt like his own. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Changing times, folks. Things may not be perfect, but they’re looking up.

(Thanks to Jim Toevs for alerting me to this photo and diary.)

Another Elementary School Suicide

Another 11-year-old boy, Jaheem Herrera, has hanged himself after enduring repeated bullying. (The horrible news comes via Will at Pam’s.) There is some reporting that he was bullied with anti-LGBT taunts, among others.

Just last week, after the suicide of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, I asked “How many more children must die before we as a society get a clue?”

This is one too many.

We as a community of parents and citizens must hold our schools to account. It could start as simply as having the parents’ associations require principals to state publicly how many reported incidents of bullying there were each month or semester, and what was done. Parents could then provide further evaluation and a check to make sure enough was done. Other ideas?

GLSEN has anti-bullying resources, focused around anti-LGBT bullying. HRC’s Welcoming Schools program and PFLAG’s Cultivating Respect also have some. Tolerance.org, from the Southern Poverty Law Center, has more general anti-bullying resources.

Not Just a Gay Issue

“It’s not just a gay issue,” said Sirdeaner Walker, mother of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, who committed suicide last week after months of anti-gay taunts. “It’s bigger.”

The Advocate has a long interview with Walker. It’s an emotionally tough read, but worth it.

I mentioned in my roundup yesterday that GLSEN’s upcoming National Day of Silence on April 17, when students raise awareness of anti-LGBT bullying, made the tragedy even more poignant. The Advocate adds that April 17 would have been Walker-Hoover’s birthday. He’ll never blow out those 12 candles.

His death was needless, but let us hope it will at least help to raise awareness of why we must all work to stop bullying. Of course, I said the same thing about Lawrence King last year. How many more children must die before we as a society get a clue?

(Thanks, Pam.)

Kiddie Consumers

Thanks to Nina at Queercents for pointing out an article from Best Life magazine about kids and consumerism, subtitled: “How to thwart the $17 billion marketing effort to steal your kids’ dreams, hijack their imaginations, make them obese, and drive a wedge into their relationship with you.”

Yikes. It’s enough to make one move to a cabin in the woods and subsist on berries while your kids play games with rocks and sticks.

Nina, the mother of a three-month-old, says, “I’m already wondering how we stop all the stuff from taking over,” and observes, “It is shocking how much stuff a baby can acquire in a mere 90 days – of course, it’s the result of well-meaning friends and family members.”

I don’t want to break it to her that it only gets worse. Read the rest of this post »

No Name-Calling Week

Today marks the start of No Name-Calling Week, “an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.” The event was created five years ago by GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) and Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. It targets grades five through eight, “years when the problem of name-calling is particularly acute,” but “the concept can be easily adapted by students and educators at other grade levels.”

Name-calling can have tragic consequences, as when a 14-year-old girl in the U.K. hanged herself last year, allegedly because classmates taunted her for over a year about her fashion sense and supposed lesbianism. No, we can’t expect children not to tease each other to some extent. (As a redhead with the last name “Rudolph,” I received my share of this.) We can, however, teach them to recognize when the line is crossed between lighthearted banter where the subject truly doesn’t mind, and harmful insults whose hurt goes deep.

GLSEN has a number of lesson plans, activities, and other resources available for download. If you’re a teacher or want to become involved in creating a more tolerant, accepting, and safer environment in your children’s schools, take a look.

Here’s my own list of safe-school resources, plus a post on a more recent offering from PFLAG.

“Prayers for Bobby” and More on Lesbian and Gay Youth

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about new research showing the devastating impact of family rejection on lesbian and gay youth.

Tonight, Lifetime television will air “Prayers for Bobby,” the true story of a religious suburban mother in the 1970’s who struggled to accept that her son Bobby was gay. It airs Saturday, January 24th at 9PM ET/PT. There are photos, cast interviews, and a trailer on the show’s Web site. If that’s not enough to convince you to watch, Sigourney Weaver is the star.

Completing the trifecta of recent media about growing up gay or lesbian is the just-published Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America, a compilation edited by Mitchell Gold (of furniture fame). Gold is also the founder of Faith in America, an organization dedicated to ending religion-based bigotry.

Let’s hope these materials about lesbian and gay youth have a catalytic effect on each other to drive greater awareness and change.