How to Talk to Young Kids About Same-Sex Relationships

I've written about my interactions with Chicago's The Marin Foundation in the past. They are a bunch of Christians who are seeking new ways to build lasting bridges between the conservative Christian community and the LGBT communities. It was created by Andrew Marin, but others have assumed more active roles with the organization in recent years.

One of those others is TMF's Director of Pastoral Care Jason Bilbrey. He wrote up the following blog last month titled "How to Talk to Young Kids About Same-Sex Relationships." He broke his response down into three bullet points:

1. There's a big difference between communicating reality and value;
2. Kids are really good at observation; and
3. When they are finally ready, it's a conversation that deserves nuance and balance, no matter how firm your convictions are.

Anyway, follow the link to read the whole thing.

Of course, everything comes down to the comments with these types of blog articles. I discovered that somebody recently shared the following comments about how he talks to his children about same-sex relationships. I responded with a healthy dose of snark and was pleased to discover that my response was published:

(click on image to read content more easily)

I shared a bit more last month and this latest juvenile response by me actually brought me back to that this weekend. I thought I might share my response to this topic:

My youngest son and I were in the car one day and homosexuality came up somehow. "You realize that I'm gay, right?" I asked him. He was momentarily shocked. "Really? Does Mark (my husband) know??"

All joking aside (though this was a true story), the kids get this more than parents realize. Parents might think they are protecting kids from the concept and the debate, but I've observed that kids know about homosexuality to one extent or another. I've overheard them chatting at school when they don't think they're being listen to. These were 2nd and 3rd grade conversations in the middle of Iowa -- not Boystown.

I've found that kids are much more comfortable with nontraditional families -- be they gay families or foster families or step families or grandparents raising kids, etc. -- than parents are. There are always exceptions, of course. But kids are really good at accepting the reality before they understand the controversy.

Meanwhile, my son has had the joy of others denigrating our household. He's watched his birth parents struggle with addiction, prison, unemployment, underemployment, and poverty and openly marveled when others imply that Mark & I deprived him of a better life.

I guess that last part is a swipe at the notion of reality VS. value. Neither I nor my kids need other parents and church people pondering the value of my family. Especially unknown church people who have no presence or experience with me or my children. That's the thing that bugs me most: pseudo scientists who ponder the negative effect of my kid being raised by two dads while never even slowing to ponder the effects that an early childhood of live-in abusive boyfriends or drug exposure in the years before we ever met him.

That's the disparity that exists in this culture war.

For the record, D' was roughly five-years-old when we had that conversation.