May 1st, 2000
Tourists at Home: Straight Kids of LGBT Parents
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Article by Abigail Garner
Imagine that you are thriving in a community which celebrates and supports you. It’s a community that provides you with a strong foundation.
Now, imagine that after 15 or 20 years you are forced to leave that community because, for reasons beyond your control, you no longer belong. You are expected to join a new culture, and live within the parameters of its values and customs, many of which contradict those of the community you were forced to leave.
For many heterosexual kids of LGBT parents, it’s called growing up.
I’m talking about being culturally queer/erotically straight, a term invented by Stefan Lynch, founding director of Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE). As the straight son of a gay dad and a lesbian mom, Lynch coined the phrase when he was 15. More than a decade later, this term continues to be invaluable for me and so many other bicultural offspring as we strive to articulate how our upbringing impacts our lives long after we leave home.
Each time I pass along the phrase to other straight sons and daughters, the typical response is relief–relief because their identity is actually common enough that someone has named it.
Not all straight kids of LGBT parents relate to the culturally queer identity, but I do run into them quite often. While recently giving a presentation on homophobia to high school students, I noticed one young woman nodding when I spoke specifically about children of LGBT parents.
Later, the young woman sought me out. Surprised, overwhelmed, and excited, she told me, “What you were saying - that’s me! I have lesbian moms!” She switched to a more serious tone when she told me her gay classmates don’t really understand why she is so involved in gay related issues while still identifying as straight. She then said something I have heard many times before: “It would be so much easier if I could just come out.”
Of course, degrees of cultural queerness vary greatly, and might depend on how old a child was when a parent came out, or if a child was born into a family of same-sex parents. Cultural queerness might also depend on how connected parents are within the LGBT community and how “out” they are in the greater community.
My queerness runs deep. It is rooted in a gay male culture that includes families of choice, show tunes, AIDS, and fabulous food. Sometimes when gay men meet me for the first time in a predominantly gay male environment they see me as an intruder and test out my savvy in a screening process I call “Stump the Hag.” I try to be patient, because although I might feel insulted when my authenticity is challenged, I recognize that this process is a survival tactic for protecting safe space. When they find I can keep up with their code words, cultural references and innuendoes, they become more curious than threatened. I was once asked, “Sweetheart, are you sure you’re not a gay man?” I thanked him for the compliment.
I have heard LGBT parents talk about children as young as four or five who say, “I’m gay.” This is not a reflection on their sexual identity (yet), but rather a struggle regarding their placement in queer culture. Children, not yet able to distinguish between sexual orientation and cultural identity know that queer culture is safe space for them. The straight world is where they hear not-nice words about their families. Why would they want to be part of that?
This quandary gets more complicated if, as we approach adulthood, heterosexual orientation solidifies. I, like other culturally queer kids, tend to gravitate to things that reflect my heritage: queer coffee shops, concerts, and social gatherings. Yet it is at the very places where we feel most at home that we are often perceived as tourists. And unless we tell our life stories to each new person we run into, we are frequently assumed to be gawking hets who can’t wait to tell our friends about how kooky-hip we are for venturing into queer space.
More and more LGBT people are choosing to become parents. Roughly 90 percent of their children are heterosexual, and many of them will remain in the LGBT community long after they outgrow the strollers that pushed them through Pride parades. As this population of culturally queer/erotically straight children grows (and grows up), we will continue to challenge the LGBT community to expand its own definition of who “belongs.”
We’re not trying to infiltrate queer culture; we’ve been here all along.
Originally published in Alternative Family Magazine.
Republished in Chicago’s Outlines and Lavender Magazine.
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UPDATE, JUNE 2004: What began as a column in 2000 warranted a full chapter in my book, Families Like Mine. The chapter is called (what else?) “Tourists at Home.”
My wife and I read your wonderful column in the May/June 2000 issue of Alternative Family magazine. Thank you, thank you, for writing about the term “culturally queer”. We find our selves using it a lot, and it’s very helpful. We weren’t raised culturally queer, but we’ve learned a little over the last few years. It’s nice to be able to say just how we belong.
YES! I *loved* your article in Alternative Families (that I got at the recent PFLAG conference). Even though I didn’t grow up with GLB or T parents, I did rent a room in a big old mostly gay house in a gay-friendly neighborhood for a total of four years.
I really enjoyed living there but never felt like a “full” member of the household (two owner-occupiers, myself, plus a stream of one or two other renters, usually gay men). To be fair, I *wasn’t* a full member. Four years isn’t the same as a lifetime.
My husband and I were explicitly excluded from a lesbian Super Bowl party this year. The hostess was apologetic but firm that this was a lesbian-only party. I gave her a hard time, but I was actually pleased in a wierd sort of way: I felt like it was good for us to be reminded of what exclusion feels like and it was empowering for her to be able to exclude us
(I realize that this message doesn’t have a unifying thesis. I think there is one, but I haven’t figured out what it is.)
My colleague tells a great story about her straight daughter taking a college course on lesbians and being ostracized by the lesbian students in the class. She called her mother, outraged, and said–what do they know about being lesbian? They have only just come out. I spent my whole childhood in the culture!
I have wondered many times how I would help my probably straight son deal with having a gay dad. And tonight I read your story. I am elated to know that people like you and Stefan Lynch are paving the way to make growing up in queer families as ‘normal’ as any other.
I am curious about your experience of being tested with the game you called “stump the hag.” It sounds to me like you may be trying to rationalize to yourself treatment that may actually be insulting. Does it bother you at all that you have learned to refer to yourself, even jokingly, as a “hag”? My father has always freely used similar derogatory words (witch, bitch, etc.) to refer to women whom he doesn’t like (particularly if they are “opinionated”). At the same time, he thinks of himself as a big feminist.
Growing up, not having any idea he was gay, I always sensed an underlying contempt for women. Do you think there is an underlying misogyny in gay culture that would result in the use of slurs like hag, witch, etc.? And, as straight women, how are we supposed to respond to it? Just act like it’s cool? Because we’re so cool? Or tell them that it’s no more acceptable than to call a gay man a “fag”? (And how can it be good for girls to grow up around men who refer to women that way?)
I hope this isn’t offensive to you — somehow you struck a nerve. Thanks for listening.
Our new neighbors, Mark and Carrie were in their back yard raking leaves when our 5 year old daughter noticed them. She watched them rake leaves and then she turned to me and said “A man… and a women… living together?” Her biological dad, until that time always had a male room mate and from the time she was two and a half years old I had been alone or had a female partner (although not always living with us). I told her at that moment that there were lots of ways to be a family and a man and woman living together was just another way.
Really appreciate your sharing your perspective on growing up culturally queer and erotically straight. It’s great to know my three daughters have someone who’s experience is out in front of theirs.
I am a 64 year old lesbian who was married to a 65 year old gay man for 24 years. I was 23 and he was 24 when we got married. Out of that union we had 2 sons. After 23 years of marriage I met a women and fell head over heels in love with her. I decided to divorce my husband since our marriage was well on its way to ending anyway. As all of this was going on, my older son, in grad school at the time decided it was time for him to come out to his parents. This was not a surprise. I never came out until 6 years ago, but my ex-husband came put to his sons at the funeral of their grandmother. So this leaves my younger son the only straight person in an otherwise gay family and needless to say he still struggles. He is estranged from is father and his brother, but has chosen to have a relationship with me. He has come a long way in accepting me and my partner, but when things get rough for him, the anger surfaces.
He thinks he is the only person in the whole world who is in a situation like this and I am out to prove him wrong. I love my son very much and it pains me to see him struggle this way. Is there some sort of support group for straight adults with gay parents and siblings? Does your book address this particular situation? I know I handled things badly with him in the beginning. I just need to try to help him now. He is 37, married twice with 3 children and I’m sure he is dreading the day when one of my grandchildren asks him about grammy and her partner.