Comments on: Tourists at Home: Straight Kids of LGBT Parents

By: K

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 03:11:27 +0000

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.

By: J

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:48:49 +0000

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!

By: KDS

KDS — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:44:29 +0000

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.)

By: Carole

Carole — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:35:06 +0000

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.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 20:07:40 +0000

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.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 19:22:59 +0000

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.

By: Gay Dad

Gay Dad — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 05:51:00 +0000

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.