I
am a professor. Among the many farces of academia, hiring season is
exceptional. Everyone in the department pretends that we are completely
collegial and endearing, while job candidates arrive and audition for
us. We go out to lunch with the aspirants and small talk ensues.
This
time around, many of my colleagues courted the candidates by musing
about their childhoods over dinner. Colleague X talked about how he was
the first one to attend college because his father only finished up to
tenth grade. Colleague Y recounted arguments about classic books with
her parents who were both English teachers. Colleague Z reminisced about
the days when her father, a preacher, prepared for his weekly sermons.
And
then there’s me sitting there. I’d love to say: “I was raised by a
lesbian who took me to a motor home on the weekends so she and her lover
could hike and build wooden decks together. When I worked in my
mother’s clinic doing typing and filing, I transcribed the files of her
mentally ill patients, some of whom were gay or transgender, so I knew
everything about sex a kid could possibly imagine by the time I was
fourteen. By the time I was sixteen, I was getting in lots of trouble.
By the way, because this was my life and I refuse to lie about the
problems it caused me, I have been dubbed an anti-gay bigot
by all the major gay advocacy organizations and the other people at
this table have banned me from the department listserv and newsletter.
“But please, go ahead, tell me how you grew up.”
For
all the talk about fighting privilege, “speaking out” and “breaking
silences” are actually not what the left wants children of gay couples
to do. Everything about my life is dangerous to discuss, because if I
tell the truth about where I came from, I can be accused of homophobia
(which has happened) and fired (which has come near to happening).
I
wish they -- the pro-gay liberals -- would make up their minds. Either
be radical and anti-establishmentarian, and accept uncomfortable voices
into the conversation -- or else shut up and let me talk about Homer’s Iliad. Which I’ve read in Greek.
Children of gays, or COGs, are ready for a turning point. I recently ran a column in Daily Caller
to begin a framework to understand what COGs’ stories, in our own
words, can teach society about the stakes of redefining marriage. We
just want to be heard -- and we haven’t, up until now.
The
gay community raised us, sometimes with love, and often with a bit of
inconsiderate self-interest. Too many of us were asked to keep secret
how hard the whole experience was. Many times siblings turned against
each other based on which brother or sister “broke ranks” and decided to
speak the truth while others played along to keep Mom and Mom or Dad
and Dad happy. After decades of decrying the pain of “the closet,” the
gay community remains largely unwilling to uncover the true feelings of
the children raised in their midst. It’s like saying, “I can’t live a
lie but my kids must.”
Don’t
think we are only disappointed with liberals. We find ourselves
wondering what happened to conservatives opposed to same-sex marriage.
The anti-gay-marriage activists gave us much less attention than they
gave to the cake-bakers, florists, and innkeepers who were Christian and
who didn’t want to service gay weddings.
The
debate about same-sex parenting always seemed to degenerate into an
insulting ritual, in which we had to listen quietly to other people
scream at each other about us. Those of us COGs who were already past
the age of thirty had to watch, with broken hearts, all the teens and
toddlers dragged by gay guardians to rallies, knowing from our own
experience how much pressure and stress must be involved. The whole
debate proceeded with both sides acting as though kids of gay couples
never actually grow up, get jobs, move out of their parents’ houses, and
speak their opinions from an adult vantage point.
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