What About Lesbian’s Kids?

My son showed me a letter from one of his high school teachers. He had asked her for a letter recommending him to National Honor Society, which exemplifies excellence in scholarship, leadership, character and service.

The letter was glowing. As I read the first page I was pleased me to see how well she had recognized his dedication, passion and spirit. When I got to the second page, however, I found myself stuck on a paragraph so disturbing that all I could do was read and re-read it.

“…sometimes his peers have ridiculed him for unconventional domestic living arrangements. It appears to have made him stronger and yet he seems to not turn cold to the humans who surround him.”

I was shocked and concerned. As a psychotherapist and a parent, my son's emotional development had always been a priority. My primary focus for the seventeen years I’d been a mother was to provide a healthy, steady, loving environment for my son.

As I read her statement again, my awareness expanded to include the challenges for all children who have “different” living situations. These children have to constantly deal with the ignorance and prejudicial attitudes of people and society.

There are many children who fall into this category. What about children whose parents have divorced and have two families with which they are navigating back and forth? What about children of different or mixed races or religions? Consider the children who are not Christian who are inundated with all the bustle of the Christmas season? How about the children who have had a parent die? What about children who are adopted or in foster care? What about children whose mother conceived them through artificial insemination?

Don't people realize that these kids are who and where they are because of adults' decisions? The children had no choice. They need to be supported and encouraged, not defined, judged and ostracized by their circumstances.

I was trying to calm down and collect my thoughts and feelings when the mail arrived. On the front cover of Newsweek Magazine was Melissa Etheridge and her pregnant partner with the caption: “CAN GAY FAMILIES GAIN ACCEPTANCE/ WHAT IT’S LIKE FOR THE KIDS”.

The article, by Barbara Kantrowitz, spoke of the emergence of gay parents who are coming out of hiding and attempting to find a place for their families in the mainstream of society. She estimated that there were 6 million to 14 million children in this country with at least one gay parent.

I jumped ahead to the part of the article that addressed the effect of a lesbian lifestyle on the kids. Kantrowitz said, “There are no long-term studies available of what the effects of growing up in such a family might be. In a comprehensive 1992 summary of studies of gay parenting, it was concluded that the children are just as well adjusted (for example, they do not have any more psychological problems and do just as well in school) as the offspring of heterosexual parents.”

As I thought about children living non-traditional lifestyles and the challenges they face, my curiosity about my son's experiences increased. I needed to hear from him how he had been treated by teachers, peers and other adults, his feelings, and how he had handled them. He was very open about sharing with me that through the years his teachers had been the most uncomfortable with his living environment. None had been direct with him, but many had inferred their critical opinions through puritanical expressions of pity or concern. Well-meaning teachers had offered comments to him over the years such as his “needing male role models” because of his ‘home life’.” He had found this humiliating. His peers had always been quite accepting, he felt, because he was.

“Actually,” he said, “I am very grateful you are a lesbian. You have the courage to be who you are, so I can too! I have no doubts about whether or not you would approve of whoever I am or whatever choices I might make in my life. That is a tremendous freedom that my friends don’t have.”

I was deeply impressed with my son's awareness that other people's opinions were about them. His maturity and wisdom in the face of these challenges inspired me. I was still upset and knew that I needed to work through my feelings. I had a strong desire to understand what this situation had triggered in me and to resolve it inside myself. Only then could I even begin to find an approach of communicating my concerns with his teacher or anyone, that would be constructive and have a positive outcome.

Why had this teacher's letter put me into such a defensive stance? Was I being insensitive on the other end of the spectrum, assuming that the people my son encountered in the world would be as open and comfortable with my lifestyle as I am? Is the only way to help our children thrive in society at this time to try to mainstream and copy a traditional family? Isn't this giving our children the message that they are not okay, or that the adults they love have something wrong with them? What can we, as parents and adults in contact with children from diverse backgrounds and situations do to support these societal challenges we all face?

During this time I ran across a sentence in a movie review by Mona Smith. “Within the Native American Community, homosexuality was traditionally associated with the power to bridge worlds.”

I was struck by the truth of these words. They brought me into a deeper understanding about the opportunity for awareness these children from "not-the-norm" homes were providing. People who either had not encountered or given thought to the children's circumstances were coming face to face with a new world. The changes in our global community were making the beliefs about "us and them", being "different", and discriminating against someone who is not like yourself, obsolete. These children really did have the power to bridge worlds by bringing consciousness about “diversity” out into the open.

When I got to the place within myself where I felt no animosity, anger or point to prove, I was ready to have a dialogue with my son's teacher. I decided to start our conversation at the place where we were both totally invested: concern for my son’s emotional well-being. Through our compassionate and honest conversation we both agreed that unexamined judgment creates fear and separation. Humanity’s hope for change can come through the children who know and live the oneness of diversity.

I know that my son and other children like him, simply by being who they are, are offering the world a powerful and vitally important chance to understand their judgement about people who are different from themselves. Those who are open enough to face the challenge of change and the new awareness that brings, will move us all closer to another definition of “family”.

Born A Lesbian

I was born a lesbian. When I was growing up in the Midwest in the ‘50s, there were no points of reference being offered for lesbians. There were no concepts, no visibility, no vocabulary, not any women living together but chastised “old maids”.

Still, I insisted on wearing my cowboy boots to church with my pink frilly dress (my sister, the redhead, got to wear blue). I delighted in spending time with other girls. I adored my women teachers. I got furious when I had to follow the dress code and wear skirts to school starting in the 3rd grade. I had no use for dolls and preferred stuffed animals. I loved sports and was disappointed at the limited opportunities offered to girls as compared to the heroic numbers of possibilities given the boys.

There has always been a huge controversy about the origin of homosexuality. Some argue that being gay is a matter of choice or a reaction to abuse as a child. Some feel justified to believe that it is “phase” that will hopefully quickly pass”. Then there are the few who insist it is not a choice, but biology.

So, I was not surprised when researchers announced that they had found the first strong evidence of a physical difference between lesbians and straight women. Leave it to science to discover that the inner ears of lesbians function more like those of men.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Sciences at Austin reported that they found the inner ears of lesbians showed “masculinization” and dared to conjecture that it could possibly be from certain hormone exposure before birth. They made the leap to suggest “since their auditory centers have been masculinized the presumption is that so have the sites in the brain that direct sexual preference.”

Molecular biologists around the world have been making headway in search for specific parts of DNA that contribute to particular behaviors. In Bethesda, Maryland in 1993 at the National Cancer Institute, a variation was discovered on the X chromosome in 33 out of 40 pairs of brothers who were gay. This evidence suggested that genes might play a part in sexual orientation. Other institutions, however, had mixed results when trying to replicate these findings. A comparable variation has not yet been found for lesbians.

In the inner ear study, a key sound amplifier measured the function of the cochlea. Women were found to be more sensitive than men, making it possible to hear very soft sounds. The test results indicated that lesbians had responses significantly weaker than heterosexual women. The response between gay and straight men was even weaker. Scientists predicted that by the year 2005 they would have mapped the entire sequence of human genes. This work was either been abandoned, under-funded, or kept from the world.

What difference would it make if scientists truly discovered a biological explanation for sexual orientation? Would I be able to have my relationship sanctified by the church and state? Would I be able to be on my partner’s health insurance plan? Would I love more confidently or differently? Would my family feel less guilty about doing “something wrong” or would they relax and love me for who I am?

I honestly don’t know if my hearing is appreciably better or worse that heterosexual women’s. I don’t know why I feel “at home” with women and not as comfortable being in relationships with men. I do believe being a lesbian is not simply about sexual preference or hearing. Being a lesbian contains many aspects of being in the world that better expresses who we are as women. So is it nature or nurture? Who knows? All I know for certain is that I was born a lesbian.