Scare tactics in full swing

Californians go to 'war' over Prop 8's gay-marriage ban: USA Today

Well folks, we've come a long way since the days of the Daisy Political Campaign Ad. Nuclear war is no longer the threat to our children, but it is gay marriage that will hurt our children in the end, according to Sonja Eddings Brown in her statement at the end of this article: "We really are at a cultural crossroads in America where we are going to be forced one way or another to decide whether the rights of children or the rights of gay adults are going to come first."

Before we get carried away, let's put her quote into context. What she is referring to is the fact that if gay marriage is legal, the behavior, as a legitimate lifestyle, will be taught in schools, and children will be exposed to the lifestyle at a young age. The piece of evidence cited for this is the fact that the court in Massachusetts ruled that parents do not have "the right to remove their second-graders from classes that required reading books such as King and King, which is about two princes marrying." In the end, Brown and others supporting Prop 8 in California have decided it is a matter of controlling what their children are exposed to.

I suppose my first issue with her argument would have to be the implication that children are never gay. There is clearly still a "nature versus nurture" debate, however there are plenty of studies that indicate that sexual orientation is usually determined (though not always recognized) quite early in life. To that end, I am curious what she thinks of the rights of gay children (if in fact, they exist in her mind) to learn about situations relevant to them, or what is more, the rights of all children to understand each other when their friends have a different orientation.

Misunderstanding or ignorance to a behavior can cause a lot of problems. Being a minority is hard enough, ask any person of color living in the United States, but being a minority that no one knows anything about can be extremely stressful. The ignorance is exactly what promotes stereotypes, because it is easier to imagine that a minority is a group rather than a bunch of individuals that share one commonality and lots of differences. On the other hand, being exposed to different behaviors and cultures makes it easier to understand that there is not one minority but several, and that they overlap. In a sense this makes the minority once again a part of the majority, the majority being composed of individuals instead of groups signified by commonalities.

This was a really long way of saying that I don't believe the rights of children and the rights of "gay adults" as Brown puts it are at odds. I further don't believe that teaching a child that a behavior exists will hurt that child. If a child is taught about being a doctor, does that mean that the child will want to become a doctor automatically? Of course it doesn't, and in the same way being taught about what a doctor does gives that child a better understanding of what happens when one goes to the doctor's office. Without this knowledge, a child could misunderstand the situation at the doctor's office, which could result in dislike or fear of doctors.

Why is exposure to differences so threatening to children then? What culture is it that we live in that we must protect our children from these differences? Don't we live in a diverse world and want to encourage our children to know and understand other cultures?

The right of "gay adults" (I'd like to point out that this identifies people who were once gay children) to get married could not have less to do with violating the rights of children. As for the rights of parents to decide what to expose their children to, it is difficult to say that the child will only be exposed to what the parents want him or her exposed to simply because there is a lack of control over the behavior of others. A child might be exposed to gay marriage (legal or otherwise) because a child in his or her class has parents that are gay.

Regardless of specifics, inevitably a child will be exposed to something displeasing to his or her parents. As in all other situations like this, would it be so difficult simply to talk to your child about the situation instead of sheltering him or her from it?

Finally, I would just like to say that equal rights should mean something in a country like the USA. It isn't enough to say that we shouldn't have gay marriage because it might be taught in schools. It isn't even enough to say that children will be exposed to gay marriage if it is legal and parents won't have a choice in the matter. If we can say that it will harm children to be exposed to such a thing, then there is a reason to worry. At this point, we can't say that it even might harm children. There is therefore NO REASON to ban gay marriage based on these principles.