When we lived in Philadelphia, one of my daughter’s acquaintances was being raised by two women in a lesbian relationship. My friend explained the girl had two mothers– and, due to the circumstances surrounding the insemination, “two” fathers. It was a bit much for a kindergartner to properly process, so I didn’t address the issue with my daughter. After all, I wasn’t going to tell her that “all families are the same,” which was the message the public schools in Philadelphia were pushing. My family’s Christian faith informs how we view sex, marriage, and parenthood, and I figured I’d answer questions only as they came up. At the time, I wasn’t ready to talk to her about heterosexual romance and definitely wasn’t ready to explain our position on homosexual relationships.
When we moved from Center City to Tennessee, we didn’t encounter similar family situations at Zion Christian Academy, a private Christian school near our house. This allowed us to discuss our beliefs about sex and marriage with the children when the kids were mature enough to understand it. We currently have three children — a teenager, a pre-teen, and a four-year-old. We’ve had “the talk” with the older two, but the pre-schooler is still asking probing questions about the etiquette of spitting and hair-pulling at school. (Our family is anti-spitting and anti-hair-pulling, we keep reminding her.)
However, parents who take children to the new movie ParaNorman might have to answer unwanted questions about sex and homosexuality on the way home from the movie theater.
This might not be the first time a kids’ movie had a gay character, but it’s the first subplot I remember. Read about it here, if you don’t mind spoilers.