Honestly, on that issue I don't think it happened that way. They were doing great with stem cell research and abortion- especially late-term. In fact, I frankly think gay marriage took DC by surprise. At first it was, "Oh, that's just Massachusetts. I'm surprised California doesn't have it." And then they realized it was a "serious" issue.
My personal perspective, having lived in the DC area most of my life and moving to MA shortly after (or was it just before? I don't remember), is that yeah, I was a little worried about how to explain it to my young kids. Turned out not to matter. I personally don't think the government should give a rat's ass who you love.
Here's how you explain it to your kids: "Mummy and Daddy love one another very much, and so do lots of other people. Men love women, some men love other men, some women love other women. And when they love each other enough, they commit to being with that person for the rest of their lives and get married."
I'm not totally sure how a conversation like that means - as some same-sex marriage opponents seem to think - that one has to start describing the intricacies of sex, anal or otherwise.
I do think it's utterly disappointing that the primary reason people seem to think that denying same-sex partners from getting married is because they are too much of a pussy to explain to their kids that gay people exist and can love one another.
I'm not totally sure how a conversation like that means - as some same-sex marriage opponents seem to think - that one has to start describing the intricacies of sex, anal or otherwise.
Because some same-sex marriage opponents are obsessed with the intricacies of anal sex (whereas the typical preadolescent child really doesn’t care about the intricacies of any kind of sex). Heck, some of them are probably more obsessed with this topic than the gay men who do it.
Explain what to your young kids? People loving eachother should be allowed together or why your government is sometimes quite insane? I would think the second one is more of a worry to explain to your young kids... But dad, why do we live here if you think 'those morons cannot do anything right'? :)
I think the issue is actually harder to explain when homosexuality is seen as wrong. I mean, if any two given people are allowed to be married, then you just explain it as something that two people do when they love each other very much. If same sex couples aren't allowed to marry normally, then you have to get into the why of the issue, which eventually would boil down to some people not being okay with what same sex couples do with each other in bed.
Yes, unfortunately that's a truth. I'm from the Netherlands and here it's kind of weird if someone is against it anyway, so I don't encounter the issue very often.
I was half-kidding with my above remark, but thinking about it; I could not live in a country where that would be the case. I would think that even if big parts of a country work like that, in 'well educated' parts of the country, your kids would've seen some amount (edited) of gay people together already which means there is nothing to explain (it being already natural). If that would not be the case, it means there is some kind of suppressing force at hand which I would not be able to live with (I'm not gay, but i'm very much against the ignorance which disallows / restricts people while there is no solid or even non-shaky argument against it).
Also, it is not known what population of a country is in fact gay. I read somewhere between 2 and 15% depending on a lot of factors. The issue is ofcourse that in most countries most gays did not (and maybe will never) come out, so it's hard to analyze anything based on that. But if 2%, it's still 2 out of 100, so in your neighborhood there will be always a few around and they ofcourse find partners from all over.
TV has probably a very big effect of what people accept as normal, probably more than neighborhoods. For better and for worse, people - including kids - watch hours of the stuff each day.
Fortunately, I was not encumbered by any feelings of "wrongness" or "immorality" or any fear that my kids would "catch it." That's why it totally turned out to be a non-issue. In fact the kids probably ended up explaining it to each other, in the very few cases where it occurred that somebody in a class had same-sex parents.
yeah, when it came up, I did. And it wasn't a big deal. It just doesn't come up often, there are gay people around, and nobody cares. It's actually exactly the way you would hope it would be.
In fact, I may be the only male in the house that uses 'gay' as a reference to homosexuality. I think to the kids gay = wimp and FWIW fag = asshole. I think. It's hard to figure it out sometimes. I just caution them that there are plenty of people who find certain terms hurtful still and they should be mindful of who is within earshot.
My personal perspective, having lived in the DC area most of my life and moving to MA shortly after (or was it just before? I don't remember), is that yeah, I was a little worried about how to explain it to my young kids. Turned out not to matter. I personally don't think the government should give a rat's ass who you love.