Way Out Parenting: Gay Idioms You’ll Need to Teach Your Straight Children—Part I

As a full-fledged member of the gay culture, you are fluent in the rich language of your heritage. But sometimes you forget that you are bilingual, and you lapse into your gay language at home. This can cause great consternation for your straight children who are listening and don’t understand.

Second-language acquisition research has shown that idiomatic expressions pose the biggest challenge for second language learners. Your children desperately want to share your special language, but like all second language learners, they take your idioms literally.

Let’s examine the gay idioms your little second language learners will need to learn and the confusion these expressions might cause.

Idiom #1. Member of the tribe

Child-friendly definition • another gay person

Synonym • friend of Dorothy

Sample sentence • "Daddy, did you say my teacher is a member of the tribe? Which tribe?"

Helpful Hints • Be careful when using this expression within earshot of elementary school-aged children. Their ears will perk right up—not because they suddenly realize you're talking about a gay person but because they will think the person you've just mentioned is a native American. Remember, your children have been learning about the first Americans since kindergarten. They are likely to ask, "Is my teacher an Iroquois? A Mohawk? An Algonquin?” and on and on until they have exhausted their extensive knowledge of tribes indigenous to various region of North America. At this point, wanting to further impress you with their deep knowledge on such an historically significant topic, they will want to describe in great detail how the Plains Indians used the skin, bones, intestines, teeth, tongue, and every other imaginable part of a buffalo’s corpse for their survival. And they will be very, very disappointed when they learn you weren’t talking about Indians at all.

© 2008 by Carrie Smith. All rights reserved.