humor

It’s natural for gay parents to feel discomfort about their assimilation into the straight world. While you existed in your gay ghetto, straight people were the enemy. You despised, envied, feared, and longed to be them. You defended yourself against your deep feelings of inferiority by telling yourself you had no interest in their boring, monochromatic lives. “I am living on the edge,” you told yourself. “I am a minority fighting for survival. I have important life and death issues to think about.” These issues included:

•How to survive the Bush-Cheney years

Do you have remarkably supportive parents who fastened on their “I love my gay son” or "My lesbian daughter rocks" lapel pins the minute you confirmed their worst fears? Or do you have parents who summarily shut the door in your face after hearing your news? Now that you have a grandchild, don’t be surprised if some of these parents want back into your life. Grandchildren change all the dynamics. The question is: do you let them in?

In Part I and Part II, we saw that gay idioms present various challenges for your straight children. But mastering them offers big payoffs too.

In Part I, we learned that your straight children are second language learners when it comes to the language of your gay heritage, and we learned how hard it is to master the idioms of a second language.

In this part, we’ll look at another obstacle your children face—and that is developmental readiness.

“What in God’s name gives you the audacity to think that you could possibly be parenting material?”

ProudParenting.com blogger - Carrie Smith - is a writer who exposes a funny side to lesbian and gay parenting. Carrie examines all corners of this new frontier in her blog called Way Out Parenting.

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.