Happy National Coming Out Day!

 (image from this fabulous cloth diaper listing on etsy)

My facebook status has been borrowed by others. Without citation or credit, it's just floating around out there as other people's thoughts. I love this. I love that I said something worth copying. (Copy my papers, thesis, or other material on which I have worked my butt off, and out comes the "why you shouldn't plagiarize" stick, but this is a facebook status. Not the same.)

I am spoiled by the privilege in my life. I am spoiled by appearing to be a middle class 20/30-woman-born-woman who is straight, white, able-bodied, well-educated, and well-mannered. Which of these are untrue or true doesn't matter. Just appearing to be these things gives me tremendous privilege. Bugbear will inherit many of these things. But it is one of my deepest desires that by the time s/he is dealing with who s/he wants to love and how, s/he will not have to ask me why I work for a church that says "homosexuality is fundamentally incompatible with Christian teaching" when we go to Pride and protests and spend our time claiming and living that God loves all people. It is one of my deepest desires that s/he will not know people who kill themselves, or drug themselves, or otherwise harm themselves, as a reaction to others' prejudices. I want him/her to grow up knowing love, in our home and in his/her world.

One of the most amazing parents I know has never asked her son if he has a girlfriend. From the time he was little, she's had conversations with him that involve questions like "Are there people at school you really like?" or "Do you know if you want to kiss boys or girls someday?" or "If you grow up to be a daddy, do you think you want to love a mommy or a daddy?"  I want to copy that. I want no part of my child's home life to assume s/he will be hetero. And I want to be active in the creation of a world where that assumption is done, and the assumption that being hetero is somehow better than anything is also done. I want Bugbear to find homophobia and hating queerness as ridiculous as we find phrenology.  And if saying "yes! Use my words as your own! Enjoy them!" moves us even one iota closer to that, then you can have my term papers as well as my facebook notes.



So, not for the first time, and hopefully not for the last:


Happy National Coming Out day! Here's to the idea that every day should be a day when we love (or have consensual sex with) whoever we want, without corporate sponsorship, violence, fear, hatred, firing, excommunication, or being otherwise treated as less than human.