Slate’s Emily Yoffe wins the “Quote of the Week” award with her answer to a gay man who asked whether he and his boyfriend should refrain from non-salacious, “welcome-home” kisses in front of the neighbor’s children, after the neighbor said it would “confuse” the kids.
Yoffe, in her “Dear Prudence” advice column, basically tells the neighbors to stuff it:
It’s part of their job as parents to help explain interesting or confusing things: How do airplanes stay up? Where does milk come from? Why do Bob and Harry kiss each other? In our old neighborhood were two same sex families. After about five minutes of explaining to our young daughter that not every family is composed of a mommy and daddy, she was placidly unconfused by this fact.
Worth reading in full.
See also Allyson Robinson of HRC and Amelie Gillette of The A.V. Club who have each pointedly addressed the “confusion” issue.
What is confusing for children? According to the final report of the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission:
[Members of COLAGE, an organization for children of LGBT parents] report that hearing that their family can’t have the same rights as other families leads them to feeling scared or confused when they hear that folks are against their families being married. They say that they think somebody is going to come and break up their family.
Youth have also shared that they’re confused about the idea of civil unions and why there needs to be this separate category for their family.
