The gay-straight alliance at one of the high schools in our area was sponsoring a showing of Love Makes a Family, the great traveling exhibit of photographs and interviews featuring LGBT families. Yesterday, the exhibit was open to the public. Even though I’d seen it before, I took my son after preschool.
With all the recent horrors perpetrated on LGBT teens, I wanted to support the GSA, even though they aren’t in our school district.
The students staffing the event were quiet but earnest, and chatted to my son about his teddy bear. We made a circuit of the room, but being a four-year-old, my son was more interested in the table full of baked goods than the black-and-white photos of people he didn’t know.
I gave them a dollar for a $0.75 cupcake and told them to keep the change. I wanted to buy the whole platter, to give them money for more exhibits, for buying LGBT-positive books to put in the school library, for flak jackets. I hesitated, though, knowing the school is in an affluent area, and my money was probably better spent on projects targeting schools that need the help even more. For now, a cupcake fee would have to do. That, and a follow-up letter to the principal thanking him for his support.
My son munched happily on the way home, not realizing they’d given him more than a mouth full of frosting. They were helping to build his future as much as their own. Would that it always tastes so sweet.