Housebroken Lunatic said:
Then again how would you know what the child might encounter? For instance, what happens if one of the classmates gets exposed as being gay without anyone seeing it coming? How do kids usually react to that when they have only been forcefed with the heterosexual norms and values all their life? With acceptance and tolerance? (I doubt it)
Like I said, they would bring it up on their own eventually, if they heard a kid being accused of being gay (and this was their first experience of homosexuality) then I doubt they would join in the laughing and finger pointing, they would just ask the valid question of 'what's a gay?' (this would be like me calling you a xtopalotakettle and having everyone start laughing at you without really knowing what the hell that is).
'What if one of the classmates is exposed as being gay?', in other words, what if a rumour gets spread and someone gets picked on for it. Excuse me for shooting your point down like a balloon here but that could be applied to anything, not just sexuality (in fact, targeting one's sexuality is an easy way to trigger our insecurities but more on this later), what you are asking to prevent our kids from doing is actually called
bullying, this can be aimed at anyone for any reason (even gay kids, if there is such a thing as a gay child, can be bullies).
I got bullied a lot because I was nerdy, a loner, somewhat overweight and hated sports, I never got any white knight crusaders rushing to my aid, no equality or tolerance for me, just my parents trying in vain to get the teachers to actually fucking do something about it.
For victims of homophobic bullying there are organisations, awareness raisers, advertising campaigns, celebrities who speak out against it, fund raisers and other such things to aid young people who get hassle because of one small detail about them, all I got was cold comfort from the empty promise of the teachers maybe dedicating some time to it perhaps if they feel like it (it's still bullying and abuse, the difference is what's done about it).
'How do kids react when they've only been forcefed with the hetrosexual norms and values all their life?', this little number made me laugh a little because it almost sounds like you're trying to imply that being hetrosexual is somehow morally inferior or linked to prejudice, what exactly are 'hetrosexual norms and values'? Does our sexuality somehow define who we are morally? Isn't that something that the desire for equality was trying to disprove?
"Love can occur between a man and a woman, but also between a man and another man or a woman and another women. Only men and women can have children through sex, though but that doesn't mean that the feelings of homosexual are any less real or strange than the ones between heterosexual men and women. People are different, and it's okay to be different because we are all a bit different from eachother in some way or another. So I want you to bear this in mind if you meet a boy who loves other boys instead of loving girls, because even if you might not love boys like he does, he's not any less of a person than you are, just different from you. The same way you are different from him when you like blue shirts more than green shirts.
You want others to accept that you like blue shirts and not get teased or made fun of because you do, right? Then it's not hard to understand that a boy who likes boys more than he likes girls would want to be able to like what he likes without getting teased because of it, don't you agree?"
Pretty simple and clear cut explanation and one that a kid at a young age would eat up pretty easily.
So exactly what is it that you fear would "complicate" matters so much?
You said earlier that you can't tell what a child will encounter or when so what's to say that they will understand or even accept that if you tell them it?
My understanding, acceptance and tolerance of homosexuals stemmed from personal experience talking to people and from my own personal view of everyone just being people, not because my parents sat me down and gave me a lecture on how I should approach sexuality.
Sexuality is a very deep and complicated subject, there are people who devote their entire lives to trying to understand and explain it. Naturally this results in a lot of people who are insecure about their sexuality or get confused or doubtful about who or what they truely are, it's not just like picking a favourite colour, it's much bigger and more meaningful than that (for some people it shapes their interaction with people or even their entire lives) so trying to get a child to understand the real meaning and impact behind someone being gay is quite a large undertaking (hell,
adults often can't quite get it, hence we have the whole problem of homophobia in the first place).
What you should be doing isn't to teach kids about how to deal with gays or bis but how to deal with
people, if you're doing it right then the whole issue of sexuality shouldn't even cross their mind.
EDIT: I also liked how you neglected to comment on my third paragraph, you know, the one where I mentioned how statistics show that acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality is at an all time high and most people are supportive of the homosexual community and their efforts towards obtaining equality.
