Mary Elizabeth Williams praises Kate Winslet in Salon for talking about homosexuality with her young children and including the possibility of future same-sex partners. Williams says this is extremely rare, even among progressive (read: the intelligent, tolerant, good parents):
You can understand how merely broaching the notion of homosexuality as something your offspring might one day know about would be anathema in a deeply religious or conservative community. That’s how Tennessee managed to pass a law prohibiting discussion of “any sexual behavior other than heterosexuality” in the classroom. As long as nobody talks about it, nobody can get indoctrinated, right?
But even in the liberal, gay-friendly pockets in our godless urban Sodoms, heterocentrism is still the default.
Why would that be? Why would gay-friendly parents not want to think about the possibility of their children’s future gay and lesbian partners? Two possible reasons: 1) even supporters of the gay agenda understand that opposite-sex, married partners committed to each other for life is an ideal worth striving for or 2) it is difficult to overcome the natural repugnance to homosexuality, whatever one’s politics might be. For many people gay rights are fine in theory, but homosexual acts still gross them out and they don’t want their children living the lifestyle. An easier to appreciate comparison: even many advocates of legalizing drugs or prostitution don’t want their kids using drugs or selling their bodies. Hypocrisy, La Rochefoucauld said, is the tribute vice gives to virtue. Or, put another way, it is very difficult to escape capital-T Truth.
