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Is Your Kid Gay?



Are you worried if your 4-11 year old boy might be turning into a giant FAG? Before you try to beat the fear of God into him, James Dobson’s wonderful organization Focus on the Family has put together a simple list of criteria to help concerned parents discern their kid’s emerging sexual orientation.

  1. A strong feeling that they are “different” from other boys.
  2. A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.
  3. A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play.
  4. A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes.
  5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them “queer,” “fag” and “gay.”
  6. A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even “think” effeminately.
  7. A repeatedly stated desire to be — or insistence that he is — a girl.

The only thing I’ve ever heard that was stupider than this list was in a public service video I watched once called “Gang Signs” (PS. You can - or used to be able to - rent these videos free at Blockbuster). It’s for parents to help them figure out if their kid is in a gang (but not a gay gang). You know, one of those things that tells parents to go rifle through their kids belongings looking for cultural signs and symbols they most assuredly won’t understand the context or meaning of. My favorite item that they told parents to look for was “Civil War hats”. Fucking … Retarded.

Anyway, I’ve been trying lately to put myself in the mindset of other people. I vehemently disagree with both this set of criteria to determine your kids gayness, and think there’s pretty much no need to do that in the first place. But what the hell are these people thinking? Why do they find homosexuality so threatening that they need to constantly attack it like this? And don’t just give me answers like: “They’re stupid” or “The Bible” or “They’re intolerant.” There just has to be more to this socially than that. My guess would be that it has something to do with the consistency and predictability of cultural roles. Everyone knows their place and everyone knows everybody else’s place. Is there any value in that, if we extract the homophobia from it? Or can we even look at one without the other? Are people really so adrift socially because they don’t know their role or what society expects from them?

[via Austin Cline]







12 Reader Responses

  1. Nathan Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 1:58 am

    Reading the above list, it seems like whoever wrote it must hate womanness as much as they hate homosexuality. Because underneath it all, that’s what it seems to be based on, a contempt for the “feminine” side, whatever that might be. Which is kind of weird, because these are the same types of people who champion a more “traditional” role for women, and yet they appear, in some way, to fear and loathe the same type of femininity that they idealize. Maybe they have unresolved issues with Mom, who knows?

  2. Worldmage Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 2:52 am

    While you can look at changing social roles without looking at homophobia and vice versa (both phenomena have several causes besides each other), I think the whole “societal role” thing is for the most part just an excuse to cover up the real underlying reasons.

    Homophobia, like all other kinds of socially engineered fear, is a control mechanism. Fundamentalist cultures need bogeymen to keep their flocks in line. If you keep people in a constant state of fear you can make them do whatever you want just by offering them safety from whatever it is you’ve made them scared of. That’s how organizations like FotF work. “The gays are after your children and your marriage! But hark! These candidates that just so happen to be in our pocket can protect you from them. All you have to do is vote for them and send us money so we can support them. We’ll make sure those nasty faggots and dykes won’t deflower your babies.”

  3. Worldmage Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 4:20 am

    As for why people are buying the malarky these charlatans are selling… well, it looks to me like there’s some complicated stuff going on that’s probably different from person to person.

    On one hand, some people really are that freaked out about the fact that not everyone is goose-stepping to the tune of the old world social roles anymore. A lot of people see it as a threat to their own identity because anything that’s different from them must be opposed to them; if you’re not with them you’re against them. Therefore, attacking gays is an act of self-defense to these people.

    On the other hand we have a large segment of the population that doesn’t question information and the sources thereof. That’s why they buy it whenever the anti-gay groups throw bogus factoids from the Paul Cameron studies at them. And hey, if you honestly believed that gays were violent pedophiles you’d be scared of them too.

    I also get the impression that it makes some parents feel better about their parenting because it gives them the illusion of protecting their children from some horrible race of monsters. It’s a slightly edited version of the phenomena reported in the South Park movie. “I may ignore my children and let them be raised by American Idol so I can sell my soul to my career, but at least I protected them from naughty language Janet Jackson’s nipple those evil gays!”

  4. The Bay Area Is Talking Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 9:34 am

    Spotting Gay Kids

    Our aggregator has two distinctly different takes on the issue of how people turn out gay. Are we born this way or is it nurture? Raymond at Dr. Saddam points us to a Boston Globe article that suggests a third…

  5. alistair Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 9:36 am

    a man an a woman traditionally came together to raise a family. the desire for thier children to do the same is inherent. i will suppose here that there is a fear amongst parents that if thier boy is gay ,then there goes the bloodline. my belief in family and the reasons for having children is to continue the genetic line, other than the pleasures of parenthood and the challenges of life in general, we are code bearers. in a politically correct environment this may not sit well, but the question comes; which came first, biology or politics.

  6. psicosm Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 10:25 am

    The odd thing is, fundies are usually of the opinion that people make the conscious choice to be gay post-puberty, or sometimes that they’re even “recruited” by radical gay activists. This whole list of latent gay tendencies would seem to support the idea that homosexuality is biologically ingrained. They just still want to stop it.

    On top of that, I might note, when I was a boy, I probably fit about 5 out of 7 of those points, and I’m not gay. I have gay friends that fit none of them really.

  7. Tim Boucher Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 11:40 am

    That’s a great point that I want to address separately Psicosm - their whole thing about how people “choose” to be gay. I think it says a ton about how they view the power of belief.

  8. bill Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 12:14 pm

    It does sort of remind me of the LA anti drug movies in the 70s. Remember those movies with titles like “Blue Moonshine” or something stupider? The ones I saw started with a group of teens having a party. Then someone would bring out a joint or something else. After the perpetrator “got high,” he would run around killing and maiming the others. The big problem is, of course, that kids see their friends take drugs and NOT go killing and maiming, which reduces the already short store of adult integrity. And the same will happen to Dobson & Company.

    Unfortunately, Dobson doesn’t care what young people think of him. He’s going after the generations with real money to spend—their parents and grandparents. Well, actually, his messages are targeted at leaders of the institutions that fund him. These institutions and their leaders are afraid that shame will come to them when someone finds a “homo” in their midst. It seems a bit like the Homes For Unwed Mothers that provide a secret place for girls to have their baby and then reappear, unpregnant, into pious society. However, these homes actually do some good. Unfortunately for the pious, homosexuality doesn’t just go away like an unwed pregnancy.

    It’s all about shame and fear of shame. The same sort of fear that prompts normally good, righteous and pro-life parents to send their teenage daughter off for a secret abortion. You really have to hand it to Dobson. The guy’s a brilliant business man. His business pulls in $130,000,000 per year just in donations. Never mind the Lost Sheep. Sacrifice the One for the good reputation of the Ninety Nine. Sin is only skin deep after all. :)

    bill

  9. james Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 3:53 pm

    “Blue Sunshine” is a cult classic. The killing and maiming came years after LSD ingestion, and was also accompanied by going completley bald.

    Someone should compile a list of the things homophobic parents do that almost guarantee their son or daughter will be gay, even if they weren’t before.

    Having said that, I think hatred of homosexuality stems from an annoyance with men who want to take a submissive role. Men who won’t “act like men” are hated and despised: cowards in combat, men who whine neurotically like Jerry Seinfeld or Woody Allen… anything that violates notions of masculinity is seen as participation in some luxury that exempts said man from having to be a man.

    It’s contempt for someone who has denounced their birthright, in other words.

    I suspect that (subconsciously) homophobes think something along the lines of “Why does HE get to act girly while everybody else has to act manly? If everyone acted girly, we’d get nothing done.” I think that’s why there’s such a focus on “converting” gay people back to heteosexuality.

  10. bill Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 8:03 pm

    Thanks James. “Blue Sunshine” was it. I saw it in a squadron ready room on a carrier in ‘79 or ‘80, during the hostage crisis. Somebody then told me about the genre of “LA drug movies” and their purpose of frightening kids away from drugs. The one part I remember was this guy stuffing a girl into the burning fireplace.

    But the part of your comment I like best was: “Why does HE get to act girly while everybody else has to act manly? If everyone acted girly, we’d get nothing done.”

    While I was at sea (mentioned above), there was one guy sent home for homosexuality, early in the cruise. I didn’t know him so I don’t know the real story. However, there was this other guy, rumored to be gay, who kicked the s—t out of this large, former gang member from east LA known for causing trouble, over some drug deal gone awry. I did know both of them and saw the damage.

    The point with all the history, above, is to say that things really do change, just slowly.

    bill

  11. James Russell Says:
    August 17th, 2005 at 12:10 pm

    I have a strong feeling that I’m different to most other people, never mind just other boys. Does that make me asexual or something?

  12. Thomas Conlon Says:
    August 19th, 2005 at 5:56 pm

    Uh I think the fear of having a kid turn out gay is that you will be thinking about him getting fucked in the ass. I am not thrilled by that prospect however I am sure parents of girls will have to deal with that eventually (or something like it).

    And in regards to right wing media raising the spectre of the ‘bogeyman’ with regards to learning about homosexuality, I don’t think it is appropriate to teach children about that in school, in 8th grade they separated us boys from the girls and showed us two movies like “here is the sexual organs”, blah blah, and that was sex ed.

    On wnd.com etc they are definitely raising the red flag, if it’s true, 5th graders learning about fellatio etc, IMNSHO it is not necessary, and according to them, it’s gay group lobbyists pushing an agenda which has nothing to do with getting ready to learn calculus.

    Anyway, I know I will get flamed for this, but hell I have 3 boys ages 1, 2, 3.

    Well it’s confusing because all these fuckin ‘normies’ have to go on is ‘thou shalt not lay with a man as a woman,’ which is fuckin’ open ended, unlike us witches who are not supposed to be allowed to live, so what the fuck man?

    Goddamnit I can’t even smoke any fuckin’ weed. What is wrong with this fuckin’ country.

    PS even if my kid is a fag he will kick the shit out of anyone.

    If you don’t want to raise a “normal” boy, don’t get fuckin’ intoxicated to a deleterious condition, don’t jerk off, don’t look at porn, and spend time with him, it’s really very simple.

    “I wish I was like you, easily amused”
    -Nirvana



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