My 7-year-old son was asked to read a note he wrote to his entire class. The note: "Dear Mark: Would you like to go out with me and maybe give me a kiss?" Mark was mortified, the whole class laughed at my son, and his teacher went apeshit bonkers. Seeing as my son has always been a charmer with the ladies, I was caught unprepared for this. I didn't get into the whole preference thing when I spoke to him about it, but I tried to be understanding. Here’s what I said: “The class rules say that we keep hands, feet, and lips to ourselves, correct? And you're too young to be kissing anyone but Mom and Dad anyway.”

He's my son, Mr. Savage, and I will always love him, but we're a traditional-if-less-conservative-but-still-very-Christian family. Being ostracized at such a young age by less tolerant family members would be painful for any child, and there's also the school environment to consider. If my son's preference is for other boys, how can I ask him to hold off acting on his feelings until he's mature enough to understand them better? I want to spare him from the harsh reality here in our Redneckopolis but I don't want him to feel bad about who he is—it was tough enough for me being an overweight nerd with gynecomastia in school. I just want him to be a safe, secure, confident, and happy child.

Distressed And Determined

My response after the jump...

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Calm down, DAD.

Your kid could be queer—any kid could be queer—but the note he read aloud in class isn’t proof. I loved my little sister so much when I was 7 that I told my parents, my classmates, and my teachers that I was going to marry her when we grew up. I still love my little sister, but I am not in an incestuous heterosexual relationship with her today. (Hi, Laura!)

But your kid could be queer—any kid could be queer—so I have to question the wisdom of sending him (or any kid) to a school where teachers go “apeshit bonkers” when a 7-year-old awkwardly but innocently expresses affection for a friend of the same sex. His teacher’s job at that moment was to protect him from ridicule, not to legitimize that ridicule by blowing up him/herself. And I have to question the wisdom of exposing a potentially queer kid—and any kid is potentially queer—to family members who hate queer people. If you really don’t want your potentially queer kid to feel bad about who he is, DAD, if you want him to be safe, secure, confident, and happy, then you should send him to a different school (or blow up at the administrators of the school where he is now) and start challenging your family members on their shitty bigotry.

As for convincing him not to act on his gay feelings for the time being, if indeed he is gay (and he could be, any kid could be), he most likely got that message from his classmates and his teacher. The message he needs to get from you, DAD, is that you love him whoever he is and whoever he loves and that you’ll defend him from shitty bigots—including the shitty bigots in his own extended family.

And finally, DAD, here's a little recommended reading for you just in case he is queer: Oddly Normal: One Family's Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality by John Schwartz.