Remember: Stereotypes don’t come out of nowhere. It’s possible that your gay daughter will attend a Division 1 school on a softball scholarship or your gay son will style your hair. Forever. For free.
Sometimes you can tell. Your son likes “girl toys,” or your daughter doesn’t. Your husband doesn’t want to talk about it, but your Spidey sense is telling you that your kid might be gay. What do you do?
Pop the champagne!
Your gay kid may be the best thing that ever happened to you.
GO WITH IT.
If you can be fully supportive of your gay child, you will be loved. Loved, adored, and worshipped. (And possibly impersonated in a drag show.) And your gay kid’s gay friends will wish you were their mom. They will remember you on Mother’s Day, and after your death, your funeral will be jam-packed with good-looking men and strong-shouldered women.
DON’T TRY TO “STRAIGHTEN” YOUR GAY CHILD.
Not only will she remain gay, but one day she may write a scathing memoir about her childhood. When it’s turned into a movie, the “mom” will be played by someone who is shorter, fatter, and more wrinkled than you are.
CLOSETED GAYS ARE NOT HAPPY PEOPLE.
Forcing your gay kid to live a lie will backfire. Kids who repress their homosexuality often grow up to become disgraced pastors (Ted Haggard), hypocritical lawyers (Roy Cohn), insane dictators (Adolf Hitler, according to some sources), or Scientologists (no example provided due to potential litigation).
Your child deserves better.
PREPARE FOR BATTLE.
It’s likely that the five-year-old boy who looks so adorable wearing your sleep bra will, in his teen years, be bullied by an asshole. It’s wrong and it’s unfair, but it’s common. Sh*tty Mom believes that, like Israel, gay kids should be allowed to preemptively strike if they feel threatened. Gay bashing would end quickly if gangs of tough gay kids were allowed to roam the streets, beating the crap out of problematic straight kids.
Try to interest your kid in some kind of martial arts. If he can enter middle school with a black belt, the school bully might skip him and move on to the kid who’s really asking for it: the nerd.
(FYI: Nerds should remain closeted until they are accepted into Stanford.)
ADAM AND STEVE CAN’T MAKE A BABY EVE.
What the Christian right hates about gay couples is what parents should love: They can’t procreate. Unlike your sister, whose straight daughter will be alarmingly boy crazy when she’s fourteen, you won’t be up nights, worrying that your gay kid is legs up in the backseat of a truck somewhere, getting pregnant.
Gay people have to go out of their way to have children. They hire surrogates, they adopt. Some of them will even put David Crosby’s sperm in their vaginas (!). All of those procedures are planned and costly. If your gay kid ever does have a baby, at least you won’t be stuck raising it while she’s out partying instead of studying for her GED.
And what if you are wrong and your kid ends up being straight?
Better luck next time.