What if my son was gay?

When I was pregnant, a lot of people asked me what I would do if my son grew up to be gay.

I guess for teenagers with a pregnant friend, that's definitely on the list of things you MUST ask her. 

But I typically told them, "Well, good for him, then!"

My first openly gay friend was a guy I met in the summer of grade 9 while I went to summer school at John Cabot S.S. He's a year older than me, but I was taking grade 10 English to fast track while he was taking it to bump up his mark from the semester before.

Anyway, all the other students in the class were snotty little rich kids that were as dumb as doornails, while he seemed to be the only person in the class who could talk about more than just shopping or getting into fights. 

You know how you meet a person and you automatically know that they're homosexual and it's not to judge them, but it's kind of the same thing as a homosexual person knowing that someone is a heterosexual and that's just the way it works. Well I immediately knew, but I didn't question it or press it because I didn't know he was openly gay until of course he admitted it to me one fine, summer afternoon. 

Anyway, he was the only friend I made in that class, I found out around the time my son was born that he was diagnosed with cancer, but he fought it and to this day, he's doing much better.

I guess up until meeting Mark, I thought homosexuality was somewhat taboo. I hate to admit it, but my mother is a crazy traditionalist with that mind set of "If my son was gay, I would be so disappointed and ashamed" etc., etc. You know the deal; and that's what I grew up with. But as the years went by and I grew up with the ever-changing perceptions of social acceptance, I finally have a real answer to the question of, "What if my son was gay?"

This kind of relates back to one of my previous blog posts titled "Shorty", the one about how being a good parent means that I will do everything in my power to make sure that society's perception of my son's physical traits won't reduce the probability of his future success. Well the same thing applies with this instance.

I want my son to be the best he can be while still being who he is and proud of what he was born with. As long as he does right by others and does his best in all that he does, then gay or not, I'll be proud of him nonetheless.

Not to mention that if he does happen to be homosexual, then he better damn well make the best of it. 

The truth is, a lot of mothers want their sons to be loving gentlemen and grow up to become wonderful fathers and good, loyal, and loving husbands. I can't say this for ALL mothers, but for myself at least, I know that whomever my son chooses to partner up with and love for the rest of his life, I want it to be because they also chose him for being the best he could be in every aspect of his life. Even if  he gives it his all yet his "best" isn't enough to meet societal standards, then my job is to raise him well enough to wisely choose someone who will love him for just that. 

Now, to me, it doesn't matter if that person ends up being a man or a woman, as long as my son is with someone who treats him right and someone who deserves the best my son can give them.

A lot of people reading this can argue with me, I've gotten into many fights over social networks because some people aren't as open minded towards the acceptance of the LGBTQ crowd while I've been advocating the growth of a community free of discrimination against homosexuals and any the like.

My son is fairly observant, and although I don't know that he's personally met anyone openly homosexual, I know that he understands the loving, romantic relationship between two people. I want him to know that so long as two people are human, there are no limits to their love given it be real and loyal. Even if he is heterosexual, I want him to be accepting of other people's sexuality. In fact, I don't even want him to see it as anything weird or different. I want him to be able to brush it off as something as common as anything else so that he doesn't even think twice about whether a person is straight or gay, he just looks straight into the essence of who they are. The biggest problem people have nowadays is that they could be looking the most genuine friend in the face, but their race or religion or sexuality will deter them from pursuing a friendship. Why is that? It's such a problem in this society. We miss out on being such good people as well as meeting such good people simply because we're too busy being judgmental about all the aspects of other people that shouldn't even be considered the defining factors of human goodness or wisdom or intellect or trustworthiness or any of the admirable traits that we all aspire to attain. I mean, I hope that my son surrounds himself with good people, people who wouldn't judge him if he were gay, or half asian or half white, or catholic, or rich or poor. But at the same time, you can only surround yourself with people that are good if you yourself practice the same goodness and that's what I want him to be. 

So what if my son was gay?

It doesn't matter. If he is my son, then he will be honest, respectful, loyal, wise, humble, open-minded, and loving because I am raising my son to be that way. I'm not raising my son to be tall or short, fat or skinny, straight or gay, white or asian; I'm not raising him to be anything he can't change. I'm raising him to be the best of what he has and to respect other people for the best of what they are. And that's how it should be, and with him, that's how it will be.