The Lucky Ones

Everyone,

“If your parents are gay, how were you born?”

Ah that age old questions that I would get asked by anyone at school when they were told my secret. How was I born… This always seemed like a really stupid question to me and to my sister. We couldn’t comprehend how people couldn’t wrap their minds around the concept that I could be alive and still have parents that were gay. When I was younger I’d go through the whole story of how my parents met, married, had kids and then divorced when my father came out. As I was 3 when my parents got divorced I can only recall vague memories of what they were like as a couple. However, I do recall all the fun memories of my Dad afterwards and his friends that my mother and the courts deemed “inappropriate”. I would love going to my father’s; he was still in his 20’s and the Brisbane gay nightclub scene sounded amazing. I could listen to his stories for hours, dreaming of the day when I could go out with him. He would always be honest with us and let us meet most of his partners or at least the long-term ones. I’ve had a variety of possible co-dad’s over the years, all of which has given me a deep appreciation of all types of people. I’ve met bisexuals, transgender, lesbian, drag queens and others without a category or label; all of whom have enriched my childhood with different perspectives and given me a sense of how the world could be if people stopped judging each other based on preference.

I remember when I was in primary school, kids could be harsh. I wouldn’t let it bother me too much, generally I’d just make a joke out of it. I would always respond to the same old taunt of “You’re Dad’s gay so you are too” with “If both my parents are attracted to men, then I think I have a higher chance of liking men also”. Thinking this was the cleverest answer to all their questions, one I can’t really use anymore as around 4 years ago my mother also came out to us as being a lesbian. (She was so worried and nervous about telling my sister and I that when we spoke on the phone I was expecting to hear someone had died. It was funny to me that she would be so nervous to tell us this “secret” when we have always just accepted that you love who you love.)

The only time I ever got upset from someone being mean was when I was at a friends with some people I knew from high school, they were discussing how f*** up children of gay people must be. This one time hurt me more than anything else, it saddened me that people would think that people who were gay were bad parents, because to me I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So now my 13-year-old half-brother is going through the same things that my sister and I went through. I just hope that difference of 20 years has changed people’s perspectives. I don’t want my younger brother to be afraid of telling people that his mum is gay. I don’t want my brother to feel like he has to hide a part of his life, or make up a lie. It saddens me that the majority of taunts don’t come from other children but from adults that are meant to be role models, this has increased over the years as same-sex marriage has become more and more in the media spotlight. I don’t want my brother to constantly be told from influential people that his family is wrong. That his mother is raising him to be a bad child.

The worst thing you could do as an adult is to put negative thoughts like that in a child’s head, to make them feel inferior to children with “normal” families. I just hope that one-day people will stop saying that children from unique families are not receiving as much care and love as children with straight parents. I don’t want my brother or any other child to feel inferior or as if they need to hide a part of themselves. We are all unique and that’s something to be celebrated. We are the lucky ones that can see the good in all types of people.