Kid tells his parents he's gay.

They struggle mightily with their conservative upbringing, and tell him in halting words that they accept it and they still love him.

And deal with rejection and snide comments from their own friends and coworkers, relatives, cousins . . . all from a previous generation with their homophobia.

A few months later the kid says he's changed his mind, he's really straight.

Don't tell me this doesn't happen. Another poster mentioned LUGS (lesbians until graduation). Being gay (when I went to college) was practically a modular course in Women's Studies. These were among the blowtorchers. When I heard of them later, all but one of them had settled down with a guy.

So the kid goes on, now that he's decided he's really straight . . . la la la la . . .

And the parents have been, to use the correct word, used, abused, and in a real sense betrayed.

Some consideration for the feelings of family is in order here.

I didn't say the kid was coming out solely to screw with his parents' emotions. Read what I wrote again.

I also don't presuppose a homophobic environment for the kid.

I also didn't say that the coming out would be broadcast. But it would certainly be noticed.

Her idea about finding dad's magazine cache is, as TheOtherBob points out, wrong -- I would have been horrified to find that my dad had a penis and jerked off like I did.

BUT --

It's perfectly possible to open up a Playboy, jerk off to a picture of a naked girl, and then go out into the world and treat women as full human beings. We men (especially after adolescence) are more complicated than the feminist cartoon stereotype. In fact we're MORE likely to actually listen to what a real life woman says than one of those "male feminists" who filter everything they see and hear from women through the lens of gender.

One more thing.

Long ago -- before Christie Hefner took over -- I worked at a battered women's shelter that got funding from the Playboy Foundation. It didn't look good on our newsletters. But it helped us stay afloat.

dpc61820:

"However, all I can think when I see anything with that dreadful woman is how she works to ensure that I, as a homo, am a second-class citizen. (I'm fairly certain she'd like to see me way less than that, but working to keep my kind as oppressed as possible is a more reasonable goal than, you know, extermination...)"

Patricia Heaton:

"Meanwhile, on Friday, one of Hollywood’s most outspoken conservatives, Patricia Heaton, revealed she’s against Prop 8.

“I have a lot of friends who are gay, who are parents, and need to be able to take care of their kids and take care of each other, and they need to have those rights,” Heaton said."

Patricia Heaton is in favor of gay rights and the use of birth control. It may be incomprensible to the knee-jerkers around here, or to the media that pigeonholes here as a "conservative" strictly because of being anti-abortion, but she a liberal and a feminist (as the terms were generally understood not too long ago).

. . . than studying the history of Communism.

In this country, and in others, it created a boogey-man that impeded the progress of social democracy.

And don't tell me about Soviet healthcare, education, opportunities for women, etc. Whatever the Soviets did, western Europe did better.

Karl Marx is just beginning to be returned to his legitimate place as a groundbreaking economic theorist. "Marxism-Leninism", though, deserves as much study these days as phrenology (though phrenology didn't kill, torture or starve millions of people).

If you have any history with him you'll know what I mean.

. . . and sit back and watch without prejudice. Blackface might be funny. The next generation (at least those who avoid "victim studies" classes in college) will make that determination.

Who knows?

Blackface was insulting in the 1970's when black people were trying to establish their dignity. But that was before the rise of gangsta culture.

Which brings on the question:

Why is it O.K. when a black performer displays the worst stereotypes of his race . . . but not O.K. when a white person puts on blackface and acts pretty much the same way?

In my later single years I found myself attracted to black women. I'm not afraid to admit that after being raised in a white conservative area, seeing the skin contrast was a turn-on. I ended up marrying a woman with dark skin.

So in my case, my libido (or perhaps romantic sense) was tied up in a kind of racial politics. So is that of someone who is attracted to his/her own race because of conscious or unconscious racism. This does not preclude perfectly happy marriages, of course.

I wonder:

If we had no such racial history -- we one grew up in a totally egalitarian environment, without any attitude, conscious or unconscious, one way or the other -- would we be attracted to the same race? Or to a different race? Or would there be no preference?

. . . whose ideal of perfection is a skinny 19-year-old boy (no curves).

This post is one of her relatively few misfires. Almost alone among "feminist bloggers", she has an open mind and often disagrees with the Official Feminist Position as set forth in stone tablets on places like Echidne of the Snakes and Feministing.

BTW:

1. Heene is indeed a sexist jerk.

2. His rants about fake boobs and makeup are not sexist. In fact they express what many (maybe most) well-intentioned men wonder about.

3. It's ill-advised to write a post criticizing a parent's other opinions right after a traumatic incident involving his child. Maybe after having children of her own Tracy will understand this better.

particulary if she's a normal sized girl or smaller. And if she wasn't deliberately trying to show them hanging out like that then she's really really stupid.