Get Out of the Box and Play in the Pool

I've been working on this paper all day - an assignment for my communications class. We had to choose an article from Communication Currents online magazine, and then analyze it based on the principles of communication and our own opinion. I chose an article on the representation of LGBT couples with children in the news, and how it is affecting them. The author took the stance that it was negative - that the struggles and hardships of the children could be used as ammo to ant-gay activists, and that focusing on heterosexual children of LGBT couples only showed that it was okay for the couples to have children if their children weren't gay.

Well, I read through the articles she cited, and I chose to disagree. I think people pick and choose to see, read, and hear what they want - they take in what will support their own opinions. I think because of this, the stories in the articles  needed to be represented in a way that would not scare a way extremists, or even people with slightly opposing view points. As a friend quoted after reading my paper, "nobody likes an extremist-" you have to warm people up to the ideas you wish to present to them in order for them to even consider accepting them.

But what struck me the most, was how much people miss the humanity of the whole situation. I didn't write about this aspect in my paper - with a word count and subject limit, there wasn't really a place for it.However, I still think it is an important aspect of the issue. People read these articles about LGBT couples, families, and individuals and they pull out the facts - they pull out whatever they can use to make and argument for or against. They are reading in order to start an argument about something that should or shouldn't be. But what they are missing is the fact that these are real people. These stories are meant to open the eyes of the world on to the hardships that these families go through, not so that we can say LGBT families are bad, or to prove that anti-gay advocates are wrong, but rather, to show the affects of non-acceptance the cruelty of the closed-minded world.

In almost every article I read for this paper, the families spoke of fear of judgement. They didn't want to speak out about their families because they didn't want to provide media-ammo. They are simply looking to be a family - they want what every family wants - a house, a safe neighborhood, a good school, friends and family to love and support them. But the children are pressured to be model citizens because poor performance could reflect badly on the LGBT community. Parents are afraid to talk of their LGBT children because it might support the misconception that LGBT parents raise LGBT children. If their boys were a little more feminine or emotional, or their girls a little too masculine - they were raised outside of strict gender constraints, and they were corrupted.

The heartfelt stories presented in the news are not meant to produce facts in support or rejection on to these theories. They are meant to bring observers in to these people's live and show the world that they are just like everybody else. The pressure and judgment is there simply because the territory is new, and people don't know what to think just yet. So why can't we see and decide to love?

One second most common aspect of each article portraying an LGBT family is that their children grow to be more open-minder, accepting, and loving than other children. They learn to accept the blending of gender identities - they learn that it's okay to be different from the norm and that it's okay to experiment. They learn to be who they want to be - who they are - rather than who society expects them to be. Aren't these principles that straight parents also teach their children? Aren't these principles the basis of many religious teachings? Isn't this a model of a near-perfect family life?

So what's the big deal? Why do we read for all of the facts and the arguments - why do we pick and fight and analyze and rip everything apart, when what we need is right in front of us? How do so many of us miss the simple humanity of a situation? We are all people and that is what these articles are trying to portray. Is that so hard to see?

I think we could all learn to live and observe as human beings. What if we went through every day living with other human beings - just human beings. No political differences, not economic differences, not racial differences - we were all just people trying to get by - trying to live, and feel, and breathe a little - laugh a little. Because that's all we really are, isn't it?

Take a day and forget everything that society defines you as - forget the labels and the boxes - and just be. Maybe you'll see the world through different eyes.

Peace and Love.