Pride

"Have you explained 'gay' to your son?" my friend (who identifies as queer) asked me the other day. Together, we watched my three-year-old race across the . I shook my head "no" and wondered, if, as a straight mother who wants to raise an unbiased child, I should have a different answer. 

My husband was raised in a radical lesbian commune, and we have more gay family members and friends than we can count. I don't have any illusions that we live in a post-sexually-oriented world (just as I know that despite the fact I voted Obama into the oval office, we don't live in a post-racial world), but there are moments in our Brooklyn life that it can feel that way. For example, across the street from us lives a family with two fathers, and, a little further down, one with two mothers, and I'm sure my son doesn't think of either of those families as any different from ours.

Perhaps I haven't explained "gay" to my son for just that reason: in our Brooklyn life, we are so surrounded by people who are different from us in a myriad of ways- in skin color, religious belief, sexual orientation, etc.—that pointing out difference seems a strange practice. I'm not sure I want to be the one—at least not yet—to explain to my kid that part of the world is prejudiced against families just like the ones who live across the street, believing that they shouldn't share our equal rights.

But the fact that they don't share equal rights makes me really mad. It makes me mad that the wedding we flew to in Iceland last summer isn't recognized in this country because it was a commitment of love between two men. I surely don't want to indoctrinate my child with my political beliefs, but I absolutely want him to fight for what's right in this world, and that desire feels apolitical. I want him to grow up with the conviction that all people should be treated equal.

Frankly, I have no idea whether my son will want to sleep with men or women, and honestly, I won't care. It won't be my business. Perhaps that's why I haven't explained "gay" yet; because 1) he's so far away from understanding attraction and 2) I don't want him to think that him loving a man would be any worse (or better) than him loving a woman.

But it would be different.

And the more I thought about my friend's question, the more I began to wonder if there are ways I could be, if not forcing the question on a three-year-old, or offering the chance for further conversation he may not be ready to have, then at least celebrating the community to which many of or friends and family belong- stepping outside of the comfort zone of "these are our neighbors" and casting a spotlight upon a life that can look different from ours.

So we took him to Pride.

Now, to be fair, it was , which is definitely tamer than the parade in the village. The kid was very excited and declared he was pretty sure there would be "characters" there—when pressed, he hoped for a Hello Kitty or a My Little Pony. We had a blast, dancing to the drag queens on the flatbed trucks, getting free stickers (we declined the free condoms). We went with friends—a straight family and a gay couple; one half of that couple held my son on his shoulders the whole time. The experience felt inclusive, and, through my son's elevated gaze, I saw the world as dazzling.

There are moments I wonder why on earth I live in New York. Why I'm raising a child here. Those moments tend to be of the oh-my-god-a-rat-the-size-of-a-chihuahua-just-scuttled-five-inches-in-front-of-me or the wait-how-much-does-it-cost-to-send-a-kid-to-preschool variety. But at that parade, on that night, surrounded by friends, who weren't straight or gay or any other signifier, but were simply our friends, it all came into perspective. What could possibly wrong with raising a kid who doesn't see either of the couples who live across the street, or got married in Iceland, or held him at Pride, as any different from his father and me? What could possibly be wrong about him knowing, innately, that love—and someday, sexual expression—is supreme, and glorious, and to be celebrated?

Someday he'll probably ask the question. But even when he does, even when he can't help himself, he'll already know what we believe. Because we live it.

Just one of the reasons I love—and am proud to live in—New York.