Saturday, October 08, 2005 | You might not be aware of this but the gay community celebrates National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11.
So now I’m coming out and saying the truth: My wife and I would love to hang out with some gay parents some time.
Here’s the deal: My daughter is just about to turn 2-and-a-half years old and, I imagine, she’s soon on the road to making friends.
And I never realized until recently how much her choices are going to affect my own social life.
My wife and I have some couples we see socially, but they either don’t have kids and look at our child as an alien entity or they had their kids long long ago and look at our struggles to get Alex to behave, settle down or mellow out with quiet indulgence and silent expressions that say, “Boy, am I glad I don’t have to do that again.”
So my wife and I are looking for another couple to hang out with, preferably with a child around Alex’s age.
But we don’t always match up with other couples and I think it’s because they’re too straight.
Don’t get me wrong. My wife and I are proud heterosexuals. We even take it as a compliment when we’re in Hillcrest and some of the young gays hiss “Breeders” to us as they pass us on the street.
However, my worldview and interests are what might be stereotypically called “gay.” I love MGM musicals, trying to make new styles of food, and my mother was “the strong one” in our family.
Plus, when I worked as an astrologer back in the 1990s, I was considered that rarity of rarities: A straight male psychic.
That definitely makes me stand out in a seemingly normal city like La Mesa, but it gets worse. Unlike many of my fellow fathers living in the East County, I have never been dirt biking, I hate lawn work and I only know enough sports to last five minutes before my eyes glaze.
Because many dates involving young parents revolve around that sort of male posturing, I’ve been thinking about how nice it would be to find some gay parents to hang out with.
I go through fantasies where Alex bonds with their child while watching “The Wizard of Oz” while I discuss art and politics with one member of the couple and my wife and the other member dish about whatever.
My wife is perfectly fine with it, probably because she used to work at a hair salon. Plus, as my mom used to say about gays, “They make the best friends.”
I listen to enough Rick Roberts and Roger Hedgecock to know that admitting I’d like to hang out with some cool gay parents could make me a social pariah but I don’t think being gay makes you a worse parent.
In fact, it might make you try harder since you have to constantly prepare for the backlash from people who like to spout family values.
That’s why I was glad to read a new book, “Families Like Mine: Children Of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is,” which had a bunch of stories from kids with gay parents who actually ended up OK.
Not all of their lives were like The Brady Bunch (is anyone’s?) but the kids did learn respect, tolerance and an amazing ability to suss people out in advance.
Good parents of all types teach their kids those skills but maybe the gay parents have to do it out of necessity, not just because it’s the moral at the end of today’s episode of He-Man: Masters Of The Universe.
Although children are created from a sexual union between men and women (or a turkey baster and a test tube), I think the drive to have sex is different than the drive to be a parent.
After all, having sex is about having fun now and being a parent is about appreciating the fun whenever you get it because you know it isn’t as often as it used to be.
I think gay men are more aware than straight dudes of just how a baby changes a person’s life so if they still want one after knowing that, I think they have just enough fear to be good parents.
David Moye is a La Mesa-based father who is nervously expecting his second child, a boy, in March.