Chris Ihidero Unedited: What will you do if your child turns out to be gay?

By Chris Ihidero

The discussion had been going on pretty well. It started with someone making a reference to another person’s gay tendencies. I asked what that meant and what exactly the big deal about homosexuality was anyway.

My friend, homophobic as any human being can possibly be, roared, demanding to know why I could have said such a thing. I repeated my statement; that there was no big deal about homosexuality and that people’s sexual choices should not be the business of other people (as long as it doesn’t affect them in anyway), and especially government.

My friend wouldn’t hear any of this: ‘You are talking rubbish, Chris’, he retorted. ‘How can you be supporting something like this, something so unnatural? (I actually don’t support homosexuality. I find it insulting to homosexuals that they need my support to make their sexual orientation choices in life. Like other things in life, they just need me to respect their right to make a choice that doesn’t threaten my life in anyway.) Did God not create man and woman; was God stupid when he did so? So what’s this nonsense you are talking?’ He went on and on, getting angrier with each statement.

None of what he said was new to me, and I’ve grown a bit tired of trying to point out to people like him that their arguments against homosexuality were pretty baseless. Did God really create Adam and Eve or aren’t they just the archetypal parent stock found in all cultures? Was there really a Garden of Eden? I have heard of Adam and Steve, and Eve and Evelyn. So, there goes another myth. Since we know that God never actually put pen to paper; isn’t it obvious that His messages are subject to the human interpretations of His messengers?

When people talk about homosexuals choosing to be so, I wonder if those of us who are heterosexuals also chose to be so. To choose means to pick between two or more realities. So, how many of us who are heterosexual tasted homosexuality or bi-sexuality before deciding that heterosexuality was best for us? If heterosexuality is natural to us, why can’t homosexuality be natural to others? The look on my friend’s face as I spoke could easily drill a hole in a reinforced concrete wall. His anger was beginning to get to a tipping point and I expected a violent reaction soon. On the other hand, I also silently prayed that he wouldn’t make the common mistake a lot of men make when arguing against homosexuality. My prayers were too late. His next outburst was true to type: ‘Chris, I’m really disappointed in you. How can you be supporting this?! I mean, I can even still understand lesbians, but a MAN, sleeping with another MAN?! That’s just disgusting!’

In the end, beyond religious sentiments, this is what it is for most men who so violently rail against homosexuality: How can a real man abandon a vagina and thrust his penis into another man’s anus? Women may be excused, seeing that they are the weaker sex anyway and therefore are prone to such nonsense, but a MAN?! The implicit gender discrimination contained in this kind of thinking, in spite of the achievements of feminism over the past 50 years, is mind blowing. And if this is such a disgusting act, how come anal sex is gaining popularity among heterosexuals? Or is it okay to insert a penis in a woman’s anus but not a man’s? Further, why reduce homosexuality to just sexual intercourse? What happened to love, care and friendship; things we expect in heterosexual relationships?

I thought he was done with me for the day, as he had become quiet as I rounded off my points. Then he landed the sucker punch: ‘So, with all these things you have said, what will you do if your child turns out to be gay?’

I didn’t see that one coming. I wasn’t prepared for it and I had no ready answer. I took time to think about it.  Are these liberal views that I tend to hold all good only in theory? Will I be a happy father if a child I brought into the world happened to be gay? In the end, as with other aspects of my life, I didn’t have to think for too long for the truth of my reality wasn’t that far from what I believe: If I have a child who happened to be gay, he/she will have all the love, care and support that I can muster, as I would have if he/she weren’t gay.

It is what the God that gave me that child would expect of me. Anything contrary to that would be against the wishes of the God that rules my heart and understanding. Live and let live.