This viral video features 13 children, aged 5-13, and their responses to gay couples’ marriage proposals.

The post Viral video: Kids react to same-sex marriage first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Imagine, in just a few years, she could have a whole different personality!

BY JJ WALLINGFORD
Lesbian.com

I love my twelve year old daughter, Jessie, I really do, but I think her hormones are starting to take over and some days I’m not sure I recognize her anymore.  She’s starting to say and do quite a few weird things. A while back we were walking along the Deschutes River and I pointed out some trash along the bank.  Jessie said, “Oh, look at that trash, what is wrong with people nowadays?”  Nowadays?  She’s twelve!  What days is she talking about?

I’m thinking she needs to hang out with people her own age and not us old-ish parents with our old people sayings.  Either that or I’m going to have to look for the alien pod that changed my daughter into a very similar looking, but very different child.  I hadn’t made up my mind until I took her shopping the other day.

Jessie and I went to look for clothes at Kohl’s and we were walking along a main aisle when I noticed she wasn’t next to me anymore.  I stopped to look around, went back to where I had last seen her, and what to my wondering eyes should appear?  She was picking up a bunch of towels that had fallen on the floor.  She carefully picked up each one and was putting them back in their proper places.

I could only stand there and watch her. Apparently this wasn’t a common occurrence because I wasn’t the only one.

I looked over at the Kohl’s employee and said, “Are you seeing the same thing I’m seeing?”

The stunned woman replied, “A tall, thin pre-teen girl picking something up off the floor?”

“Oh, good, I’m not hallucinating.”  We stood like that, two momentarily flummoxed adults, until Jessie finished and looked over at us.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Mom…and lady I don’t know?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that before, Jessie.  Why did you pick up all those towels?”

“Oh, that kind of stuff really bugs me.”

REALLY?!?  This is the same girl who, after a bath, will ball up her towel and throw it on her bedroom floor.  And if that ball was in the middle of the floor, in front of her door, she would step over it until said towel ball decomposed back into the earth.

“Wait a minute.  Why don’t you pick up the stuff on your bedroom floor?”  Because, honestly, I don’t see a difference between the towels at Kohl’s and the stuff she throws on the floor in her own home.

“Oh, that’s different, Mom.  I would never have picked those up at home.  I want the stuff on the floor in my bedroom.”

“Even your wet towel?”

“Oh, I just never notice my towel on the floor.  You can pick that up if you want to.”

Oh. My. Goodness.  She never notices that, yet she saw, out of the corner of her eye, towels on the floor along the back wall at Kohl’s which bugged her so much she had to carefully fold them all up and put them away. Please, if you can explain, even a little, what goes on in the mind of a child, I would greatly appreciate it.  Now if you don’t mind I have to go and search for the pod in my house because I’m pretty sure that wasn’t my daughter at Kohl’s.  Maybe I’ll show her the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and see if she makes that weird screeching noise at me.

Essay original published on JJWallingford.WordPress.com

A long time ago I realized I had two choices in life: I could either laugh or cry. I chose to laugh. I share my humorous life with my partner, daughter and Boston terrier in far south Seattle. Two things I do take seriously are family and sports. Let’s talk at www.facebook.com/jj.wallingford or shoot an email to jj.wallingford@yahoo.com.

The post Can someone please explain children to me? first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Sweden has recently decided to tackle traditional ideologies and market their toys though gender-neutral advertising for the Christmas season. Top-Toy Group, a licensee of the Toys “R” Us brand, has published a gender-neutral Christmas catalog this year.

In recent years Sweden’s leading advertising watchdog — Reklamombudsmannen, or RO — has criticized Top-Toy for their catalogs and ads that depict only traditional roles of boys and girls.

Read more at dot429.com

The post Gender-neutral catalog for Swedish Toys “R” Us brand first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Like so many LGBT parents, my wife Tracie and I are raising our kids in the cross-hairs of a cultural war. Our oldest son, B-Man, was conceived on the day that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom officiated the wedding of long-time lesbian activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, sparking an international marriage equality firestorm. Our youngest son, K-bird, was barely taller than his homemade “Support Our Family” sign when he stood on a street corner in our San Francisco Bay Area suburb, shouting “Vote no on Prop 8!” Though we have always made it clear to our kiddos that their participation in political activities is optional, these dudes unfailingly opt in.

As a result, in my life as a parent, politics have been a constant companion, like a cat performing figure-eights between my feet as I scramble around the kitchen, trying to put dinner on the table. So you might think I’d know something about talking to kids about politics. After all, in my sons’ short lives, I have fielded countless questions like “Why would people vote yes on Prop 8?” and “If Prop 8 is unfair, why did it win?” And sure, I’ve figured out some basic ground rules for these sorts of conversations:

1) Tell the truth in kid-friendly language.

Okay, so I’ve figured out one ground rule. But ultimately in this, as in all things parenting, I’m really just making it up as I go along.

So the other day, when my now eight-year-old son, B-man, asked me, with a barely detectable tremor in his voice, “Mommy, what will happen if Romney wins?” Per usual, I had no idea what to say.

I did, however, have some idea what not to say, like for instance, the first words that popped into my head: All hell will break loose. Nope. No good. Keep looking.

Here’s what I do know about my kids: When they are asking questions about change, no matter if they’re asking what it will be like at that vacation house we rented for a week, or what it will be like if a gay-hater who courted the Tea Party to become the republican presidential nominee becomes president, what they’re really asking is this: Am I going to be safe?

When contemplating a Romney (forgive the parenthetical statement here, but I can’t stand to type these two words next to each other) presidency, at least from an adult perspective, “Am I going to be safe?” is a complex question. Will we be safe if this guy takes over international relations? Will we be safe if he’s our frontrunner on domestic social issues? Will we be safe if he employs the exact economic tactics that created this country’s current financial mess? Hmm …

But from a kid perspective “Am I safe?” means stuff like, “Will you and Mama still be here to make my oatmeal in the morning?” Or “Will we still have oatmeal?” Or “Will we still be allowed to be a family?”

So I answer the question this way: I look deep into my kiddo’s ocean blue eyes and say, “If Romney wins,” I can hardly utter the words, “nothing in our house will change.”

And even as I’m saying it, I realize this is not so much a true statement as it is a vow to my child.

In truth, if, you know, that thing were to happen, lots would change. Women, immigrants, LGBT folks, the nation’s economically challenged, the middle class, and citizens who would be impacted by any potential foreign policy fall-out (read: all of us) would face anxiety-producing uncertainties. But no matter what’s happening in our country or in my own psyche, I need to make sure that any anxiety I might feel does not trickle down to my children. No matter who lives in the White House, I will muster the kind of constancy, confidence, optimism, and family pride that builds a solid foundation for children.

But at the same time that I make that vow of constancy, I want to make sure that my kiddo knows that it really does matter who wins the presidency. “Pffft, no big deal” is a lie. And I don’t want to lie to my kid.

So I feed my brain’s adult data on the candidates into the kid-language translator, and it comes out this way:

“Different politicians think differently about how our government should make and spend money. They think differently about how our government should support people who need help. They think differently about how our country should communicate with other countries. They think differently about who should have what rights.”

“Yeah,” B-man chimes in, speaking like the pint-sized civil rights warrior he is, “like Romney would have voted yes on Prop 8.”

“Right,” I say. “And the w

ay President Obama thinks very closely matches the way I think and the way Mama thinks. So we’re voting for him.”

“And the way Romney thinks doesn’t match.”

Cheryl Dumesnil and family

“Right,” I say. “And if Obama is no longer our president, things in our government and our country will change. But in this house, we are a family, and we love each other, and we are sticking together, and no matter who is president, that will never change.”

Poet, writer, activist, and educator, Cheryl Dumesnil is the author of the forthcoming memoir “Love Song for Baby X: How I Stayed (Almost) Sane on the Rocky Road to Parenthood.” She spends her free time jumping on a trampoline and telling potty jokes, because the sound of her kids’ laughter makes her really, really happy.

The post How to talk to kids about politics first appeared on Lesbian.com.