The Wake

Nineteen years ago, half a million people marched in Washington, D.C. to fight for gay and lesbian rights. Celebrating that day and continuing the fight for rights and awareness, the University’s Queer Student Cultural Center (QSCC) holds National Coming Out Week events each October. This fall, the QSCC’s keynote speaker asked supporters not to forget the children of gay and lesbian couples – because they too are marching through the homophobic world.

“QueerSpawn,” is what keynote speaker Abigail Garner calls herself. The daughter of a gay father and a straight mother, Garner is a professional advocate for not only the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) community, but also for their children. There is no exact figure for the number of children who have grown up in GLBT families over the past two decades, but estimates vary from one million to 16 million.

“We’re constantly trying to bring in diverse people, to represent a diverse community,” says QSCC Co-Chair Vincent Staupe, a senior journalism and mass communication major, of bringing in Garner. She spoke about issues that the rest of the week’s events did not address, Staupe explains.

Children with one or two GLBT parents face unique and demanding pressures, Garner explains. This is not because GLBT parents are any less fit than straight parents to raise children, but because of the current heated political dispute as to whether their families are “valid,” she says.

Naturally, these children feel pressure to legitimize their families and thus to refute the two widespread myths about children of gay and lesbian parents - that they too will be homosexual or that they will be damaged in some way, Garner says.

“These hot button debates about what types of families will be recognized rage on, with little regard to the reality that kids are already in these families,” explains Garner. Today’s fiery political questions of gay and lesbian marriage and GLBT parenting force the children who are already in these families under a public microscope, argues Garner.

The parents, fighting their own battles, who focus on teaching their children how to deal with discrimination they may face often do not realize the extra pressures their children cope with, she says.

Garner explains that when she was a child, “I knew that I had power, power to change people’s minds… their perceptions about gay people in general.” She says that by displaying herself as a perfect and healthy child she could become a “testament to gay parenting.” On the other hand, when children like her make normal mistakes, “the default blame for anything short of perfectionism becomes the sexuality of their parents,” Garner explains.

“For a lot of kids that realization puts tremendous pressure on them,” Garner explains, “If children are going to be visible, they have to be perfect. That’s what they internalize.” Garner interviewed many adult children and young children of homosexual parents for her book Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell it Like it Is. “Children know that we’re in this powerful position, because we are symbols of something much bigger,” she says.

If a child of GLBT parents does something like skip class or tries drugs it is blamed on their unfit parents, Garner contends. But, when their classmates (kids with straight parents) do the same things, those things are brushed off as common mistakes teenagers make.

Ironically, if children of GLBT families grow up to identify as GLBT themselves, they are often reluctant to come out to even their parents because they do not want to confirm the myth that GLBT couples reproduce GLBT children, Garner says. No studies have shown that GLBT parents are any more likely to produce GLBT children than straight parents, she points out.

Aside from facing discrimination and pressure to display public perfectionism, children in these families also live with a lack of laws protecting them, Garner argues. Because their parents are not always legally recognized as parents, or this status changes across state lines, children face risks in situations where a “legal parent” needs to be present, Garner says.

Both the GLBTA (A is for Ally) and the anti-gay marriage/adoption crowd contribute to the negative forces these children face, explains Garner. While the far right condemns the parents and makes claims that the children are unhealthy, the left fights back boasting the flawlessness of their children. Both are unwise moves, Garner warns. “What it’s really like for kids to grow up with GBLT parents is much more complex than what either side of the rhetoric claims.”

“I hope that with more honest conversations, the children in these families will someday have the rights that children in other families have, including the luxury to be as dysfunctional and complex as any other family, without worrying about the backlash of prejudice,” Garner says.

The QSCC hosted a variety of events in the week to encourage such honest conversations about GLBT issues, Staupe says. Luncheons, outings, a rally complete with a literal “Coming Out Door,” and an annual drag show were very successful, says Staupe.

Despite rainy weather, over 200 students showed up to the rally, where they picked up t-shirts donning the words “gay,” “bisexual,” “lesbian,” “transsexual,” “ally,” or “me.” “The main point of the week for us is to raise awareness of GLBT issues,” Staupe explains.

“We just want to let people know that we’re here. We’re [QSCC] at 205 Coffman Memorial Union, and we’re here for the students.”

More about Abigail Garner’s advocacy and research can be found at .