Should Parents or Schools Teach About Homosexuality

There's an old joke featuring a two-sentence message on a men's room wall. The first: My mother made me a homosexual. The second is in response: If I give her enough wool, would she make one for me? There are some theories that mothers are responsible for a child's eventual sexual orientation. Some say it is the fathers. Others believe it starts in school yards. Others believe it can be an unavoidable biological process.

Whatever the reason, the teaching of the realities of homosexuality in our culture must start at home. Fortunately for those who grow up to choose the gay life, most families today are accepting of that choice, and the traditional anger and shame are much less prevalent than they were in the past. There's a growing number of gay couples and other social changes that can be confusing to children. Therefore, it is increasingly important that parents give their young children adequate comprehensive sexual information before they start their school years.

Some strong advocates of keeping all such indoctrination within the family object to any kind of sex education in the classroom. This may have been a workable solution in previous generations, when most non-home exposure to sex came from such innocuous sources as schoolyards, teen hangouts and slightly suggestive movies. In those days, homosexuality was, as Oscar Wilde called it, "the love that dare not speak its name". Fortunately, for those who choose that way of life today, gay people are accepted by both family and society at large.

Children today are bombarded 24-7 by explicit sex information in all of its forms on their computers, television sets, movies and advertisements. There is no way parents can hope to have any control on how that glut of information affects their children, except to teach their own beliefs and standards of behavior early. While schools have classes that deal with the science of sex, it always has been and always will be the total responsibility of the parents to teach their children the basic facts of sex.