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Quinn Kenney is a queer Mainer, a they who has remained a they despite presidential executive orders.
Hiding or denying the existence of queer people isn’t going to make your kid turn out straight and cisgender. No, hiding and denying that queer people exist and have always done so may guarantee your kid’ll grow up judgmental and self-loathing, queer or not.
I believe the argument that queerness is sexual and therefore not appropriate to mention around minors is too vague to base policies on. Kids pretend to get married all the time, and, with as much seriousness a kindergartener can muster, they plan to as well.
Heterosexuality is introduced to kids right away, and it isn’t always sexual. Thus, the exact same actions but with same-gender partners isn’t inherently sexual either.
Nobody’s worried about children seeing heterosexual parent couples in storybooks, but tell the same story featuring two moms or two dads as opposed to the straight couple and that’s a no-no. Why? A genuine question, and I think the answers lack practical reasoning. It’s not obscene when it’s straight? And what if a student has two moms? Are they banned from saying, “My moms took me to the playground”?
Not all households are the same, and no one way is right. A loving home is what a child needs.
Banning mentions of queerness, be it gender or sexuality-wise, until the age of 18 is unfair as well. Sex ed exists before kids are 18, and common sense dictates there should at least be some mention that there are other alternatives to the cishet options.
Sex ed shouldn’t be teaching how to have gay sex. It also shouldn’t be teaching how to have straight sex. It should teach how to have sex safely. Consent, condoms, and communication.
As a non-straight unhatched trans kid, sex ed was excruciatingly uncomfortable. (The trans egg metaphor is used usually around the internet. The trans person who doesn’t yet know they’re trans is “unhatched,” and once they start to make some realizations about themselves and their gender identity, they’re hatching. “The egg cracking” is when someone first starts to figure it out.)
It was also very othering. I never encountered anything near how I felt, and for a confused kid expecting school to provide all the answers to life I was disappointed.
Being gay should not be taboo. Nor should being trans, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, or any flavor of gender creative. It’s hard going through life seeing your peers figuring out their lives while you’re floundering. If I had been aware of what being trans was, of the many facets of potential attraction, I would have settled into adulthood feeling a little less like I was drowning and more like I had a handle on who I was and how I would have liked to approach the real world.
Education is not indoctrinating. Mentioning that other ways exist does not force someone to act in ways not consistent with their internal compass. I would have been thrilled to have seen even a paragraph in a health textbook saying “some people are transgender and here’s what that means.” Maybe an example question featuring a same-gender couple. If that doesn’t apply to you, you might not even notice it. But to a kid like me, it would have been life changing.
Self discovery is an essential component in growing up. Don’t ban mentions of selves different from the norm. That helps no one and hurts many.
