Having Friends is what is most Important to a child

When Florida Gov Ron DeSantis and his allies assert they are protecting the young from groomers, drag queens, doctors and parents who accept that gender is not biology then it is time for us to seek protection from Gov DeSantis. His claims are false, even cruel.

There is nothing new about boys who act like girls or girls who act like boys. The young always bent gender limitations. How often has a girl boasted to a boy that she can throw a ball further and harder?

Malevolent conservatives wave the flag of parental rights and appeal to a daydream that parental influence will make children straight. Or even worse their goal is to bring back the days when heterosexuals were normal while homosexuals and trans persons were deemed immoral and sick.

In 1952, my mom caught me having oral sex with another ten-year old boy, warning me only fairies do that. Seventy-one years later, it remains a searing memory, a moment of terror and shame, I wished a trap door could open and let me disappear.

In a flash I knew I was a fairy. Accepting a negative identity came easily, and it is a warning that the “don’t say gay” crusade will not protect  children but could easily leave lonely children miserable. Making these identities a bad thing won’t stop the young from fooling around; it will only make them feel pain for doing it.

I achieved loneliness at an early age. In nursery school I would walk across the room and kick over other children’s building blocks. I did not play well with others. I was a troubled child, meaning I caused trouble.

I paid a heavy price for this hostile behavior. I didn’t have the support of friends. Where most kids went out to play after school, I headed for the library.  A bookworm who checked out a book and tried to finish it before bed.  Books like the Hardy Boys, sports stories by John Tunis. However entertaining, they emphasized my athletic weakness and failed to raise my spirits. They were reminders I was terrible at sports and physical activity; my insecurities deepened. There were no books written for boys like me.

The “Ban the Books” movement might bring back the pain I suffered as a preteen. I’m delighted that children can read books showing that it is ok to be gay. Books like this would have changed my life. Books are probably the only way I could learn that my dark secret wasn’t so dark. They would have quieted my fear that anyone who knew would shun me.

My fear of being found out shut me off from others and made me stupid. It stopped me from knowing what other people believed. My nightmares and anxieties went unquestioned and achieved the certainty of truth. Having no friends that I truly trusted stopped me from appreciating people who were supportive. Nor did I learn the smart answers to stop mean remarks that hurt. Stupidly I felt certain that I had to hide my inner self from everyone. Seeking a magic solution, I stopped using the word “suck.”

Looking back, I believe the banned books could have rescued me from the harsh conviction that I was disgusting. Only in books, in the privacy of my own room, could I have accepted the idea that my life had hope and that my loneliness was unnecessary.

My isolation meant I lost the benefit of early childhood friends; learning what banter is friendly and what banter is mean and should be ignored.

Books don’t make children gay. Parents don’t make children gay. Teachers don’t make children gay. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking children are malleable and informed by adults. Each student comes to school with his or her own needs and personality, paramount among these is finding friends.

In school, students have favorite teachers and others they resist. Even the young aren’t surprised that adults have disagreements. It is a mistake to think that teachers dominate children. Teachers constantly complain, “They just won’t listen.”

Florida’s Parent Rights law popularly known as “don’t say gay” is tone deaf to these realities. Good teachers watch children’s developments with a kindly concern.

Hard right conservatives who ignite parental anger ignore the social side of schooling. These adults make the teacher’s job difficult when they should be supportive of a teacher’s effort to make children happy.

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