Robert Oscar Lopez: Growing up with two moms
Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community didn’t really know what was going on in the house. To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A’s.
Inside, however, I was confused. When your home life is so drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird. I have no mental health disorders or biological conditions. I just grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast.
My peers learned all the unwritten rules of decorum and body language in their homes; they understood what was appropriate to say in certain settings and what wasn’t; they learned both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine social mechanisms.
Even if my peers’ parents were divorced, and many of them were, they still grew up seeing male and female social models. […]
I had no male figure at all to follow, and my mother and her partner were both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers. As a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends, since I was neither confident nor sensitive to others. Thus I befriended people rarely and alienated others easily. Gay people who grew up in straight parents’ households may have struggled with their sexual orientation; but when it came to the vast social universe of adaptations not dealing with sexuality—how to act, how to speak, how to behave—they had the advantage of learning at home. Many gays don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home.
It is unfortunate that this man had been ill-served by his upbringing. I find myself discussing with same-sex marriage advocates about the issues of gender and how men and women are just not fungible. The advocates all fall back on that any differences between the sexes are “social constructs” nothing more. Even when I have brought up the fact that there have been widely different societies throughout history, but the male/female paradigm has remained constant (even if the numbers of partners within a marriage has not) … I actually got the jaw-dropping response that all that proved was “millennium of bigotry.”
Same-sex couples regardless of legal status, do commit and do have children. They will not do their off-spring any favors in buying into the myth that gender can be ignored.
It was not until I was twenty-eight that I suddenly found myself in a relationship with a woman, through coincidences that shocked everyone who knew me and surprised even myself. I call myself bisexual because it would take several novels to explain how I ended up “straight” after almost thirty years as a gay man. I don’t feel like dealing with gay activists skewering me the way they go on search-and-destroy missions against ex-gays, “closet cases,” or “homocons.”
Though I have a biography particularly relevant to gay issues, the first person who contacted me to thank me for sharing my perspective on LGBT issues was Mark Regnerus, in an email dated July 17, 2012. I was not part of his massive survey, but he noticed a comment I’d left on a website about it and took the initiative to begin an email correspondence.
Forty-one years I’d lived, and nobody—least of all gay activists—had wanted me to speak honestly about the complicated gay threads of my life. If for no other reason than this, Mark Regnerus deserves tremendous credit—and the gay community ought to be crediting him rather than trying to silence him.
Regnerus is under attack, not for his scholarship but for his politics. Lopez, too, is summarily dismissed:
Many have dismissed my story with four simple words: “But you are conservative.” Yes, I am. How did I get that way? I moved to the right wing because I lived in precisely the kind of anti-normative, marginalized, and oppressed identity environment that the left celebrates: I am a bisexual Latino intellectual, raised by a lesbian, who experienced poverty in the Bronx as a young adult. I’m perceptive enough to notice that liberal social policies don’t actually help people in those conditions. Especially damning is the liberal attitude that we shouldn’t be judgmental about sex. In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Sex can be hurtful not only because of infectious diseases but also because it leaves us vulnerable and more likely to cling to people who don’t love us, mourn those who leave us, and not know how to escape those who need us but whom we don’t love. The left understands none of that. That’s why I am conservative.
Leftists judge people on their politics rather than their character. And they judge studies on the politics of the researchers rather than the research.
Yet, they are the most open-minded, tolerant, civil, rights-respecting people … evah!
Humbug.
Great post, Darleen!
And great point about the researchers: “Progressives Attack Professor Mark Regnerus Over Same-Sex Parenting Research.” And, “Why Are Progressives So Intolerant?“
– Lefturds / Progressives are all perfect projectionists. They project their own bigotries and intolerance onto others at every opportunity, because they know their bullshit theories go against natural order and human nature..
Well said Darleen. I have friends raising kids in such relationships. It is harder. I am not saying it can’t be done and there are plenty of dysfunctional heterosexual relationships, but a male role model (almost all such parent relationships I see are two females) is important for both boys and girls. And even a really butch mom is not going to fully cut it.
This is really intriguing and I am happily reading everything available on it.
Sciiiiiiience to the rescue.
EBL
The situation of two moms or two dads is not ideal, but that just means certain challenges have to be acknowledged and dealt with
which will not happen as long as Leftwing “gender is a social construct” orthodoxy holds sway.
– Real science, if OT:
– For those that wish to follow along at home here is the NASA TV live stream for the Mars Rover landing on the red planet.
– Coming up in a few minutes. Buckle up sports fans.
So it’s not all fabulous? I’m shocked, I tell you.
hetero couples suck raising kids too. the 1960’s dick van dyke hetero’s have much to be desired.raise them in what direction?
I have lesbian friends who have been a couple for a very long time and consciously and carefully decided it was not in the best interest of the child for one of them to bear children. Indeed, they determined that the idea was a selfish one. I second this.
I also have lesbian friends who do have children and they are all no longer couples. Child-rearing is difficult on relationships, as all parents know. Tossing in a new variable certainly doesn’t make it any easier.
so here’s my prob: the old man starts work in ’68 retires in ’85 collects full pension til 2011.my mom collects 1/2 pension til death. this ain’t going to work long term. hard core demonrats the ‘rents.
my dad started work at 15 y/o (1943) semi-retired 2003. Obama wants to take his Medicare Advantage away.
oh
don’t put mittens stickers on your car nay:
f&ck commie bastards 2012
“my dad started work at 15 y/o (1943) ”
my dad milked it for 18 then lived it for 17 and pass the ball to mom for ?
Oddly enough I had a very similar conversation with my niece this week. She asked about gay marriage and I explained why gender matters when raising kids. Interesting to see a man with actual life experience reiterate exactly what I told me niece.
Although, to be honest, she already knew that part about “Life is hard when you’re strange.” She is, after all, part of my family. We’re all oddballs.
Must be tough for the left to call him homophobic. I imagine more than one lefty burned out his (or her) last three brains cells trying to figure out what pejorative term to use to describe him.
Obama wants to take his Medicare Advantage away.
oh my a gwb big gov’t compassionate conservative buy votes. go rinos!
nw
You know 1) ppl on MA pay extra out-of-pocket 2) the ONE part of Medicare that has been a success 3) dad has paid in to system for 60+ years and at 84 and still occassionally taking clients, what he is receiving is his own contributions
I actually got the jaw-dropping response that all that proved was “millennium of bigotry.”
Only one millennium? Haven’t humans been around at least 10x longer than that?
The majority of human civilizations have not been influenced by the Abrahamic religions, and yet none of them decide to honor same-sex couplings the same as heteros.
Or if they do, it doesn’t last. We shouldn’t wonder why that is?
there are plenty of dysfunctional heterosexual relationships, but a male role model … is important for both boys and girls. And even a really butch mom is not going to fully cut it.
A butch mom isn’t going to cut it at all. She’s still a female in the kids’ eyes, so she falls into their “What Females Are” folder, whereas their “What Males Are” folder remains empty.
A lesbian can be a perfectly good mother but she can never be a father. Sorry, but there’s no changing that.
As for dysfunctional hetero relationships, my father has a personality disorder and hes treated us like a pile of steaming horseshit 24/7, but I still benefited by having a father in the home, if for no other reason than my mom could stay home with us while we were young, and we had someone in the home who got up every day without fail to go to work. I’ve got pretty good impulse control, a good work ethic, and wasn’t at all promiscuous, which are typical benefits a girl gains by being raised by her father.
Even if he is a mean old jackass.
Furthermore, pointing out that hetero households can be hellish doesn’t have any bearing on whether same-sex parents are OK for a kid. As Mr. Lopez observes, same-sex parents cannot—no matter their intentions or efforts—model proper male/female relationships for their kids, nor can they model proper maleness or femaleness. Like it or not, a little boy looks to father to see how to be a man, and little girls look to mothers to see how to be women. Even if your parents are as eccentric and non-stereotypical as a $13 bill, the kid will look to their same-sex parent as a model.
Of course, to privilege the sexual-identity needs of the children over the sexual preferences of the adults is pure, distilled h8, so you can all safely ignore this post.
Both nervous and yet blunt, I would later seem strange even in the eyes of gay and bisexual adults …
It also occurs to me that Mr. Lopez was on the Asperger continuum somewhere, which also makes you strange, but I don’t think every child of lesbians is an Aspie. So there’s that.
– Oddesy is on mark for in EDL with all systems operating correctly – approximately 1 minute from Mars atmosheric insertion and the start of the Rover capsul decent.
You know 1) ppl on MA pay extra out-of-pocket 2) the ONE part of Medicare that has been a success 3) dad has paid in to system for 60+ years and at 84 and still occassionally taking clients, what he is receiving is his own contributions
abolish it go and to free market. transformational change for the hope and change! see animal health care.
– Oddessy is approx. 14 Km above the martian surface – speed mach 2 – parachute will deploy at about mach 1.7 – capsule on line to target touchdown point – all systems normal.
– Curiosoty has landed!
Furthermore, pointing out that hetero households can be hellish doesn’t have any bearing on whether same-sex parents are OK for a kid. As Mr. Lopez observes, same-sex parents cannot—no matter their intentions or efforts—model proper male/female relationships for their kids,
so hetero dysfunction can? me over bearing father figure and meek mommy sux big time when they are both fools.
Live pics from Mars surface now being shown!
WOW
– Yes – first pics of the Rovers own wheel looking down at the martian surface. A lot of dust gets kicked up from the crane rockets during landing which will be cleaned off.
– This Rover is larger than an SUV and has 50 times the reserch capibility of previous versions.
– These missions will be the prelude to manned missions sometime in the 20’s or 30’s.
so hetero dysfunction can?
Something is better than nothing, unless your same-sex parent is a serial killer or child molester.
Immediate tweets in response to Curiosity landing:
James Lileks
The really calm guy in the control room right now is probably the time traveller.
SooperMexican
Wait a minute… shouldnt that shadow.. be on the other side?!??!?!?
CatsPolitics
ON THE GRASSY KNOLL???1!!1
Phineas Fahrquar
Drat the luck. The Martian ruins are just out of view of the cameras.
?@MooseOfReason
Curiosity saw its shadow. Six more weeks of whatever season it is on Mars.
Dan Collins
Curiosity to Mission Control: Where is all the white womens at?
Just Karl
That’s not Mars… that’s a space station!
Joshua Malina
CNN: NASA’s 2.5 billion dollar Curiosity rover has landed safely on Mars. The first images confirm, “It’s a shithole.”
SarahK Fleming
Nice. Curiosity is photographing its own shadow into every picture. Amateur.
@u62
I haven’t been this excited for thumbnail sized jpgs since i was on AOL
@MarsCuriosity:
I’m safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!
@MarsCuriosity
No photo or it didn’t happen? Well lookee here, I’m casting a shadow on the ground in Mars’ Gale crater
Phineas Fahrquar
But how does this fulfill NASA’s main mission of Muslim outreach?
yes but you have to insert blacks and gays in your coverage to make it “authentic” – mbm
too many “white” peeps @mission control
don’t forget the wymens!!11!!
you wymens don’t forget about the
Harkin blasts House GOP over DC abortion bill
kill the baby
– Damn – almost all the JPL links are down due to server overload – but heres a back door you can still pull up to see the images as they come in.
Curiosity has its own Twitter feed and is posting pics
https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity
Of course, to privilege the sexual-identity needs of the children over the sexual preferences of the adults is pure, distilled h8, so you can all safely ignore this post.
What I cannot get as a scientist is the idea that sexual preference is not only inborn but something completely unchangeable, while gendered behavior is a sociological construct.
When there is ample evidence that sexual desire can be shaped and altered by our environment, and that even in a relative cultural “vacuum,” people with a certain chromosome set still start evincing certain kinds of behavior.
I don’t get it. Nor do I get the fact people completely miss implications of either of these hard-line stances, like whether or not it would be ethical to gengineer a child’s sexual preferences. (Given there’s good evidence that homosexuality is coupled to a higher risk of depression, suicide, and STD risk, it seems that engineering it out would be healthier for children the same way straight up removing a depression risk would be. And why can’t we socially construct gender however the hell we feel like it? Who’s to say that obliterating gender differences via social engineering is going to be useful for humankind?)
– Outside of any real risk gto the health of society at large, there are no words to express how little I give a damn what other peoples sexual preferences are.
– The fact of that is what seems to drive the oddballs into hysteria, which means I don’t care what they think either, as long as they don’t try to force their ideas on me or deny my right to my own prefered belief system.
– If they want to deny me the right to my own beliefs they have a hell of a fight on their hands.
It isn’t science, its politics.
A lot of creative people have issues with depression, if they are linked, would it be a fair trade, to give up creativity for happiness? Would it be “better”?
Great article, Darleen. Thanks.
What I cannot get as a scientist is the idea that sexual preference is not only inborn but something completely unchangeable, while gendered behavior is a sociological construct.
Love it Pellegri. Yes, exactly. and I don’t understand what is so horrible to the idea that sexual attraction is a preference ?
Not to take this idea to an absurd level – but even heterosexuals have preferences. Chubby chasers, or guys that like flat chested women.
I guess because it then ruins their political argument. In their minds.
That’s why it is taboo in ghey circles and media to be bisexual or admit to having had opposite-sex sexual relations.
Once they achieve their goals I would expect that it will no longer be verboten to notice that environment and culture has a large influence on whom one sees as acceptable sexual partners. That is to say, once the culture has changed to their liking.
Even the examples usually trotted out — Greeks, mainly — treated actual marriages as superior to same-sex couplings. Alexander the Great may have had bed-partners, but he also had a wife or two and a recognized son by one of them. I’ve never read about a monarch of the day declaring a same-sex lover as an heir, even among the Ptolemaic line that was already reviled for their habit of marrying their siblings.
The Romans considered it scandalous, and it’s hard to judge whether the accusations made about various figures were accurate or just slander. I *think* the claims that Hadrian had a boy-toy are relatively recent (which, IMHO, places them alongside claims about Lincoln), but even if they aren’t, they can’t change the fact that he had a wife who was recognized as such. The other emperors who faced such accusations were infamous in their own days, so it’s hard to tell if Elogabulous truly minced around as accused, or if Nero did try to marry a Greek man who reminded him of his deceased wife (or if that accusation wasn’t just a slander of Nero *and* his deceased wife).
Preferences can be changed; genetics cannot.
Thus the horror among the activists that Bachman’s husband and Chik-Fil-A’s Cathy fund groups that help unwilling gays change their preferences. It’s akin to the bizarre claims of “genocide” by deaf “advocates” in response to Cochlear implants. If people who are unhappy with their lot in life can change that lot, who will the “advocates” speak for?
and I don’t understand what is so horrible to the idea that sexual attraction is a preference ?
I thought it wasn’t a preference. I’ve known lots of gays who would have given their right arms not to be gay. It wasn’t what they wanted, but it’s in the hand they were dealt. They tried like crazy to go straight but nothing worked.
Also, it’s possible that there is more than one path to becoming gay. There are definitely cases wherein sexual abuse affects or determines one’s sexual attraction: sometimes when those people work through the issues of the abuse, the same-sex attraction goes away.
In other cases, it’s possible that the area of the brain that controls sexual identity and/or attraction was irregularly developed during gestation.
There might be other stuff going on: how should I know? But it would explain why some people are helped by the treatment and some totally aren’t.
groups that help unwilling gays change their preferences
Unwilling?
I thought it was voluntary. Or do parents ship their kids off?
Unwilling in the sense of being gay, not changing.
thought it wasn’t a preference. I’ve known lots of gays who would have given their right arms not to be gay. It wasn’t what they wanted, but it’s in the hand they were dealt. They tried like crazy to go straight but nothing worked.
Well, first there is a continuum. Bisexual folks, of course. But, trying not to be gay isn’t the same thing being “unable” to attract yourself to someone you don’t prefer. You know, that friend you just LOVED to death, and despite their having the correct naughty bit, you had absolutely no attraction to. And our preferences come from … where? Who knows. I personally believe it has more to do with early childhood experiences, etc, than genetics, but that’s just my belief. And, until they find that gay gene …
Also, it’s possible that there is more than one path to becoming gay. There are definitely cases wherein sexual abuse affects or determines one’s sexual attraction: sometimes when those people work through the issues of the abuse, the same-sex attraction goes away.
Yes, and there are people who are never abused, and could go either way, and decide they prefer the path more traveled.
In other cases, it’s possible that the area of the brain that controls sexual identity and/or attraction was irregularly developed during gestation.
Chemistry. Hormones. I’d believe that more than genes.
Yup. This.
The question is – in the current political environment, is it even possible to develop a pre-natal hormone therapy which would correct the environment in the womb that leads to homosexuality?
SCIENCE!11!111!
“gender is a social construct”
You know what else is a social construct? Society. You want your kid to function in modern society, then maybe you should get him up to speed on the social constructs that 99.99% of his fellow citizens take for granted.
Preferences can be changed; genetics cannot.
I got a roomful of guys in white lab coats what say they’re working on it. I mean, sure, they’re working on life-threatening diseases and disorders, but once the gates are opened…
No one has demonstrated that everyone with the alleged genetic predisposition (which itself seems more assertion than science) actually is gay, nor that everyone who is gay has the alleged genetic predisposition.
As for gay people wishing they were straight and being unable to change, a lot depends on the habits and, yes, identity that has already taken hold by then. A lot of people may believe consciously that they absolutely want to be different than they are, but an underlying ambivalence can sabotage any such effort.
It’s what keeps the psychiatrists in business.
s for gay people wishing they were straight and being unable to change, a lot depends on the habits and, yes, identity that has already taken hold by then. A lot of people may believe consciously that they absolutely want to be different than they are, but an underlying ambivalence can sabotage any such effort.
If guys could absolutely want to be attracted to large sized women – in order to increase his pool of prospective dating options – but that ain’t gonna happen either.
I do believe that those on the spectrum – men and women – can “learn” to focus on preferences that will lead to an easier/happy life.
Which is exactly what the activists are counting on when they harass Chick-Fil-A. It’s far easier to surrender and shut up.
A lot of creative people have issues with depression, if they are linked, would it be a fair trade, to give up creativity for happiness? Would it be “better”?
Oh, I’m among the creative-but-depressed group. I honestly don’t believe that we should be doing much if any genetic engineering for personality, mental disorders, sexual preference, etc. But it’s something I’m laying out on the table as a discussion point, because it’s a huge touchstone of the soft eugenics movement (which is also really into aborting “imperfect” fetuses) that we SHOULD be able to fix humanity’s problems by engineering away whatever’s wrong with our babies. (And right now, just getting rid of everyone who’d have a reduced quality of life by someone else’s, largely subjective, standard.) If the science ever becomes settled (which is hilarious because we should know by now that science doesn’t “settle”) and if current trends hold that the quality of life for homosexuals, even in totally permissive environments, is worse, then where does the ethos of “we need to fix these defective babies so they can be perfectly happy!” lead us? As far as I’m concerned, we’re plowing head-on at 60mph into a giant pile of Unfortunate Consequences.
Me, personally, I’m happy with preventing anencephaly, Tay-Sachs, and all other childhood lethal diseases while leaving (most) everything else on the table. No one should have cystic fibrosis or MS or lupus. But the biological tendencies that lead to double-edged disorders with definite conferred benefits (schizophrenia, sickle cell, bipolar disorder)? We should be far more careful with what we’re doing if we want to get rid of those. (And even then, we may later discover that by eliminating “completely negative” disorders we’re losing an important adaptive gene. Which should be reason for caution when it comes to any genetic tweaking of any species. The uncertainty principle applies in the macro here–even if we perfectly understand a biological system, we do not know every single ramification that a change to that system would have on the supersystem it’s part of.)
I know this is well after the ‘freshness’ date, but my daughter was on vacation and I wanted her opinion first. My partner and I have raised her since she was adopted from China at 8 months. She is now 17 and entering her senior year in high school. My partner, her mother, died 10 months ago.
Her first comment was: ‘he is making an excuse for being a shitty friend. If he can’t socialize it’s his problem, not his parents.
We talked more about the issues and given her own experience with being raised by two ‘moms’, she stands on her original thought. We made an effort to make sure there were men in her life – her grandfathers were constant and regular (weekly visits with my parents, summers with my partner’s father staying with us). Her god-parent was a regular participant – we all attended the same church weekly. She has had male teachers, neighbor friends have fathers that are good friends.
My first thought upon reading the post was ‘what kind of upbringing did he have’? My daughter said she would never like, nor plan to allow her children, to be home schooled. She has said repeatedly over the last couple years that school is a good socializing experience that kids need.
Frankly, I don’t think having lesbian parents was the issue for this gentleman…
Tracy thanks for post.
I know when my son was 17 if i asked whether i was a good dad the answer mostly was i sucked unless he wanted something from me like the keys to the car on a friday night, then i was the best dad in the world. And he was probably right because i was mostly playing it be ear.
I’d be curious if a study has been made following the path of same sex offspring to see if there was a true deviation from the norm.
Otherwise we are dealing with anecdotal evidence which is probably filtered by the speaker.
I don’t need to ask her if I am good parent, and I didn’t in this case – her response was to Robert Lopez. However, I understand your point. I don’t think there can ever be such a study because every family is unique – it is the result of circumstances and events that each must face. CJ (my daughter) had to deal with her mother’s stroke and death over the last two years and that will have changed everything.
We talked today about ‘regrets’ and she said that her life would have been much different had we not moved two years ago – an event that probably triggered the stroke that began the slide to the end for her mother – yet, SHE said that she was better for the move in the long run.
I agree that kids, even smart, mature teens can’t ‘judge’ in any objective way…but I am not certain any of us can ever judge our upbringing in an objective way.
I also think Mr. Lopez is offering a convenient excuse: “I’m different because I was raised different” I wasn’t raised different. My parents are heterosexual, have been married for 55 years this year and my mom was a stay-at-home- mom, we were raised in the Catholic Church. I have made my own choices and take responsibility for the outcomes.
First let me express my condolences for you and your daughters loss. I lost my father at about the same age as your daughter. I can relate.
I think Lopez is telling his story through his eyes and to him his rationales are real. Mileage may vary.
It’s like home-schooled kids. And the lack of socialization.
Back in the early days of the internet, Yahoo had forums (clubs they called them) and there was one member of one of the larger political clubs that was in her senior year of high school with plans to attend the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. I believe she was on an academic scholarship. Anyway by her senior year of college she was elected President of the Student Body. I’m pretty sure social skills helped.
She went on to the University of Chicago Law School did well there and last i heard she was practicing entertainment law in LA.
To the point. For every story that reinforces the norm there is another story that goes counter to it.
That’s what makes life interesting.