How one same-sex
couple navigates their teenage children’s dating
years.
Dean and I are in
the kitchen making our Monday night dinner of Dad’s
famous tacos, one of us browning the ground turkey meat
while the other prepares the toppings: cutting
lettuce, slicing tomatoes, shredding cheese, and
microwaving the tortillas. By chance, Dean and I bump
against each other in the small kitchen, turn, smile,
draw closer. Our eyes have a sultry look as we
embrace, our hands reaching out for the other
person’s hands until we are stroking each
other’s back, preparing for a soft, tender kiss
on the lips when “Get a room, you two!
Sheesh!” in half-shout, half-laugh comes out of
my 15-year-old son’s mouth from the living room
sofa. There is a moment of stunned silence -- quickly
followed by guffaws of laughter from all of us.
Dean, Brett, Adrianne, and Parker
In many ways our
lives have become an unscripted sitcom that would make
Everwood and Gilmore Girls look tame. As gay
parents of two children (I was married for 21 years
and share custody with their mother), my partner and I
have watched carefully the joys and quandaries of our
children entering their middle- and high-school years of
dating. We listen carefully to how they explain our
relationship to their friends, dates to the homecoming
dance, and long-term steadies: “Well, you see,
my dad is gay and lives with his partner, Dean.” Even
in the liberal bubble of Chapel Hill, N.C., the
reactions are priceless, ranging from stunned silence
to a retraction of the date’s invitation to a
low-key but “wow” reaction of “Really?
That’s cool!”
For both
children, teenage dating meant going through their own
coming-out process, but this time coming out
“straight” to us. As weird as it seems,
“coming out” is now part of the script for
most families with any combination of gay, lesbian,
bisexual, transgender, or straight members. My
daughter, Adrianne, put it this way: “Dad, Dean, I
have something to tell you. I’m straight. I
didn’t know how else to say it, and I
don’t want to upset you, but I cannot hide
it.”
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Webb-Mitchell is director of the School of the Pilgrim,
author of On Being a Gay Parent
(Seabury Press, 2007), and an ordained pastor
in the Presbyterian Church (USA).