Parents might look anxiously for a boy or girlfriend, even though they may not want to cope with the attendant disagreements, because it at least reassures them that their teenager is 'normal', and not homosexual. Most young people experiment with members of their own sex, without this necessarily being their permanent sexual orientation. But the recent change in the law that lowered the age of consent for gay sex to eighteen (soon, perhaps, to sixteen in line with heterosexual age of consent) affects the fact that most boys who are going to find their sexual partners among their own sex are hardly likely to have a sexual moratorium in their teenage years.
Homosexual girls are still ignored in law, but our objections to either our sons or daughters falling in love with their own gender have little to do with legal niceties. Most parents will be devastated by the thought of discovering their son or daughter is gay. Partly, this is because it seems to be an attack on your sexuality - what does it say about you if your child chooses this form of sexual expression? Partly, it is the removal of a form of immortality. By turning away from heterosexual sex you see your child as refusing to give you grandchildren and refusing to carry on your family line. Partly, it is a deep-seated and unquestioning fear of the unusual and the different.
Parents might seek to turn their children against the idea of being gay by being violently critical or abusive about homosexuality. When they do discover the truth, they may seek to blame their offspring's conversion on another person who is seen as having corrupted their hitherto 'normal' child. In fact, although we don't know why some people are attracted to members of their own rather than the opposite sex, we do know that it is not something that can be induced by seduction. Neither is it a result of a hormonal imbalance that can be cured. Those who find their own sex equally attractive or more attractive than the opposite sex do so for the same reasons as some of us find blondes preferable to brunettes or redheads sexier than both! Abuse does not change these feelings - it just ensures the young person comes to the realization of their sexual orientation with fear, disgust and an often suicidal low self-esteem.
If one day your child is the apple of your eye, your hope for the future and the carrier of your family line, and the next day a disgusting 'queer' - what has changed? Not, certainly, the person themselves, who is still the child who loves you and whom you loved. Only your perception of them. Which, then, is at fault -the person or your viewpoint, and which would be easier to changed?
Young people should be able to express their sexuality. This is not to say that we should condone or encourage all levels of sexual activity. We should see, and help them to see, that sexual expression is not just one act - the act of sexual intercourse. It is a range of feelings and activities that stretches from the beginnings of self-awareness and exploration right through to complex sexual relationships with sexual intercourse. If we feel they are not yet ready to make the full journey, we would do better to allow them to take the first necessary steps, than to forbid them anything at all. If these first steps are made with confidence, and not tainted with guilt or fear, they are more likely to take their time and not to grab at experiences prematurely or inappropriately. The more we accept them and encourage them to accept themselves, the better chance they have of becoming caring, happy individuals able to make the loving and lasting relationships all parents want for their offspring.
