Ordinary, Like Us

First published in the Chicago Free Press, May 7, 2008

Young gays and lesbians want to be married. And have kids.

That's what the first survey of the aspirations of gay and lesbian youth discovered.

Rockway Institute reported that more than 90 percent of the lesbians and more than 80 percent of the gay males they surveyed "expect to be partnered in a monogamous relationship after age 30."

About two-thirds of the males and just over half of the females said they thought it was very likely they'd have children.

What's extraordinary about this is just how very ordinary it is.

Ordinary for mainstream society, I mean. When we think of straight young people, we assume they want to get married and have children. There are always those who don't, of course, but they tend to be eccentric outliers.

The gay community, though, has long assumed the opposite of itself (especially gay men), and the mainstream world has assumed the same. Gays were thought to be promiscuous. Gays were artists, not parents. Gays were the outrageous life of the party, not couples who were in bed by 10 p.m.

But maybe the ordinariness of the survey results should not be such a surprise.

The survey participants were 16- to 22-year-olds in urban areas; they've grown up in a world where there are out gay members of Congress, out celebrities and rock stars, out mayors and athletes and CEOs and writers.

They've grown up with gay-straight alliances in their schools, with classmates who had out and happy gay parents, with discussions about whether saying "That's so gay" constitutes prejudice.

Gay and lesbian youth want stable marriages and children?

Of course they do.

Because they have grown up in an America where being gay is starting to seem unremarkable. Where being gay doesn't need to mean living a particular way. Where being gay doesn't have to mean putting limits on your future.

Young gays and lesbians don't want to destroy "traditional marriage" the way social conservatives fear. They want to be traditional - and one state, Massachusetts, allows them to do that. Hopefully others will follow.

These young gay people want what many heterosexuals want: a home, a family, a purposeful life, a job they can pursue with passion. They want to work without fretting they'll be fired for being gay; they want to marry their sweetheart without having to hire a lawyer to make sure they can visit each other in the hospital; they want to raise kids without worrying that their child will be beaten up for having gay parents.

It is my theory - but I don't know this to be true - that as gay and lesbian role models diversify, as we have images of lesbians who drive trucks and lesbians who are fashion models, images of gay men who style hair and images of gay men who are dedicated dads, more people will feel comfortable (and have felt comfortable) coming out.

As it becomes clear that gay people are not all one thing, more people will realize that it is not fitting into the "lifestyle" that proves you are gay - it is not the "gay accent," or the lesbian's comfortable shoes, or the love of club music, or being a Democrat - it is simply loving and being attracted sexually to people of the same gender.

There have always been gays and lesbians who wanted monogamous partners and children, but until the past couple of years, they've been hidden from mainstream society by the gays and lesbians who get more attention - the promiscuous, the party-goers, the style tastemakers.

We love that part of our community. The absolutely fabulous gays are the ones that help define us as being creative, artistic, fun. They're the ones who help us feel special. Different.

But we're also the same.

And that basic similarity is what young gays and lesbians see right away. They have access to it. They know - already! at their age! - that they can have the life they want, whatever that life is.

They can do the party circuit. They can be successful government officials, or artists, or business owners. They can be parents.

Being gay doesn't limit them, because being gay is only one part of who they are. Or perhaps it's that the definition of being gay has expanded. It no longer means only eternal singlehood and a furtive life lived in gay bars and dark city parks. If a lesbian wants to be married, she doesn't have to pretend that she's living with her "best friend." If a gay man wants to be married, he doesn't have to marry a woman and then seek sex in public restrooms.

Now she can marry a woman, and he can marry a man.

And our gay and lesbian youth are planning to do exactly that.