What defines a family?

I've been pondering this question for a while now. It's no secret that anyone's sexual preferences isn't an issue for me. I don't really care either way if you are gay, bi or straight. It's what and who you are as a person that matters most to me. Sexual orientation has no bearing on what you are as a person either so to me it's a moot point.

Which brings me to this - What defines a family? Religion? Government? Humanity?

A definition at the online dictionary site Free Dictionary :

fam·i·ly (fm-l, fml)
n. pl. fam·i·lies
1.
a. A fundamental social group in society typically consisting of one or two parents and their children.
b. Two or more people who share goals and values, have long-term commitments to one another, and reside usually in the same dwelling place.
2. All the members of a household under one roof.
3. A group of persons sharing common ancestry. See Usage Note at collective noun.
4. Lineage, especially distinguished lineage.
5. A locally independent organized crime unit, as of the Cosa Nostra.
6.
a. A group of like things; a class.
b. A group of individuals derived from a common stock: the family of human beings.
7. Biology A taxonomic category of related organisms ranking below an order and above a genus. A family usually consists of several genera. See Table at taxonomy.
8. Linguistics A group of languages descended from the same parent language, such as the Indo-European language family.
9. Mathematics A set of functions or surfaces that can be generated by varying the parameters of a general equation.
10. Chemistry A group of elements with similar chemical properties.
11. Chemistry A vertical column in the periodic table of elements.
adj.
1. Of or having to do with a family: family problems.
2. Being suitable for a family: family movies.

The one that concerns this blog post is :

1.
a. A fundamental social group in society typically consisting of one or two parents and their children.
b. Two or more people who share goals and values, have long-term commitments to one another, and reside usually in the same dwelling place.

Nowhere in the text above does it say what gender the parents are.

Does it truly matter what gender parents are when it comes to raising a child? Does my defined female body parts matter more or less than my partner's male parts when it comes to instructing our children and teaching them how to live their lives? Does my gender come into play when I teach my children right from wrong, ethics, morals? A sound basic start to life? Does my partner's?

If two parents have breasts and a vagina each, are they less equipped to teach those same things to their children? Does it matter that a child's two parents have penises and no vaginas or breasts in sight?

Does it matter in the greater scheme of things that some families are different? That their dynamics are not conventional? Is being gay or bisexual a moral sin that we should be outraged to find in our normal suburban lives? Or is it just another facet of the human race?

For me, personally, no. None of it matters. Rather, I'd look to the children in such families and ask are the children happy? Is their home filled with love? Is their home filled with peace and happiness? Are they being nurtured? Raised with a decent set of values that sees the best in human beings? If the answer to any of these questions is no then I'd have a serious problem with you raising children whether you are straight, gay or bi.

Being different (whether it is your sexual orientation, your skin colour, your nationality) isn't a disease. It isn't something that a gay or bi parent passes on to their children any more than being straight is. For all of us it's just a way of life. Why then must outsiders feel the necessity to interfere, to want to deny them the right to parent simply because they fear Teh Gay?

We (mostly) teach our children that skin colour doesn't matter. Why then do we insist on teaching them that being gay and loving someone who is the same sex is abhorrent, one of the greatest sins anyone could commit? We insist that teaching tolerance and acceptance of anyone that is different is how we should be raising our children yet at the same time many of us teach those same children it is ok to discriminate against those whose sexual preferences are outside the norm. How confusing for the child. Accept people for being different except if they are gay or bi. That teaches them nothing. It resolves nothing. Except sows confusion.

I saw this article in Rolling Stone yesterday after it was posted on Facebook. Read it. Then dare tell me that we are doing the right thing by stigmatising anyone who is different.

ONE TOWN'S WAR ON GAY TEENS A school district rocked by suicides of young teens, where teachers have no idea how to enforce blatantly anti-gay policies, where children are denied the right to just be, to explore themselves, figure out who and what they are, where other children are taught that it is ok to physically, mentally and verbally abuse those who are seen as different, where the adults in the situation stand back and ignore the shamefully hurtful things normal teenagers do to those who do not fit into the nice neat square box.

I dare you to read it without feeling anything. I dare you.

Boy George can be an inspiration

Someone asked me a few days ago if I have ever considered writing about our past. I haven't. I don't think I have the eloquence and writing skills to do our country's past justice.

The best I can do is to be a witness to what has passed, what we are living in and what is to come. To raise J&C with the expectation that no matter what a person looks like on the outside, it is the inside that matters. Prejudice belongs in the trashcan with all the other rubbish out there.

The past week and this week there has been much discussion about being gay. The school play is running right now and as with any boy, wearing makeup is not something they would ever do willingly. Lipstick and blush is for girls not boys. Of course this hasn't meant that there hasn't been any teasing. Teasing and 10 year old boys go hand in hand, especially when makeup is involved. J came home last week a bit upset because some of the other boys called him a girl, sissy and said he was gay for not being bothered with wearing makeup. Until I showed him pictures of men wearing makeup. Who knew Boy George would be inspirational in that department? We spoke at length about why any man would want to wear makeup, have their nails done, get their hairy backs waxed...generally manscape. He understands it a bit better now, that just because you do all those girly things doesn't make you an aberration to be feared and generally made fun of. It doesn't mean that you are gay, it doesn't mean that you are. All it means is that you are a human being. Inside and out. And that being gay is perfectly ok with me. It's the love you have inside to give someone else that matters.

Survival guide : Stolen vehicles

After spending a couple of hours twiddling our thumbs at the Centurion Police satelite station vehicle clearance centre at the testing centre, my little car is no longer on the stolen list! After all the phoning around and just about speaking to every single police officer in the area we're done...until it happens again that is.

A few observations for those poor sods who ever get caught up in the Stolen Vehicle Twilight Zone :

1) Expect to stand in loooooong queues.
2) Expect to be treated worse than a criminal if you are white (yes, I know, I should stop being so damn sensitive and give some black people in this country a chance but when you are spoken to and treated as if you're a piece of shit on the bottom of someone's shoe just because of the colour of your skin, then the Rainbow Nation is not so Rainbow anymore now is it?)
3) Expect to be sent from one department to the other with no one knowing what it is you are supposed to do.
4) Make copies of EVERYTHING! Including the police file if you can.
5) Get everyone's name, telephone number and superior's details. It helps.
6) Make multiple copies of your ID book and the car vehicle registration papers.
7) Take a book, bottle of water and something to snack on, it's a long wait.
8) If you have a recording option on your cell phone, USE IT!
9) Be nice, nice is good. It doesn't help you shout and scream obscenities at the people you encounter along the way. Sometimes they really don't know how to help you and shouting at them just makes it worse.
10) Be prepared, keep 11tybillion pens and pencils in your handbag or car.

Above all, be vigilant, try not to be a victim of a crime. Sucks but that is the reality.

And this is why Pretoria will always be tainted with racism...

Last week J's grade 2 year (6 classes) spent the morning at a working farm that has a small part set aside for guided tours. You get to touch farm animals too! He enjoyed it immensely. Later on in the week, a friend asked if J had also complained about "those blacks". I said no, what was going on? She then told me that there had been a group of kids from another, black, school there and that a few of them had attacked a few of our, predominantly white, kids, stolen money, scratched in bags and just generally behaved like a bunch of savages, you know, like only blacks can (insert eyeroll from her here). Her child was one of the kids attacked and choked from behind by a black boy, she said.

I was quite shocked because surely the teachers would have intervened, I asked. No she said, they were nowhere to be seen and the kids had to fend for themselves.

Did any one of the parents ask the teachers what really happened? No she said, there was no point, it was obvious that they did not have the best interests of the children at heart and she had an appointment to see the headmaster anyway to lay a complaint and to insist that the other school be held accountable. After that the conversation became a rant on her part about how black people are the scourge of the earth. I must admit, at one point all I heard was blah blah blah blahblahblah blahblah....until she left and I had time to think about it and to question J.

J told me that he didn't know about any physical fighting but that he saw one boy try and grab a sweet out of another's hand. He couldn't remember the colour of their skins.

Today, for the first time since last week, I saw his teacher long enough to ask what had happened. I though, let me find out from someone who was there and saw firsthand what had gone on.

It turns out that one of our schoolchildren verbally pestered one of the other children in the other school group. The guides had taken our children around the farm and then left them in the care of the teachers to eat their lunch before climbing back onto the buses. A handful of children didn't listen though and sneaked out to a small play area and started pestering the black children whose turn it was to play in the play area. And as it happens in any schoolground around the world, the kids involved got to fighting and the teachers from both schools jumped in to stop it.

So, our kids were the culprits. To further complicate things, she said that some of the parents had taken the matter up with the Parent Control Board instead of going to the headmaster or even the teachers to find out what had happened. That these same parents demanded action and even wanted to get a protest march together to force our school headmaster to do something about the children from the black school. That they also wished for the teachers to be disciplined in some way.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Racism is so ingrained in many households here that the future of our country's minds are being poisoned from the cradle. They are being taught to hate black people for no reason other than skin colour. White children here are taught that blacks are less than human, that they have no worth. And when it comes to incidents like these, it's better to lie to your parents than tell them the truth. Because white people don't lie.

Which makes me think that my friend's child may have lied to her mother just to be part of the group.

I hope that in this environment I can raise J&C to be better than that, to not see colour at all except as a novelty. That any prejudices I might have do not rub off on them about anything and anyone. That they have their own minds when it comes to the colour of someone's skin and that they judge a person on their actions and not by racial makeup.