Scientists even tried to prove that there’s a “gay gene.” These concepts about sexual orientation helped justify the case for legal protections. In the early ’90s, partly as a response to the destructive notion that gay people could be changed, activists pressed the idea of sexuality as a fixed, innate state. The idea that no one would choose to be gay is widely held - even in the gay rights movement. But it was impossible to know whether he meant to insulate me from the world’s bias or implicitly rationalize his own. “I’m just trying to protect you,” he said. When I was a teenager, my father cautioned me against marrying a black person. A less-charitable interpretation is that he thinks being straight is superior. But this attitude complies with, even reinforces, that culture in the first place. Perhaps he just meant that it’s easier to be straight in a homophobic culture. “Don’t you want her to be happy?” one friend asked. But wanting my daughter to be a lesbian? I might as well say I want her to grow up to be lactose intolerant. It’s one thing for them to admit that they would prefer their kids to be straight, something they’ll only begrudgingly confess. Many of my straight friends, even the most liberal, see this logic as warped. If we vote Democrat, of course we want our kids to vote Democrat. If we like sports, we want our kids to like sports. If we went to college, we want our kids to go to college.
But more often than not, we define happiness as some variation on our own lives, or at least the lives of our expectations.
I live in the liberal bubble of Park Slope, Brooklyn, where no yuppie would ever admit to wanting their kid to be anything in particular, other than happy. Sally Kohn is an essayist and a CNN political commentator.