Homosexuality, Porn, and the Classroom

Children of same-sex couples should be banned from Catholic schools because they might bring pornography to school. That’s the argument of Michael Pakaluk in The Pilot, “America’s Oldest Catholic Newspaper,” on June 4.

Pakaluk, a regular columnist for the paper, is Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia, and the father of a first grader. Pakaluk’s full argument — based in part on the fact that his son had a classmate with two dads — goes something like this: A teacher or a parent might “deal with the two men in such a way as implicitly to teach my son, or other children in the class, that there is nothing wrong with same-sex relationships.” That leads children “astray,” he claims. Six-year-olds, he says, are too young to be able to sort out sinner from sin “in a matter involving both immediate familial affections and sexual disorder.”

He also doesn’t trust same-sex parents who may volunteer in their children’s classrooms or chaperone class trips. They might “advocate” for their “lifestyle” while doing so.

When I first read this, I was — I swear to you — catching up on my LGBT news later than usual because I had been chaperoning my first-grade son’s class trip earlier that day. I can affirm that I was too busy making sure no child ran off down the wrong trail to have time to “advocate” for anything, except perhaps snack time.

But yes, I have occasionally responded to some of my son’s classmates who have asked me, “He has two moms?” They say it with the same tone as they might ask “He has the new Toy Story Lego set?” — not confused or distraught, but simply wanting to confirm what my son himself has told them.

Pakaluk’s final argument is the most ludicrous. It “seemed a real danger,” he said, that his son’s classmate with two dads might bring something “obscene or pornographic” to school or talk about such things, “as they go along with the same-sex lifestyle, which — as not being related to procreation — is inherently eroticized and pornographic.” (Correct me if I’m wrong, but when opposite-sex couples are trying to procreate, don’t they spend a lot of time doing erotic things?)

He claims, furthermore, that the boy “might easily have encountered [obscene or pornographic things] in his household.”

I ask you: Exactly how would Pakaluk know this?

The Boston Globe’s Lisa Wangsness has more on the story. She points out that on the same page as Pakaluk’s piece, The Pilot also published a letter to the editor in support of allowing children with same-sex parents into Catholic schools. She also says that in a phone interview with her, Pakaluk backpedaled from his comments about pornography.

That’s good, but this is unfortunately not going to be the last time someone equates a gay or lesbian identity with all sex, all the time. (To which I reply: If people really want gay men and lesbians to stop having sex, they should be encouraging us to marry and have kids. Nothing puts a damper on ardour like a wailing infant in the next room.)

U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton made the “gay equals sex” argument earlier this week, when he said "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" should not be repealed because it would require parents in the military to talk with their children about homosexuality. "What do mommies and daddies say to their 7-year-old child?” he asked.

As the mother of a seven-year-old first grader, whose friends — many of whom are Catholic — know he has two moms, I can assure Skelton and Pakaluk that they are all unphased.

I will also note that when my son gets curious for the details about how he came to be — which involved a doctor’s office and syringes — I will not need to mention sex at all. I’m not sure I could say the same for most of the opposite-sex parents of his friends. No one, however, seems to be suggesting that those families be kicked out of schools for fear their kids will start discussing sex in the classroom.

Photo credit: cdsessums