If Only Little Stevie Hadn’t Been So Attached to His Mother… June 6, 2011

If Only Little Stevie Hadn’t Been So Attached to His Mother…

By Guest Contributor
June 6, 2011

Thanks to former Templeton Prize winner Chuck Colson, we now have a better idea of how homosexuality develops:

A little boy I’ll call “Stevie” was a beautiful, healthy child. But by age five, his parents suspected something was wrong. Stevie loved Barbie dolls, the color pink, and dancing around like a ballerina.

Oh no! Not PINK!!!

Without intervention, [Dr. Joseph] Nicolosi said, Stevie had a 75-percent chance of growing up homosexual, bisexual, or transgender.

…

In his book, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Nicolosi describes what had likely led to Stevie’s preoccupation with feminine things. Nicolosi explains that as infants, boys and girls alike are emotionally attached to their mothers. It’s normal for girls to continue developing their feminine identity through their relationship with their mothers. But boys must dis-identify from their mothers and begin to identify with their fathers. Clearly, Stevie had not begun to do this; he continued to identify with his mother.

And that’s how Little Stevie caught Teh Gey.

Oh, Colson is an Evangelical Christian. Forgot to mention that.

Who am I kidding — you already knew that, right?

(via WTF Would Jesus Do?)

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  • Jennifer

    This could be funny if it weren’t so incredibly sick.

  • Rose

    “Oh no! Not PINK!” may be my new favourite catchphrase. 😀

    A part of me kind of wants to read Nicolosi’s book out of sheer curiosity, but I know I shouldn’t; it’ll only make me angry.

  • ckitching

    Who am I kidding — you already knew that, right?

    Extremely religious Muslims and Jews are known for making those kinds of idiotic remarks, too. The only reason to expect it was an Evangelical Christian is that they’re more plentiful in the English-speaking parts of the world.

  • Linda Gulley

    Templeton Prize? I think Simpleton Prize would be more accurate.

  • Mimi

    This kind of stuff makes my blood boil. It is just so ridiculous and so harmful to little boys and also to their moms. So, how do they discourage the boys to “dis-identify” with mommy? That is what I wonder.
    My son is 6, at age 4 he wanted to be a girl… loved the color pink, dolls, liked dressing up in Princess gear. Did we freak? Did we worry he would be gay? NO. Because gay is not “caught” by playing dollies and liking the color pink. Gay is just how you are born (IMHO), and there is nothing wrong with it. My son currently loves Batman, SuperMario and kittens. Its normal for children to explore and play with a variety of toys.
    I just want to spit nails… anyone have a cross handy? ( ;

  • Karen

    Good grief! This archaic theory was dismissed decades ago.

    I can’t believe these kooks are still peddling this outdated nonsense.

  • Eli

    Does anyone else feel this is reminiscent of Freud and his all-boys-actually-lust-after-their-mothers theory?

  • Revyloution

    Im having a long argument on Facebook with a Christian. He made the claim that abuse and poor parenting caused homosexuality.

    In the subsequent arguments, I spent a good deal of time looking for peer reviewed studies looking for the causes of same sex attraction.

    This information needs to be all in one easy to use list. Does anyone know of a good website that lists good studies?

  • geralyn mott

    is the templeton prize awarded to the current author in publication with the lowest IQ? cause this guy really deserves it!!!

  • Steve

    That kind of thinking is probably inspired by Sigmund Freud. I don’t know for sure, but it does sound like something he would come up with

  • ThereIsNoSpoon

  • geralyn mott
  • alex

    Funny, I was the boy twin always playing dress up and theater and giving our conservative father anxiety attacks, but my athletic fraternal brother who loved baseball and soccer was the one who turned out gay.

    This kind of thinking is so damaging to normal childhood psychosocial development. It insults little girls as silly and meek and puts fearful restrictions on boys.

  • alex

    looking for the causes of same sex attraction

    Hey man, they’ve never found a straight gene either.

  • This could be funny if it weren’t so incredibly sick.

    Agreed. I want to laugh it off, but I can’t. This is just disgusting.

    Funny, I was the boy twin always playing dress up and theater and giving our conservative father anxiety attacks, but my athletic fraternal brother who loved baseball and soccer was the one who turned out gay.

    This kind of thinking is so damaging to normal childhood psychosocial development. It insults little girls as silly and meek and puts fearful restrictions on boys.

    ♥ ♥ ♥

  • Andrew

    These people actually think that it’s healthy and normal for children to be made to feel ashamed for what comes natural to them.

  • Heidi

    Whereas with intervention, Stevie can instead grow up with deep-rooted psychological problems and self-loathing, no matter what orientation he has.

  • Hypatia’s Daughter

    I have been married 34 years to a guy, had 3 kids and I HATE PINK. I dressed my babies in yellow & green just to annoy people.

  • Earthchile

    My little sister when she was about eight years old would say she wanted to be a man when she grew up. We all thought it was cute and, of course, encouraged it. Hey, we were kids, too. lol. But I don’t recall anyone being concerned. And she grew up to do beauty pagents and modeling. Now she’s happily a wife and mother. It would have been fine either way but it shows that children go through different interests and it doesn’t necessarily determine their gender or sexual identity.

  • Steve

    @geralyn mott
    NARTH is a notorious anti-gay group. Everything they say and publish is per definition BS

  • Bowser The Cat

    What can I say other than wow…. I’m sure his data was all properly peer-reviewed…

  • I despise this torrid garbage , the sheer lunacy of the religious , and the audacity to flaunt their poison ideals as virtues . AGH!.

    I suppose the author has many titles ,I do everso look forward to “a parents guide to forcing stone age morality on blank slates” , “a parents guide to raising a repressed , self-destructive youngster” and “a parents guide to alienating your offspring”

  • I work at a bike store and last week a mom (full description, if it matters: African-American late twenties/early thirties) came in to look at a new running bike for her four year old son. When he immediately asked for the hot pink, white-wheeled bike she nonchalantly told me how much he loves pink.

    It was cool that she had no problem with it.

    In other news, we carry a bike called a Townie that comes in a white/pink version. All the female customers I’ve talked to hated it.

    In even other-er news, fashion historians will tell you that, until the turn of the century, pink was a boy’s color and blue was a girl’s.

  • @Heidi:

    And how. Spent a good 13 years of my life fighting and hating myself for wanting to be who I was. My number one prayer as a Christian “God, turn me into a girl so I feel right.”

    <- bisexual transgender here

  • Without intervention, [Dr. Joseph] Nicolosi said, Stevie had a 75-percent chance of growing up homosexual, bisexual, or transgender

    Ok* – and…? So what?

    * granting for the purpose of argument …

  • @geralyn mott – For an explanation of homosexuality, you cite an anti-gay hate group? Seriously? And you don’t think somebody here is going to call you on it?

    @Revyloution – The simple answer is that there isn’t any definitive research on the subject. There has been research that seems to indicate the cause is likely at least partly biological, but nothing definitive.

    As a gay man, my personal opinion is that it really doesn’t matter because it’s none of anybody’s business but my own, and that it’s my constitutional right to live my life as I see fit without others shoving their religion down my throat, and I’m through with apologizing or making excuses for what I am and groveling and begging for the civil equality that is my birthright as an American, that my father and grandfather risked their lives to protect for me. I’m no longer asking for my civil rights, I’m demanding them, and if anyone doesn’t want to go along with that, they’ll have to explain it to a judge.

  • ATL-Apostate

    Is this the same Chuck Colson from the Watergate 7?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Colson

    Convicted felon. Now devotes his time to telling parents how to cure teh gay.

    How nice. On the positive side, as a felon, he’s not legally permitted to vote in federal elections. Oh wait, scratch that, according to Wikipedia, Jeb Bush reinstated his right to vote in FL in 2000.

    Hmmm.

  • Catinthewall

    Well, if this theory had a smidgen of truth to it, we would see a disproportionate percentage of gay men who grew up with a single mothers.

    Any bets on whether this turns out to be the case?

  • Nordog

    Well, if this theory had a smidgen of truth to it, we would see a disproportionate percentage of gay men who grew up with a single mothers.

    Any bets on whether this turns out to be the case?

    Well, it would make you wonder about the meme of all the gang-bangers in the projects growing up with one mom and a half dozen siblings all by different absentee fathers.

  • Daniel Dingeldein

    In his book, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Nicolosi describes what had likely led to Stevie’s preoccupation with feminine things.

    I have a preoccupation with feminine things.

    Breasts and vaginas!

    OMG, does that mean I’m gay too? All this time I thought I was straight! Man, what am I going to tell my wife of 20 years, she is going to be shocked.

  • sware

    Well, if this guy can grow up to be who he is being raised by a lesbian couple, I strongly doubt “pink” and “dolls” have a damn thing to do with any of it. Go Zach Wahls!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q

  • Ibis

    At the age of 5, I wanted to be a cat.
    —
    These people think that Stevie liking “feminine” things is wrong only because they think there’s something inherently wrong with being female.

  • Bleatmop

    You forgot to put a [sic] beside the Dr. in the guy’s name.

  • crowepps

    He made the claim that abuse and poor parenting caused homosexuality.

    It’s my understanding that severe abuse causes boys to become psychopathic serial killers who slaughter dozens of women. Apparently nobody’s particularly interested in preventing that but they get all tweaked when it’s about Teh GAY! You’ve got to wonder about people’s priorities.

  • Bones

    This kind of thinking must mean that all girls are lesbians. Arg!

  • I was always told that boys turn gay because of ‘refrigerator’ mothers…women who wouldn’t allow their sons to be attached to them.

    That was wrong?

  • Tracy

    @Eli I had the same thought. I never use this word, but this MORON obviously has no understanding of human development. How can they be giving him a prize?

  • cthulhu

    Now how is he going to explain the gay men that never liked pink, barbie, and were never really attached to their mothers. Really isn’t this the same B.S. that dobson wrote in the same book in which he also talked about beating children? It really gets annoying to say the least when the religious reich states that the reason we are gay or lesbian is because we have daddy or mommy issues.

  • Wait. Poor parenting causes Teh Ghey, and poor parenting is what happens when a kid really really loves their mother? But it’s, eh, also incredibly important that it is mothers who are the primary parents/caregivers? And that’s not even beginning with the idea that there’s something wrong with being a happy, well-adjusted person with loving parents who is anything but straight and cisgender.

    Excuse me, I need to go wash my brain out with bleach, before the complete lack of logic goes any deeper.

  • Suzy

    I have been a tomboy all my life. In fact, I still am. When I was a child I wasn’t interested in what girls are normally interested in: dolls and such. I was interested in boy games. I chose to play with boys instead of girls. Well, until they would play with me, because as we reached puberty it became “uncool” for them to play with a girl. So then I went on to play with other tomboys. Never with the “lady-like” girls.

    I never liked “girlie” clothes etc. When I was 5 there was even a period when I told my parents to call me “Peter” and I wanted to pee standing, because I found it cool that boys can do that. LOL. I was so tomboyish that one of my primary school teachers jokingly called me by a boy name (I didn’t feel it offensive and the teacher didn’t mean to be offensive. She was a nice lady. I liked her and she liked me.)

    My parents took it with ease. (My father went crazy and became an Evangelical Christian only later in his life.) They just laughed the whole thing off. I’m glad they did.

    Guess what? I grew up and I’m not a lesbian. Not that it would be wrong if I was, but I’m attracted to guys. I’m still not really “lady-like” in my interests, but my sexuality has nothing to do with this. I’m glad my parents didn’t want to send me to therapy to “prevent” homosexuality or transgenderism or something. I’m glad my dad wasn’t yet a Christian at the time.

  • Joolz

    @sware Thank you for that link.

    I cannot understand the fear that some people have of “the gays”. My mum brought me up to just accept people as people and I have thanked her for that on more than one occasion. I would hate to have been raised as any type of bigot (although I may have been unaware of it had that been the case).

    Julie

  • @ibis:

    I’m 27 and want to be a velociraptor.

  • Jenny Bliss

    im guessing this guy is forgetting an important fact haha traditionaly speaking until the 1920s pink was a masculine colour and blue the femminine, as to why this reverased i cant remember the reasoning behind

  • Without intervention, [Dr. Joseph] Nicolosi said, Stevie had a 75-percent chance of growing up homosexual, bisexual, or transgender

    Actually, it’s higher than that. Closer to 95% for apparently male, 60% for apparently female.

    But intervention makes zero difference. Neither does upbringing. It’s a symptom, not a cause.

    See Kenneth Zucker’s continuing experiments on such children, and George “Rentboy, Lift my Luggage” Reckers’s experiments using systematic beatings in the 70’s. Long-term follow-up showed no effect other than a greatly increased suicide rate, and there were no controls.

    Zucker’s given up on “de-gaying” such kids, he now attempts to reduce the rate of transsexuality by increasing the rate of homosexuality instead. But when the sample is reduced to those showing all the diagnostic criteria for transsexuality, not just one or two, there’s no effect.

    See Hinkle, C.E. (2008) Zucker: Manipulation of Young Feminine Boys. Polare 76, 10-18.

  • Hypatia’s Daughter

    And HTF did Chuck (convicted Watergate felon) Colson earn a Templeton prize? I thought it was awarded to good scientists i.e. those who could separate doing good science from religious beliefs (as opposed to those who would sell out science in the name of their religious beliefs).
    While I had little respect for good scientists who would seek out or accept a Templeton prize, I at least thought the Templeton Foundation was honest, albeit misguided. If Colson can get one, I know it is a farce and complete bullshit.

  • Claudia

    @Revyloution, there’s a fair amount of research on the subject, though unfortunately most of it covers homosexuality in males exclusively. Though wikipedia isn’t perfect, this link is a good go-to guide for a list of references on studies. Keep in mind though that unless you are inside a research institution or university, many original studies will be behind a pay-wall.

    I agree that whether or not sexual orientation is a choice is a purely academic question. Religion is a choice and no one is advocating legal discrimination against the religious, particularly not the people who tout “being gay is a choice” as a good reason to discriminate.

    However I do think educating on how it is not a choice is helpful in winning “hearts and minds”. Of the many people I’ve seen who say “I used to be against gays but then…” you usually hear that 1. Someone close to them came out and they couldn’t abide discrimination against them and 2. The realization that being gay is not a choice and the moral intuition that it is wrong to discriminate against someone on the basis of the way they were born.

  • @Dan S. – That was exactly my thought. “…And?”

    The fact that Colson has an “and” (AND IT IS TERRIFYING PINK!!) tells us all we need to know. 😛

  • T-Rex

    Maybe it was because of a vaccination he received? Doh!

  • JenV

    Am I the only one who’s pissed that he’s blaming the mother and her influence on “making” the poor boy gay? It seems like there is such a disgust and abhorrence for anything woman, that they are willing to pin any offense on us. Fucking assholes and their blatant misogyny.

    Who really cares if the kid likes pink and dancing around like a ballerina? Kids explore their world by imitating things they find interesting for the fleeting moments in their young lives. It’s GOOD for them to pretend and explore new ideas. They are like little scientists, doing experiments all day. Why would anyone want to stunt a child’s growth and imagination by putting them in some preconceived, in this case, genderized box?

    Let the kid play with pink and dolls and dance…he’ll only be a kid once, and for such a short time. It’s not the mother’s fault he might turn out gay, it’s not the pink’s fault he might turn out gay, and even if he does turn out gay, can’t we just love this little boy for who he is? Shit, I’m going to one-up this guy and suggest that the mother go ahead and paint the little boy’s toenails pink. Won’t matter a bit in the end!

  • Saltyestelle

    read a psychology textbook, please!!! gender identity (social construct) and sexual orientation (biological drive) are different things entirely. I hate idiots.

  • Clearly it is mom’s fault for being too attached to her son. If she’d beaten him regularly with a stick then he would grow up to be a “proper” man who knew how to treat women. Like Norman Bates.

    No, hang on. I was momentarily confused and mistook bullshit for fact. Please forgive me. Also it was Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve…or something. 😉

  • Alexis

    “Without intervention, [Dr. Joseph] Nicolosi said, Stevie had a 75-percent chance of growing up homosexual, bisexual, or transgender”

    With intervention, Stevie has a 100% chance of becoming a self loathing drug abuser, alcoholic, or evangelical preacher.

  • @Saltyestelle:

    People like this don’t see a difference. It is entirely possible for a person who is biologically heterosexual to be transgender and thus mentally homosexual (lesbian trans-women, gay trans-men.)

    But to them, transgender automatically equals gay. A man wanting to be a woman is gay.

  • (My edit function is gone, weird)

    And actually, a transgender person is mentally heterosexual. My liking my boyfriend is straight. I’m physically male, but mentally female.

  • Jenny Bliss

    @Kev
    should point out transgender is an umbrella term for several different things as aposed to transexual which is most likley what is being gotten at here as constantly in society the termonology gets mixed up (kind of like people who mix up theroy and hypophisis >.< curse my spelling lol)

  • @Jenny:

    Yea. I use “transgender” for the umbrella term. To a transgender like myself, all transsexuals are transgendered, but not all transgendered are transsexuals. (I am transgender but not transsexual.)

    I’m sure to other trans-persons this is different, so I try not to ruffle feathers too much among the community 🙂

  • cthulhu

    After reading what the parents put Kirk through I am willing to blame them for their child’s death. Part of the therapy involved placing toys in front of him, both feminine and masculine, and shunning him if he chose the feminine toys and praise him if he chose the masculine ones. Then his father would actually beat him weekly. Apparently Reker told them to make it into a award punishment kind of thing because he told them Kirk would accept it. They would give him red poker chips for feminine behavior and blue for masculine. Blue chips would get him prizes like candy and red ones would get him beaten. Reker actually told them to beat their child. It was so bad that every time he ended up with welts over his back and butt. I know that it is callous to blame his parents, but when you do that to your child you are partially to blame.

  • Jenny Bliss

    @Kev
    hehe fairdoos, after re-reading what i put could come across a little condisending haha that seems to happen alot when im in a rush, not that im going on blogs when im supposed to be working or anything *shifty eyes* shush dont tell anyone 😉

  • @Jenny:

    Oh no, don’t worry. It wasn’t condescending at all. It’s an important distinction to be made ^^

    And yea, I probably should be doing work, too.

  • Larry Meredith

    hmm… well that’s a strange one.
    Growing up with an abusive father, I can definitely say that I entirely identified with my mother but didn’t turn out gay. Not even bisexual.

  • They gave him a prize for producing a way to screw children up psychologically?

    I think this procedure is as bad as beating your child to correct behaviour. You are trying to correct a child’s behaviour into something he is not involuntarily. This isn’t like removing a security blanket or getting your child to sleep on his own. This is like torture to ensure that he grows up “straight”.

    More than likely this will just screw up your kid. I once spent an entire year wearing only green, because I thought I was a martian. I was 5 my parents though it was adorable. Expecting 5 years old to understand traditional gender roles is daft.

  • cat

    I’m with Dan, the only reason that anyone would be upset that they thought something was turning a kid queer is if they think queer people are inferior at the outset.

    @Claire, the studies on the correlation between the born gay theory and support for gay rights suggest that this is the result of third variables, most particularly religion, and that controlling for pre-existing anti-gay religious beliefs essentially erases it. People who already are anti-gay due to religion adopt a choice motto because they think it better suits their pre-existing religious sentiments, ditto for heteros who adopt born gay as a way to soothe their pre-existing discomfort with anti-gay discrimination. (Lewis, Gregory B. “Does Believing Homosexuality Is Innate Increase Support for Gay Rights?”. Policy Studies Journal. Urbana: Nov 2009. Vol. 37, Iss. 4; pg. 669, 25 pgs-sorry no link, I have the cite from a paper I wrote a while back).

  • Kev Quondam, Kevque Futurum

    But to them, transgender automatically equals gay. A man wanting to be a woman is gay.

    I used to work with a really funny woman, June, who was born a man and her girlfriend was much more sensitive about the transgender thing than she was. June was adamant and often crude about her interest in woman. I don’t know if that makes her a gay woman or a straight man in a woman’s body. Frankly I don’t care because after the initial surprise and a endless questions she was just June to us. I suppose it might have been a bit tiresome for her but she was a great sport about our curiosity.

    There seems to be a tendency for the religious, particularly the religious right, to label people as either gay or straight and hence “wrong” and “right”. In reality, or at least in my experience, human sexuality is never that binary. Looking for someone to blame also seems to be a tendency that the religious right have. Funnily enough they are blaming the mother but I’m sure sisters or other female role models might also share a portion of the blame in their minds. On account of them being sexist douches, if you hadn’t guessed.

  • @hoverfrog:

    It’s funny that it’s actually older brothers that make their siblings gay more often than not XD

    They can’t ever get their stories straight though. The religious tend to blame both mothers and fathers, too much parenting and too little parenting, strict and hands-off family structures, traditional and non-traditional. They’re looking for excuses and trying to find some way to avoid calling it as it is. To give legitimacy to the homosexual lifestyle is to abandon their principles and admit that it’s ‘okay.’

    I still don’t understand what’s so bad about us. I just want to live my life free to be me. I’m not going to hurt anyone. Why am I such a ‘threat’ to them? (Heck, I wouldn’t kiss my boyfriend in public – mostly cause I’m not big on PDAs.)

  • Ibis

    @Kev Because men should be men and women should be sexual and reproductive chattel, just as God intended. Any deviation is sacrilege because it paves the way for women to take their privileges away from them.

  • @Ibis:

    Oh, I see.

    …

    Can I still be a velociraptor? Cause that would be cool.

  • Freemage

    The many mental backflips the average fundie goes through to justify this crap is enough to convince me that “cognitive dissonance” should be an Olympic sport.

    The “choice” meme is particularly bent, since of course, it’s so easily countered by asking, “So, when did you choose not to be gay, and was it difficult for you to reject that sweet homosexual lovin’?” (And, of course, the dark truth is that a lot of the ones who stress the “choice” meme so heavily ARE deep in the closet, and trying desperately to convince themselves that they can choose to be straight. It’d just be sad if it weren’t so harmful to others.)

    And yeah, the misogyny that encompasses most homophobia is also pretty damned blatant. Women are unclean and sinful, ergo any behavior that is associated with being a woman is unclean, and any woman who acts as a man “should” taints the man’s world.

  • Rollingforest

    Many people on this thread have said that Colson is sexist because he believes that boys become gay by being too attached to their mothers. Which begs the question: Does he believe that girls become lesbians by being too attached to their fathers? And, if so, does that make him misandrist?

    I do think that Colson’s article is homophobic. I haven’t read any of his articles on gender so I can’t make a claim there, but I did want to consider those claims about this article.

  • Kev Quondam, Kevque Futurum

    It’s funny that it’s actually older brothers that make their siblings gay more often than not XD

    I don’t believe that it is possible to single out one factor like that nor do I think that it is useful to try to do so. Some people are atypically attracted to other people. That is a fact and people who can’t accept it need to get over the fact and stop whining about it.

    They can’t ever get their stories straight though.

    I think that is because they don’t understand what they are discussing and are grasping at any straw that might be an “answer”. They can’t imagine or are in denial that the need for an answer is unnecessary.

    To give legitimacy to the homosexual lifestyle is to abandon their principles and admit that it’s ‘okay.’

    I think that they see a myth of what a homosexual lifestyle is. The gay people I know don’t live much differently to the way the straight people I know live. Except that the gay people are obviously more fabulous. 😉

    I still don’t understand what’s so bad about us.

    That’s the thing though. It isn’t you. It is them. They are the ones with the issues, you are merely the target. If it wasn’t you then it would be some other minority group. Like atheists. 😉

    Heck, I wouldn’t kiss my boyfriend in public – mostly cause I’m not big on PDAs.

    Whether you choose to snog in public is your choice. It shouldn’t ever be dictated by someone else

  • ianam

    Oh, Colson is an Evangelical Christian

    And a Watergate criminal.

  • @hoverfrog:

    Well of course it’s not possible to single out a factor like that as the sole reason. There’s a lot of possible things that can cause a person to grow up homosexual – one of them just so happens to be that you have an older brother.

    I love that one picture of a sign I saw someone carrying at a gay rally, something like “The Gay Agenda. Wake up. Eat breakfast. Go to work. Eat dinner. Sleep.” The only difference between me and your average person is I’m attracted to – and dating – a guy, and that I’ve got some gender issues.

    And yes, I will never tell anyone else whether or not they can kiss in public. I don’t want to do it myself, but if a couple wants to – go right ahead.

  • AmyC

    This reminds me of my mom on Easter this year. My nieces and nephew were all born in April or May, so on Easter we also have a birthday party for them. It’s like a second Christmas. So on top of their birthday gifts, they all also get Easter baskets (with little gifts, again like Christmas, instead of stockings with extra gifts, they get baskets with extra gifts).

    My nephew just turned three, and his older sisters are 5, 7 and 12. The girls all got cute little purses with lip-gloss and other “girlie” stuff in their baskets. My nephew got a few hot wheels or something. He hated his basket. He cried and said he wanted a pink basket with a purse and lip gloss just like his sisters got. Honestly, it was adorable. The only reason his basket was different is because he’s a boy and he didn’t understand that. My mom was making a big deal about it (she wasn’t upset about it, but she thought someone should explain to him that boys play with different things), but everyone else just thought it was funny. In fact his sisters did eventually share with him. He went around the house with a pink basket and lip gloss on. My aunt Tammy also painted his toe nails pink that day. We all thought it was funny, but my mom thought she was going too far. Logan (my nephew) loved it.

  • crowepps

    Oh, Colson is an Evangelical Christian

    And a Watergate criminal.

    It’s just miraculous how prison helps people find Jesus. Especially once they find out the Parole Board thinks doing so is good for leaving a couple years early.

  • About the transgender as gay thing, I have a transgender friend who is male to female and she’s a lesbian. Until her transition most people would have seen her as a straight man, in fact she married her wife before she started transitioning. Actually of the transgendered people I know there’s the full spectrum of sexuality, homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual.

    People link gender and sexuality way too much. While they are related (I’m only attracted to certain combinations of physical sex and gender expression) they aren’t rigid relationships at all. I’m not the most feminine of women, my own boyfriend calls me a boy sometimes, but I’m enthusiastically straight. I also know some very masculine gay men and some incredibly feminine pink and lace wearing lesbians.

  • @Noadi:

    Yea, but see – you’re a rational human being. To the homophobes it doesn’t matter if gender and sexuality are completely different ideas. It’s a guy acting like a girl. Guys are supposed to like girls and want to be guys. Girls are supposed to be girly and want to have babies with guys. There’s no separation between the two ideas to the homophobic jerks out there.