The New Normal

Stephen Mulholland has got a lot of people upset, with his recent article in the Sunday Times, titled: “Same-sex parents have a special duty to their children”.  I would say, he isn’t wrong.  We do have a special duty to our children – but not quite in the way Mulholland imagines.

Bringing up a child, no matter who you are, isn’t the easiest thing.  The manuals are both incomprehensible and dull.  Anyone around you who has ever had a child is quicker with the advice than with actual help.  It is a lonely sea and you have to paddle it pretty much on your own, on those bleak nights when projectile vomit hits the ceiling and temperatures soar off the charts.  Of course there are the “Little House on the Prairie” moments as well, when all is sweetness and such dazzling light as one could never hope to imagine, let alone describe.

But generally, children of whatever age are a bit of a slog.  You have to hammer away at their spelling and reading and vocabulary and maths.  If you don’t, like a neglected work email inbox, it starts to become impossible to recover the lost ground. You have to bandage the grazed arm, you have to calm their fears.  You have to take them to school, you have to make their supper and then get them to eat it. Being gay or lesbian is neither here nor there, since one does none of these things using one’s sexual organs, or any combination of them.

Each phase has its wonders and each phase seems to have its slog.  It is the dreariness of dealing with nappies and tasteless food that comes out of very expensive bottles in chemists; it is the fighting for space in bed; it is the explaining things over and over again – because, as a friend of mine once said to me long, long ago – “You have to teach them everything!”

Yes – everything.  And what she forgot to tell me is that you have to un-teach them a hell of a lot of things as well.  We have to explain to them that the world is sometimes a very hostile place – where children will laugh at them because of who they are, or because of who we all are as a family.  And we have to explain to them that those children have learnt their cruelty and their bigotry and stupidity from their parents.  And it is very likely that they learnt it all from their parents in turn.

We have to teach them how to deal with a world where some people think it is fine to be one thing and not fine to be another, whether because of race, or religion, or accent or gender.  We have to teach them tolerance, even of the idiotic many who are so terribly comfortable – so unchallenged – so unruffled.  We have to teach them these things, not because of who we are but because of what the majority is, and how it thinks (or doesn’t) and behaves.

So yes, I think Stephen Mulholland has a point, bumblingly made, albeit.  Gay and Lesbian parents need to do a great deal to protect our children from rampant and openly confessed heterosexuals.  They are a dangerous breed, by and large.

And it is the case, holding as they do, a majority of such huge proportions, that they can behave as though there is no-one else on the planet.  They can define what is “normal” and what is not.  They can demand obeisance to the gods of “family values” and “common sense” and “religious principles”.  And they can persecute those who do not conform to a binary view of gender, sex and sexuality.  And they do.  I need not cite the terrible details.  That is what is “normal” in the world in which we as lesbian and gay parents live with our children.

It is not his patronising attitude which worries me.  (I would much rather be patronised than ignored).  It is not even his short-sighted and bigoted conclusions which he reaches on the basis of no discernible argument.  What worries me most about Stephen Mulholland is that he is so god-damn smug and self-righteous about himself.  He speaks, perched so comfortably on the summit of Mount Self Content.  His speaks a hetero-normative tongue, because he simply has never heard any other language.  That is what worries me.  And he is not alone.  You, dear reader, are likely to be with him too.  Now put yourself in my shoes, as a parent.  Would you not have your work cut out for yourself?

Define the word "real".

Some time ago, I was overhearing an argument taking place between my two children.  Usually, they get on.  They are, indeed, polar opposites of each other.  The one’s black is the other’s white.  The one’s yay is the other’s nay.  They agree on very little but they contrive to get on.  They are not biologically related, either to each other, or to me.

But this time it was blistering – the argument.  It was brought to a close when the younger one spat at the older these words - he said, “Anyway. You aren’t my real brother!”  The words stung his brother.  They certainly stung me.  I kept silent though.  I would wait my time to deal with it.

During the next week, I went searching through my photograph albums.  They are substantial in some areas, and exceedingly thin in others.  I was looking for, and found some pictures of my two brothers – the one 15 years older than me (and now dead), the other ten years older than me.

I waited a week and then called the family together.  I placed the pictures of my brothers on the coffee table and asked the children if they recognised any of the people in them.  They examined the old photographs carefully.  The one showed a youngish man swinging a cricket bat, the other showed a family of four siblings.  It had me as a baby, being held by my sister and with two brothers posing alongside her.

No, they didn’t recognise any of them, besides my sister.  These, I said, are my realbrothers.  These are my blood brothers.  Have you met either of them, I asked?  They looked again at the pictures.  No, they didn’t think they had.  In fact, I said, they had met one of them very briefly, at my sister’s funeral last year.  Oh, they said, yes, they had. 

Had they ever heard these brothers of mine phone me about anything?  No, they hadn’t.  Did either of them call me on my birthday?  No, they didn’t.  For Christmas?  New Year? For any reason at all?  No, they said.  They were not aware of any contact.

Did they not think that was strange, I asked? Yes, they did think so.  I then went on to elaborate on the relationship.  My older brother had been kind to me when I was growing up – but we had lost contact early on and that connection was never re-established.  My younger brother seemed to want nothing to do with me from the start – whether it was because I was a rebel, or because he didn’t approve of my lifestyle, or my politics or my views, I did not know the reason.

But the upshot of it all was that my brothers had virtually nothing to do with me throughout my late adolescence, early adulthood and middle age.  Nothing!  They knew nothing of me.  They had made no effort to contact me.  When terrible and dramatic things had happened in my life, they were both sublimely uninvolved.  I dealt with exile, return, arrest, passport removal, divorce and a suicide entirely without them.  My relationships were unknown to them.  My triumphs and my tragedies, my joys and my sorrows – all passed them by.

These were my “real” brothers.  These were people who share significant elements of my DNA.  They are my blood relatives.  On the other hand, there is someone with whom I have grown up.  A friend – and we have been friends since the first year of High School.  We could not be more different.  We have very different views on things, very different positions.  We argue, when we want to, like hell.

But this man has been present in my life.  Every step, every fumble, every fall and every achievement.  I asked them if they recognised him?  Yes, they said, they did.  Does he call me ever?  Often, they said.  Have you met him?  Many times, they said.  This man is not related to me in any way.  He shares nothing of my DNA.  But this man is my real brother.  This is the man I can rely on, not to agree with me, but to support me – no matter what. Which of them, I asked my children, would they think I should consider to be my real brother?

My children were staring at me with wide eyes and open mouths.  I am sure this is not the last time we will have conversations around this matter – because I believe it is a hugely important one to have.  But I think they did get the salient point, that it is not how you are related, biologically, that matters at all. Rather, it is how you behave.

Hidden meaning

The story which my son read to me today was fairly shocking. I suppose it wouldn’t have been shocking in 1923, which is when it was written, by a man called James H Fassett. The forty-eighth edition of the reader, called “Briar Rose” was the edition my son was reading from.
I started feeling a bit uneasy with the title – “Escape from Red Indians” and my alarm grew as the story unfolded.

“Many years ago”, it began, “two boys lived on a farm in America. It was so long ago”, the story continued, “that there were very few white people in that country”.

“Indians” lived very far away in the woods, but occasionally, they would “come down to where the white people lived and capture any white person whom they could find”.
It went further in setting the scene. “White prisoners would be taken to the Indian villages and would be held there as captives”.

The story is about how one child, "John" – a white innocent of course, was captured by savage Indians. He had his skates with him at the time of capture. The Indians thought the skates “must be some of the white man’s magic”, so they ignored them.

There are then descriptions of the savage conditions in which the Indians lived and John was given to an Indian mother, who treated him “as if he was her own son”.

John was of course very brave and astonished his savage peers with his bravery, even in stick fighting and the use of bow and arrow. However, because he was white, the Indians made him go with the women “squaws” to hoe. John had learned from his Indian peers that hoeing was for squaws and not for warriors and so he quickly rebelled. He had learned to “speak their tongue” but they nevertheless did not trust him.

On the day of his escape, the river had frozen over and so he brought out his skates and put them on one of his peers, who fell about on the ice, much to the merriment of everyone. There was much hilarity and mirth. When John put the skates on, he too fell about, pretending to do the same as all the other non-skaters.

Then, when he was far enough away from everyone, he skated off into the sunset down the river, towards the sea (because he knew the white people lived near the sea), found his parents again and lived happily ever after.

Now, besides the fact that this story belongs to a completely different time, I ask myself, is it appropriate in the South Africa of the 21st Century, for our children to be reading such stuff? There are all the usual facets of colonial writing in it: the glorification of whites and the demonization and idiot-ization of everyone else. More than that, the sexism of the time is simply assumed along with the unquestioned fact that we all belong with “our own” and should stay with “our own”. Indeed, we are safe with “our own”, happy with “our own”, and constantly in danger of being attacked and abducted by “them”. It is typical frontier storyline. But is it appropriate for children who are trans-racially adopted, in a country whose constitution guarantees the rights of everyone to live in dignity and peace – such as mine are? More than that, is it appropriate for any children for that matter, transracially adopted or not?

It is in these standard ways, where stories are told without questioning their content, that prejudice gets passed on down the line. I can only conclude that it is either laziness on the part of the school, or a simple lack of the most basic content interrogation, which allows this kind of story to be amongst the instruments of learning in a school, in Africa, some 88 years later?

And a child will lead them

I will never forget the moment, some 10 years ago now, when our Muslim social worker asked my partner and me the casual question - "And what religion will you bring the child up in". We were in the process of adopting our eldest child. We had not even met him yet. We were going through what seemed like a rather long process of being prepared for parenthood.

Being amongst the first Gay male couples to adopt a child in this country - the territory was rather new - for the social worker as well. They wanted us to "practise" for a while - and so for several miserable weekends, we were asked to go to the adoption home and feed the children. Dear Lord! It was a nightmare. I think they thought if we could survive that, we could survive anything - (I know that thought crossed my mind several times). But having passed the test, we were now looking at the nitty gritty of adoption. Who was likely to be the primary parent? Who was likely to provide the discipline? Etcetera, etcetera.

The innocent question about religion caused a three week break in the process, while we discussed the matter. Backwards and forwards it went. My partner, Leon, loathed the Church. The Church had almost proved his mental undoing, in its lack of care for him; in its homophobia; in its dreadful hypocrisy and alienation of Gay and Lesbian people. He was very uncertain indeed. On the other hand, he was pretty much at sea from a religious perspective. A kind of wannabe "spiritual" type, with not a great deal of focus, or specific practise to offer.

I, on the other hand, had been a priest - had studied and taught Theology for gazillions of years and had left the Church the moment the struggle was over. What was the answer to the Muslim social worker’s question? The truth is, it was an inoffensive question. She wasn’t expecting any particular answer. We could have said “None!” and we would just have moved on in the conversation. But we decided to interrogate the matter with what was, for both of us, surprising intensity.

We discussed the nature of faith. We discussed the practise of belief. We discussed our own journeys – the positives and the negatives. And we came to a decision – strange in the eyes of many and peculiar, sometimes, even in our own judgement. We decided that we should raise the children in the context of the Christian faith –despite our own serious misgivings.
And so that is what brought me back to the Church. A baby. The absolute epitome of human frailty and human need. A baby, with a newly minted laugh and eyes so clear, you could see eternity in them. A baby that came into our lives, to change them forever.

We called him Gabriel – and it is his job to put the angel on the top of the Christmas tree every year. We called him Gabriel, the harbinger of good news. We called him Gabriel, because that was the first name we agreed upon while flipping listlessly through a bible one Sunday in Church, during a boring sermon.

And tomorrow, Gabriel will be serving at the High Mass on Christmas Day, dressed in a cassock and surplice and looking utterly angelic, smothered in incense and feeling the surge of the Haydn “Jugendmesse” and the swirl of hieratic language. Of course he may, one day reject it all. That will be his choice and that will be his unquestionable right. But when and if he does so, it will be from the position of an insider. He will know the stories that form such a massive part of our philosophy and our culture, for good or for ill. He will understand why some people pray to a God and have hope for the future and show love to their neighbour. And, hopefully, if he does reject it all, he will be a better person for having taken what is good in religion and making it his own.

Of course, there are dangers. It is also possible that he will imbibe the bewildering levels of prejudice; the terrible bigotry and the hatred, which is also part of religion. It is possible that he will start to see himself as superior to other people. It is possible that his brain will start to ossify and become closed to science, and change, and possibility. That is also a feature of religion. But it is bad religion – and I hope that he will be enabled to see that and to reject it.

In the meantime, I will thrill at the sight of the child I have been entrusted with, dressed like an angel, doing his service with a diligence and dedication that really inspires me, when together we pause at the crib of another baby. A child who, it is said, can lead the lion and the lamb to find peace with each other. That is an ideal I want for Gabriel. That is a vision I want for myself.

What about the Ancestors?

I remember that day very clearly. An excited call from my partner, Leon, saying “We have got a child”. I went into panic mode. I had made my position very clear, both to him and into Social Welfare. I wasn’t going to have just any child thrown at me. I wanted to be sure that I could “bond” with the child first – not that I had the vaguest idea of what that might mean.

So I went to see this child, which they thought would be right for us. He was lying quietly in his cot at the far end of the room, sucking his finger. I looked at him. He looked at me. After a while, I put out my finger and he took hold of it. And at that moment – that instant – I knew that this child was mine. I knew that I was his father and he would be my son.

When we adopted our children, the legal wording of the adoption order was, for me at least, very important. It said that this child was now “as if born to you”. The ancestors of that child (and the state) for whatever reason, handed him over to me and my partner. Our children were not “abandoned”. They were consciously and lovingly handed over. Those children are now mine - “as if born to me”. These two black boys now have two white fathers.

And it happened quite naturally, fairly early on, when I was asked by one of them about the identity of an old white lady in my photograph album, that I explained that she was my mother. “Your grandmother”, I explained, “she died a long time ago”. And we moved on to the next set of pictures. “And that is your Aunt, and that is your cousin…” and so it went.

Both the children refer to Leon’s parents, who are much more to them than pictures in an album - as “Granny” and “Grandpa”. And Leon’s parents make no distinction between our children and the children which his brother has produced biologically. Our ancestors are now the children’s ancestors. They have no others.

Of course besides anything else, the question of culture has also come up fairly frequently. Just because of the fact that these children happen to be black and me white, do I need to start doing a course in gumboot dancing? Should I rush off and get myself circumcised? Should I have a regular supply of Mopani worms in the house to make them feel secure? This is as crazy as it is bizarre and it reveals, I am afraid, just how far we are away from a really non-racial society, where colour is the least significant thing about a person.

No, we are not there yet. And yes, I have no objection to “exposing” my children to cultures other than my own. I also have no illusions about the difficult path they will need to tread. They need to be secure, not in some fantasy culture from somewhere else, but in their own skin, for who they are. And force-feeding them Mopani worms will not make it easier for them. It may make it a whole lot worse.

Mother and Child

Rodrigo Garcia, the director of this film, is an undisputed genius at crafting the unexpected. There is no way in which one could have second-guessed this complex narrative of a mother and daughter, separated at birth, who both struggle with the damage done to each of them. It is a narrative of loss. It unfolds slowly, uncompromisingly, deftly. The viewer gets drawn into the complex disentanglement of three separate sets of lives, all of whom are linked to each other.

The film opens with with two 14-year-olds kissing. The scene fades into an unplanned pregnancy - leads to a birth - a glance at the child by her mother before it is taken away for immediate adoption.

The rest of the action takes place 37 years later, when the audience starts on a journey of discovery which has as its basis the terrible effect of this event on the two women. Annette Bening's Karen, the mother, lives a sterile life. She hasn’t married and cares for her ailing mother (Eileen Ryan). There is a wall of silence between these two women. They are unable to communicate with each other. They are unable and emotionally ill-equipped to deal with each other’s pain. Karen's mother relates better to her home helf than she does to her daughter. In turn, Karen’s interaction with others is equally awkward and lacking in emotion. She is damaged and one learns that the source of the damage is the child she was forced to give up by her mother and whom she writes to regularly, imagines, but makes no effort to seek out.

Naomi Watts' Elizabeth has overlaid her pain with high quality legal work. She is unable to relate emotionally to men and uses them mercilessly through risky and emotionless sex. She is fiercely independent but she is something of a drifter. But she returns, several times, in her roaming to the town in which she was born.

A third storyline follows another unwanted pregnancy and an adoption process. Kerry Washington's Lucy in unable to have children with her husband (David Ramsey) and they seek a child through a Catholic adoption agency, to meet a young prospective mother who, though willing to give up the baby, is extremely demanding in terms of what kind of family she wants for her baby. The interplay of power and helplessness in this narrative is almost frightening. On the one hand there is the need of Lucy, both to satisfy the needs of their marriage, and the apparent (somewhat ruthless) needs of the expectant mother, to dominate by means of the trump which which she holds over them.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, as well as her birth-mother, Karen, have their own issues of power. Neither has sought the other out, even though, for both, this could have meant resolution. When they eventually do, neither of them can claim any victory.

A gentle Jimmy Smits, is attracted to Karen but her response to him is almost violent rejection. When her mother dies, she is able to give in to his attention and give herself up to it. There is an interesting sub-text regarding God, and religion throughout the piece. It is a Catholic Adoption Agency which keeps the records of the adoptions. The nun who forms the centrepiece of connection is kind and gentle and humane. But it is it also the same agency which is the cause of botching critical connections between the players. The Jimmy Smits character admits to not believing in God, but his over-religious daughter describes him as the “kindest man alive”.

Lucy is interrogated ruthlessly by the prospective birth-mother on her religious beliefs. When she admits to her that she is an atheist, she believes that she has lost all hope of winning the birth-mother over. Only shortly afterwards to discover that the mother is convinced by her honesty.

Elizabeth gets sexually involved with her boss, played by Samuel L. Jackson, at a Los Angeles law firm. The relationship is curiously ambivalent and nothing one might expect. There is an age difference between the two of them, which is simply there – never noted or even acknowledged by anyone. But it is there – at the height of him achieving orgasm – Elizabeth calls him an “old man”. He is black, she is white. This fairly significant issue is never mentioned by anyone. When there is a need for introduction, she introduces him to others as “her father” – without further comment. Later on, the issue becomes extremely important in her life – but again, utterly refreshingly, it is never mentioned.

The three narratives eventually collide. Not in an easy way and not in a way where there is necessarily any resolution. The characters remain their own individual selves. The connection is real, but circumstantial. It does not control any of them, but it is the drum-beat at the centre of their being.

What is so magnificent about this movie is that it is always understated. It tries to resolve nothing artificially. At the end, there is a peace. But it is a heart-wrenching, gut-aching peace of real life. It is the peace of a complex set of lives. It is the peace we go about making for ourselves – or not.

It is a magnificent piece of cinema. Utterly magnificent.

The things we can trust

Last night, our family went out to dinner to celebrate our eldest son turning 8 years old. Leon’s parents took us all to a Pizza place – a really nice one, which was empty enough for the kids, together with one of their cousins, to run a little wild, without frightening off too many patrons.

Gabriel had a very busy day, and by 8.30, he was tired. He came and sat on my lap, for a while (as he seems to be doing these days) and then he stretched himself out on the bench next to me, and fell asleep, his head resting on my lap.

I looked down at this sleeping child and I started to remember our 8 year history together. From that tiny 3 month old baby lying sucking his finger in the Princess Alice Adoption Home, to this fairly confident boy, whom I recently went to watch doing cartwheels around the stage.

There is nothing, no words, no sound I can make - nothing I can write or explain – which can describe these kinds of moments. Every parent knows them. They seem to be something which the depths of our human being recognises and treasures. If you do not have children, or have not been attached to children in this kind of fundamental way, you will not know what I am talking about. It is so extraordinarily powerful. It is overwhelming. It is humbling. It takes one back to the very depths of one’s own being and life experience.

I put a post up on Facebook about it and a friend replied that the picture I posted evoked in him some of his most secure childhood moments. I responded, saying that what made me really sad was that Gay and Lesbian people, generally, do not experience it. Indeed, I would have never experienced it had Leon not insisted on children.

Another friend, whom I told the incident to, and the profound effect it had on me said, “isn’t it wonderful – that complete trust”. Indeed, it is wonderful, that I can be Gabriel’s secure place – even if only for a few simple and precious moments.

Trans-racial parenting

Pic - Getty Images

I have written quite about this in this blog before - so I was interested to read a satirical article recently on the site "Parent 24" by Sipho Yanana, entitled "My white son", where the author (black) contemplates adopting a white child - and how that child would be brought up. The article itself is really good - but the comments, or some of them at least, are fairly indicative of the state of intellectual play about this issue.

However, an interesting aside. Our childminder came home today, after a weekend of Zionist church services (which involves, she tells us, singing, praying, dancing and tea drinking - tea without milk or sugar - which is described as the "Tea of life"). She got a lift with a fellow Zionist, who is apparently also working for two white gay men who have adopted children. Except, in this case, the children which have been adopted were imported from Europe, and are white.

I remember having pause for thought, many years back, while I was living in the UK, when I heard that social services there would not allow adoptions trans racially. I wondered, for a moment, whether this might be racist. But thinking about it, I came to realise that, it probably is not. We do not, after all, live in a perfect world. And the needs of the child, of course, need to be paramount. I discovered, when we were going through our own adoption process, that even here in South Africa, social welfare will try, as much as possible to pair like with like. So, for instance, if there is a black child, black parents will be preferred. If there is an Indian child, a coloured child - these would be matched, as far as possible with their racial equivalents.

Of course, it isn't always possible - and then the default position is to match a child with loving, willing and able parents, rather than let the child languish in a home. And I think also, though it was never said, that if a child can be placed in a heterosexual home, that would be preferred to a same-sexed arrangement.

And the reason would be this - that it is just easier! It is much easier not to stick out like a sore thumb in public. It is much easier not to have to explain why you are a different colour from your parents. It is much easier to be in a "normal" environment, than one which is uncommon. That is why it would be preferred.

What do I think about that? I think it is probably correct. Does that mean that we should put an end to trans-racial adoptions, or adoptions by homosexuals - not at all! But I don't think we should be so naive as to ignore the problems, both potential and real.

The link to the article is

http://www.parent24.com/Content/Getting_pregnant/adoption/2151/2ee5d683100f4ac6b86695187a065fdf/31-08-2009%2011-08/My_white_son_