My black, gay and disabled kid named Dave

A friend of mine asked me today if people who would chose to have a straight child over a gay child are homophobic. I automatically said no, which surprised me. I thought about this scene in the movie, The Family Stone, where they're all at the dinner table: the mother, the father, the two brothers (one with his partner and one with his fiancee), the two sisters, etc. They are talking about fashion or something when the mother says, "You know, I secretly wished all my kids would be gay. That way I'd never look like a wreck and I'd never make terrible curtain choices." The whole table laughs except for Sarah Jessica Parker's character, the fiancee, who replies: "That's terrible. I don't know why anyone would wish for their child to be gay; it's like wishing for you kid to be black," the other son's partner is black, she looks embarrassed but she continues, "Being gay is really had to do, I just don't understand why someone would wish another struggle on their child." Well of course the family retaliates but thinking about this got me to thinking even more.

If a seventeen year old boy is presented with this question, the guy to whom my friend had asked the question, no doubt he's going to say straight. A barren couple in the fifties or sixties would rather adopt a white baby than a black baby, not for their own comfort but for the baby's. Does that make them racist? When I imagine myself as a mother I automatically imagine myself with a girl. Does that make me sexist? I chose a black ipod over a white one. Do I not like white? Our choices and preferences are not by any means our wants or our needs. That is what I was thinking. But here's the other aspect to it: science has gotten so intense that mothers who choose to do insemination can choose the sex of their baby before actually being pregnant. Women who go to sperm banks know a lot about their sperm donor so that they can pick the best genes for their child. The latter seems more ethical, for that's what it's all about right? Pairing your genes with the best genes and having children... but does a woman who does the selective choosing and none of the searching really benefit? To me, both of these still seem completely inhumane. Gay, straight, black, white, boy, girl, whatever.

Bottom line is they're your kids. You should love them no matter what, right?