I was thinking recently about how, if at all, my Catholic upbringing shaped my political/social beliefs. My conclusion is that it hasn’t to any great extent. But I realized something that hadn’t occurred to me whenever I’d gone over this ground in my head before.

I’d always found it interesting that, though I did for a while try to internalize the Church’s dogma on rights and opportunities for women in order to be a “good Catholic” girl–I eventually gave up and accepted the fact that I just couldn’t buy it, but I did try–I was <i>never</i> able to accept the Church’s opposition to homosexuality. Even that “hate the sin, love the sinner” crap didn’t work for me, because I understood that sexual orientation is not about what you do, it’s about who you are.

Now, this is not a big mystery to me as I was always able to trace it back to the fact that, before my mother “went back to the Church” when I was very young, a few of her good friends were lesbians. Having seen for myself from a very young age that LGBTQ folks are real people and not the aberrant monsters conservative religionists try to portray them to be, the anti-homosexual bias of my childhood religion just wouldn’t stick.

My favorite of my mom’s friends lived a few doors down from us. Mom always says I loved her because she dressed “so flamboyantly and colorfully” and that’s definitely a part of it. As a three year old girl, I thought anyone who wore swirly skirts and fabulous fringed shawls had to be the coolest person ever. And then there was the way her tiny apartment was decorated with brightly colored silk cushions, and the fact that she had finger cymbals and let me play with them without complaining that it gave her a headache. Best of all was her old, blind, cranky Siamese cat, who wasn’t fond of most people but would for some reason allow me to pet him. And of course it always helps when a child can tell that the adult talking to her likes her and isn’t just being patronizing. Given that it’s been almost thirty years since I’ve seen her and I still remember all this, it’s obvious that I really did adore this woman.

So, of course, I’d always figured that the fact that someone I cared for so much at such a young age was a lesbian must have had an effect on my subsequent resistance to the homophobia of my childhood religion and society in general. What I realized in my most recent mental rehash of the history of my personal values, though, is that it goes farther than that. I’d always figured, okay, I remember seeing her hugging and kissing her girlfriend and it was a normal thing, so nothing that I was told later could make it <i>not</i> normal–and that’s true. But there’s also the fact that I was raised by a single mother who refused, for reasons of her own, to get involved with anyone while I was a young child. There were no other functional heterosexual relationships, married or otherwise, in my family. And most of what I saw on television and in movies and in print advertising that had to do with heterosexual relationships either began and ended with sex or incorporated the kind of manufactured “romance” that strikes even children as being somehow inauthentic and plastic.

Which means, as is no doubt obvious by now, that my first exposure to an actual loving, affectionate romantic relationship, and my only one for quite a while, was seeing two women, one of whom I knew and absolutely adored, sharing a hug and a kiss. And realizing that brought home to me, in a way that goes beyond intellectual understanding, how important it is in combating homophobia and transphobia that LGBTQ folks be <i>seen</i>. That being forced to hide, in ways great and small, their relationships and their very identities, is not only profoundly unfair in the short term, it forces them to be complicit in their own marginalization and perpetuates the bigotry that oppresses them. And that fucking sucks.

So I guess what I’m saying is: Won’t someone think of the children? If we love them, then we must let them see and know and love people of all sexual orientations and identities. Because whether that leads to them growing up to be allies or growing up without fear of accepting and embracing their own sexualities and identitites, it can only be a good thing.

And that is my lightbulb moment for today.

(cross-posted to my personal journal)