"Are you gay, too?"

My son's friend asked him that question while they sat side by side playing videogames. The boys were ten years old. I happened to be walking past the doorway of my son's bedroom when I overheard the exchange.

The incident came to mind last night while I watched Piers Morgan's CNN interview show. His guest was Rosie O'Donnell, and the subject had turned to her family life: raising children as a lesbian parent. "Parker was in second grade," Rosie described, "when he came home from school and announced that some kids insisted he was gay. ‘You're gay because your Mom is gay,' the classmates had said, with great certainty."

For youngsters, it's an understandable assumption. It's typically true — children know this — that the religion of the parents tends to be the religion of the child. Similarly, the race or ethnicity of the parents tends to be the race or ethnicity of the child. In the mind of youngsters, why wouldn't it work that way for sexual orientation as well?

I advocate arming our children with a proper understanding of this "mechanism" before they find themselves on the receiving end of a classmate's innocent question or misguided opinion. Gay and lesbian parents sense, intuitively, the wisdom of what I'm suggesting, yet find themselves unsure about the timing of such a conversation, or tongue-tied when they need the words. Here's one way to approach it:

Once kids are old enough to understand pair bonding — that most people grow up and find someone to marry — it's not too soon to broach the topic. The kids can be as young as three or four or five. A logical opportunity presents itself when witnessing a same-sex couple in a children's storybook, or in a movie or television show. Keep your comments brief (if the kids have questions, they'll ask them afterwards), and be sure to focus on love, not sex.

"The women (or men) in the story — they're together because they want to be married to a woman (or a man). That's who they love. The name for that is 'gay.' If they have kids, those kids might not be gay, because everyone is born different. Everyone figures out, as they grow up, who they want to love and marry — a boy or a girl. Just because your parents are gay doesn't mean you'll be gay. Everybody finds the person that's right for them. We don't copy our parents when it comes to who we love and marry — we figure it out for ourselves. If other kids tell you that you're gay because you have gay parents, tell them it doesn't work that way. Most children don't know this — nobody told them."

What we're doing in a conversation like this is no different than taking the children on a guided nature walk around a pond, explaining the ways of the natural world — the algae, the fish, the rocks — without society's long history of bias or fear coloring the way we tell the story. It's just another dimension of how life is lived on planet Earth, and when we describe it matter-of-factly, our kids receive it that way as well.

Here's a truly feel-good moment at the holiday season: a short video that will stir your pride at being a gay or lesbian parent. Consider sharing this video with your children, if they're old enough to appreciate the message it contains. Or share it with anyone else in your life — perhaps a supporter who will beam with delight, or someone who may still need educating to be able to endorse gay and lesbian parenting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMLZO-sObzQ

My son spent time in a boarding school as a youngster. It was his first encounter with kids from outside the progressive, urban area in which we lived. On our first visit to campus two weeks after his enrollment, my partner Eric ("Dad") and I ("Poppa") walked with him across the lovely quad. He suddenly leaned into me and whispered, "Poppa, I want to call you my uncle when you visit. These kids don't know about gay people and there's a lot of prejudice."

He was 13 years old at the time.

I knew right away that I'd have no trouble honoring his request. After all, it was his life at school — his environment, his peer group. Eric and I would be having no real contact with that community. Why shouldn't he handle his situation in a way that was right for him?

Once our kids understand that there's anti-gay prejudice in the world, they face their own coming-out process. Things can get dicey when classmates, campmates and teammates start to question, comment, and, sadly, tease about alternative families and sexual orientations. At times like this, our job isn't to push our sons and daughters to confront what they might not be ready to confront. Our job is to help them weigh and measure the pros and cons of staying in the closet. We've been there ourselves and know how complicated the coming-out process can be.

I was asked recently if I'd have responded the same way to my son's request had he asked me to be closeted at the time he enrolled at his neighborhood elementary school. Reflecting for a moment, I realized I wouldn't have agreed to that. To honor such a request, I would have had to compromise my commitment to living an open and honest life in my own community. The negative ramifications would have been too great: closeted contact with his teachers, with other parents, with the friends he'd invite into our home. Of course, I would have wanted to explain to him my thinking, in language appropriate to his age.

At different times throughout their childhoods, our children face a coming-out process of their own about having gay or lesbian parents. These can be tough moments — for them and for us. If there's one guiding principle that prevails, it's the importance of bringing empathy and sensitivity to those moments so our kids know they are understood and supported by us as best we can.