Imagine someone on the conservative side of politics said this:
“I’m straight and I want my kid to be straight.”

You tell me, how quickly would that person be excoriated, metaphorically tarred and feathered on Twitter, and forced into a PR-style apology?

In this day and age, it would be less than 24 hours.

However, Sally Kohn, left-wing writer and lesbian, can get away with saying “I’m gay and I want my kid to be gay” and there is hardly a peep about it, except in the comments on the article she wrote in the Washington Post, and in a handful of other articles.

Here it is, from her own metaphorical pen:

I live in the liberal bubble of Park Slope, Brooklyn, where no yuppie would ever admit to wanting their kid to be anything in particular, other than happy. But more often than not, we define happiness as some variation on our own lives, or at least the lives of our expectations. If we went to college, we want our kids to go to college. If we like sports, we want our kids to like sports. If we vote Democrat, of course we want our kids to vote Democrat.

I’m gay. And I want my kid to be gay, too.

Many of my straight friends, even the most liberal, see this logic as warped. It’s one thing for them to admit that they would prefer their kids to be straight, something they’ll only begrudgingly confess. But wanting my daughter to be a lesbian? I might as well say I want her to grow up to be lactose intolerant.

She acknowledges that her view is probably akin to her own father’s precaution against marrying “a black person,” as she puts it, and also acknowledges that she is frustrated that her daughter – who is SIX YEARS OLD – shows no sign of being a lesbian. (Did I mention that her daughter is SIX?)

Time will tell, but so far, it doesn’t look like my 6-year-old daughter is gay. In fact, she’s boy crazy. It seems early to me, but I’m trying to be supportive. Recently, she had a crush on an older boy on her school bus. She was acting as any precocious, socially awkward child would, which is to say not very subtle. I confided in a friend who has an older daughter. “She wants to give this kid a card and presents,” I e-mailed. “The other kid is so embarrassed. It’s painful to watch. What do I do?”

My friend wrote back with a slew of helpful advice, ending with a punch to my gut: “Bet it wouldn’t bother you so much if her crush was on a girl.”

She was right. I’m a slightly overbearing pro-gay gay mom. But I’m going to support my daughter, whatever choices she makes.

There is so much wrong with this entire situation, that I can hardly take it all in.

First of all, Kohn wants to have her argument both ways. In the article, she talks about the “born this way” argument – and how it it became the launching point for gay rights. However, saying that you “want” your kid to be gay implies that there is a choice involved. And Kohn freely admits that her daughter (again, who is SIX) shows every sign of being interested in boys (gasp! The horror!). So, which is it? Is it a choice, or not?

Second, there is an extremely unhealthy amount of projection going on here. This is a six-year-old girl. Short of basic biology facts and classic liberal indoctrination (which Kohn admits that she does, constantly reminding her daughter to use gay roles in her pretend play), why would any sane parent be concerned with their child’s sexuality at this age? And I’ll bet that Willa, Kohn’s daughter, isn’t going to be overly thrilled in ten years when she can Google herself and find that Mom was busy making a buck off of writing articles about wishing she had a different kind of daughter. And I thought my arguments with MY tween daughter were getting bad.

Third, this is the kind of bigotry that Kohn herself would never tolerate when it comes to race, religion, or homosexuality. She has a long track record of supporting politically correct stances on race and gay issues. All she proved in one article was that she is a huge hypocrite.

Finally, Kohn calls herself at the end of the piece “a slightly overbearing pro-gay gay mom.” Intellectual honesty should have made her leave out the “slightly.” After all, she just wrote an entire essay in a national newspaper complaining that her daughter isn’t a lesbian. Her SIX YEAR OLD daughter.

If I’ve learned anything in the last 11 years of being a mother, it’s that children NEVER do what you expect them to do. Because they aren’t you. So, sorry, Sally. That’s not your clone you are raising. That’s another individual human being who is going to grow up and not be you. If you are disappointed about that, then you should really keep it to yourself, instead of embarrassing your daughter and yourself in the Washington Post.