And now Something Touching

Every now and then my faith is renewed. If the families represented here are an indication of where things are headed, the future sure seems sweeter. The five or so comments that were posted at the time I read the article are also encouraging! Found at Thingamababy.com

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Best casual conversation leading to a serious discussion you’ll read today

5-year-old daughter: “He’s the best brother ever!”

Dad: “Why?”

“He’s exactly like me!”

“Well, no, you have girl parts.”

“I know something about boys that Momma knows too.”

“What?”

“He can go to the doctor and get surgery to become a girl.”

[raucous laughter from Mom in the next room]

Dad: “I hope he doesn’t need to have that surgery.”

My nurse-wife guesses our daughter overheard a conversation about women who have sex-change operations (while retaining their vaginas) and later give birth, and to the point, how hospitals might change their operating procedures if this becomes commonplace.

So Dad and Daughter sat down to talk a few minutes about how throughout history individuals who are different have usually been treated poorly by most people in a community, such as black people being enslaved (which we covered in a previous conversation).

And how most boys and girls grow up to like each other and get married, but some boys like boys, and some girls like girls, and some people even grow up feeling they should be a boy when they are a girl or the other way around. (We know of one such child who seems to be in that situation.)

And how these people today are the ones being treated poorly and how that’s wrong.

When Dad says he hopes his son doesn’t need that surgery it’s because of how other people would treat him, but that we would still love him.

This conversation was not too heavy for a 5-year-old. She assimilated the information quite easily.

Less than an hour later my wife waited in line at a pharmacy behind a transgendered individual who was picking up her hormone pills.