We adopted Laura when she was a little baby. It was a laborious process but in the end we were a complete family, married with children. At the time we lived in a nice town, people were friendly with us and the neighbors were absolutely awesome. But we had to move due to Jane’s job. Jane is my wife.
So when Laura was 6 we moved to another town. We were a bit scared. How will a lesbian couple with a child be seen here. How will people treat us? After we settled, things started to reveal. What was so frightening to us became reality. People would give us judgmental looks and everywhere we’d go they were whispering.
Once, an old lady said “How will that girl grow up? This is not normal. God made woman to be with man, not with woman.” We got over the general gossip, but when Laura started school it was the hardest part of living in that town.
First week at school was normal, but when her classmates found out that her parents were two women, the disaster unfolded. She would come home crying. “They call me lesbo child and they say my family is not normal,” Laura cried. Me and Jane were in front of something we could not control. Our child was hurting because of discrimination.
We decided that Laura mustn’t go to school until we found a solution. But we had the duty to explain her that we are a normal family. I am a doctor, my wife is a Pharmacist, we have never harmed anybody. We have a normal life, we love each other and we love Laura. We told her that love and acceptance were the most important values in a family and those kids that bullied her were confused because their parents never explained them what is wrong and what is right.
We were aware that we could not steal Laura’s right to have a normal childhood by continuing to live there. We offered her everything, but we could not control the discriminating society. We decided to choose a place where we would not face discrimination. We made research and we found it.
But we could not forget that the majority teach their children to discriminate and to bully.
Now we think of a program to teach children in school that is wrong to discriminate, bully and be rude to people according to their sexuality, race, religion, nationality. How can we make parents understand that a child from a gay family has the right to lead a normal life? That, in fact it’s not the gay family who steals the normal life from the child, it’s society who does this.
We had the opportunity to leave a place that was hurting our family, but not all gay families afford this. I hope we can develop a program to support gay couples with children. People must understand that those who discriminate destroy a child’s life, not their gay parents.
