Nothing warms the cockles of my gay heart, Dear Breeder, quite like seeing a child throw a fit in the middle of a grocery or department store. I love watching the helpless parent try to corral the unpredictable behavior of its offspring. I love watching the exasperated and thoroughly bored sales staff. And I love—possibly more that life itself—rolling my eyes, throwing up my hands in an exaggerated manner, and making blanket statements which invariably begin with the phrase, “If that were my child…”
The beautiful thing about “If that were my child”-statements, Dear Breeder, is this: that is not my child. That will never be my child. And unless I someday find myself in an alternate reality of financial stability, infinite patience, and biomedical breakthrough, I will never be forced to play into in the societal expectation to keep children around the house. You may have already noticed—as we certainly have—that children, on the whole, are notoriously messy, ridiculously self-obsessed, and in constant need of attention and affirmation. And believe you me, the last thing a gay needs is competition.
Baby: “You gotta be kidding me.”
What may come as a surprise to you, Dear Breeder, is that many gay people actually enjoy spending time in the presence of children. Like us, children live in a world of imagination and instant gratification. Want a candy bar? Try crying! Feel like you deserve a new toy? Refuse to leave the store until someone buys it for you! Upset about what’s for dinner? Pack a bag, pretend to run away, and watch how quickly the menu changes!
This is why, despite their cold and immovable exteriors, gay people are secretly thrilled when their differently-oriented brothers and sisters begin to use sex for procreation, rather than mere physical pleasure and emotional manipulation. The welcome introduction of nieces and nephews often jumpstarts the stagnancy and complacent discontent to which many families fall prey, by showing us that the world is still a magical place full of new experiences. Nieces and nephews remind those of us who may have forgotten, that Christmas is a special time of bright lights and wish fulfillment. Having kids around the holiday table causes us to remember that Thanksgiving is really about belt buckles, hand-drawn turkeys, and saving room for dessert; not just stolen land and ethnic cleansing. And who, I ask, wears a shit-eating grin on Halloween better than gays and children?
More important still, the gay uncle, lesbian aunt, gay aunt, or lesbian uncle has the tremendous privilege of exerting an unprecedented level of influence on a child’s life, without any of the troublesome responsibility its parents must endure. The homosexual aunt or uncle is free to show up sporadically with extravagant gifts in tow, to forget birthdays entirely, to tell wildly inappropriate stories well within hearing range, to call every so often from a pay phone and hit the child up for a little cash to get us through the month. And the best part is, the child never notices or grows to resent these behaviors. Absentee fathers should be so lucky!
“I told you, I’m good for it, Chrissy!”
So, pat yourself on the back, Dear Breeder, for giving your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters one of the best gifts imaginable: a renewed sense of hope for the future of our families and our species as a whole. Without your embarrassingly compulsive and genetically pre-programmed need to clone yourselves, we might never realize the importance of living enthusiastically and without irony in each moment, and that children, like gays, make every get-together exponentially less formal, more emotionally volatile, and generally way more fun. We thank you from the bottoms of our hearts for risking your personal bank accounts (not to mention your wives’ bodies) to bring a new person into the world, who may one day discover the cure for cancer, but is just as likely to eat your drapes.
Breeder's Digest 