Lady Gaga, full frontal snogging, and gay rights on the yellow school bus

As I understand it, the conversation on the school bus went a little like this...

"What are you reading at the moment, Maya?" asked Kammai.
"I've just finished 'Angus, thongs, and full frontal snogging'," replied Maya.
"Any good?"
"Quite. There's some funny rashing, but it's only really about boys fancying girls and girls fancying boys. At one point they tease the teacher about being lesbian."
"Oh." Kammai looked out of the window as the driver took a wrong turning. "It's the same in 'Know your body' at school. We learn all this stuff about sex, but it assumes that it's only between a girl and a boy."
There was a pause while the bus tried to squeeze into a space smaller than itself so that it could get past the garbage truck.
"I want to teach people that being gay is ok," stated Maya.
"Okay or normal?" said Kammai. Kammai is eleven. She has a more sophisticated understanding of this entire debate than most members of congress.
"What's the difference?"
"Well, if it's okay then people might still be thinking it's weird. Whereas if you teach them it's normal, then they will think it's normal not weird."
Maya thought for a little while. She thought about her wonderfully extended family filled with people who were gay, straight, and bisexual. She hatched a plan.

When she arrived at school, Maya asked her teachers if she could have a lunchtime meeting with them. She proposed writing a PowerPoint presentation to be given in each advisory in Middle School about the fact that being gay was normal. She argued that the curriculum was prejudiced: not just against children who were, or might be, gay but against all children in teaching them that one kind of sexuality was normal and ignoring others. The teachers listened and agreed. Then Maya told her friends and people she knows at school about what she's doing and she's gathered the names of people willing to support her.

Since then, all her spare time has been spent on the internet trying to find quotes and evidence about being gay or from people who were gay - American football players, film directors, pop stars, writers and poets, actors, politicians.... She's gathered facts about the percentage of the population who are gay and worked out the likely ratio of her school population. She's thought about the philosophical importance of recognizing each person's individuality and the problems of using any kind of label. The only major problem she's come up against is that she can't find a quote from Lady Gaga which talks about being gay without using swear words. Maya doesn't think it's right to use swear words in school as some people might find them offensive.

My wish is that both Maya and Iola fall in love with people who love them and who bring them joy. People with whom they can achieve a richer kind of happiness than that which would have been possible alone. It's likely that those imagined future partners might think that my girls are a bit weird for having their mixed-up English/American accents; and it's inevitable that Nathan and I will think that these partners are weird for their taste in music and fashion.That's what parents do, right? Everything else is just normal.