The Al Realpolitik Institute of Sulfur Mining & Extraction

[TJ in Oregon]

Sorry to highjack this thread, but this matter has sort of shocked my conscience. I just cannot image any decent person doing such a thing to persons dependent upon them, much less their own flesh and blood.

Not letting them date somebody? My parents have done that to my brother multiple times and they still love him.

[TJ in Oregon]

Sorry to highjack this thread, but this matter has sort of shocked my conscience. I just cannot image any decent person doing such a thing to persons dependent upon them, much less their own flesh and blood.

Not letting them date somebody? My parents have done that to my brother multiple times and they still love him.

You said a bit more than that, including that you would ban your kid's partner from your house. Or does this regime just obtain while your kid is a minor?

I would have no recourse beyond that point other than to require my rules to be followed if the child remains living in my house. Once a child moves away I would not have any authority regardless. I would never cut-off my child or anything like that because it would serve no purpose other than alienation. In essence, I would have ~18 years to impart Catholic teachings on the child and then he will enter the world alone and must be able to make those decisions for himself because I would have no control anyway.

[TJ in Oregon]

Sorry to highjack this thread, but this matter has sort of shocked my conscience. I just cannot image any decent person doing such a thing to persons dependent upon them, much less their own flesh and blood.

Not letting them date somebody? My parents have done that to my brother multiple times and they still love him.

You said a bit more than that, including that you would ban your kid's partner from your house. Or does this regime just obtain while your kid is a minor?

I would have no recourse beyond that point other than to require my rules to be followed if the child remains living in my house. Once a child moves away I would not have any authority regardless. I would never cut-off my child or anything like that because it would serve no purpose other than alienation. In essence, I would have ~18 years to impart Catholic teachings on the child and then he will enter the world alone and must be able to make those decisions for himself because I would have no control anyway.

Well while legally under your care, you might do a lot of damage to your kid (not, not the house rules stuff (he can screw in other venues and hide it from you and no big deal, straights have that issue too), but all of that other very heavy stuff that you lay on him, assuming that he is pretty hard wired), and once he ceases to be dependent, would you still reject his partner, and ban him from your house?  And God help him if he is less supple intellectually than you, so he cannot successfully "compartmentalize," which might be a key survival strategy.

The major issue here that is absolutely critical to my attempt going well would be that it would require every ounce of subtlety I posses such in order to prevent the kid from committing suicide or rebelling or losing the will to continue living life.  Of course that would be horrible and in the case of suicide worse than homosexuality in itself. It would be very important to try and find a way to give the kid some self worth throughout the whole ordeal.

As far as the rest, I think we've gone about as far down the road into the land of hypothetical we can go...

[TJ in Oregon]

Well... I guess I hadn't thought of drugs but that would another thing I would hope to try and prevent. If the child becomes dysfunctional and turns to drugs I would have also failed as a parent and failed to raise the kid in the practice of faith. I would hope to have a good relationship with my own child if nothing else, because absent that I would have again failed as a parent. There are so many ways to fail and so few to succeed!

The way the world is changing with regard to LGBT issues will make this more difficult perhaps than it would have been in any previous generation since most of society seems to have changed its mind over the last 10 years or so. The kid would need an awful lot of support to just make it through and perhaps would need some prodding to form friendships at all. But there is more to life than sex, something I would hope any child of mine would understand. One of the most important issues behind this dilemma (as you noted) is to still love the child. Now that's pretty easy to say sitting here on my computer and much more difficult in real life when I have an actual person sitting in front of me looking me in the eye.

I guess the best answer I can give is that I would not want my kid to have any of the problems you mention or enter a homosexual relationship.

[TJ in Oregon]

Thank you TJ. Heaven forbid that any of this should transpire in your life (for both yourself and your son), but if it does, I hope you will remember this exchange. It was from my heart. Best.

Thank you Torie. I appreciate the constructive criticism and mature conversation about a topic that is rather contraversial.