AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM

Nature or nurture? DNA or choice?

Truly disassociating oneself from beliefs taught from birth is a difficult and confusing process. I was raised to believe homosexuality was a choice and a sin. The same church which taught me to love others and treat them the way I wanted to be treated, also taught me to avoid and reject anyone choosing a same-sex partner. It was perplexing and I could find no justification for placing my sin on a higher moral ground than anyone else's, so I refused to reject others based on their sexuality, still in the dark recesses of my mind thrived the idea that homosexuality was a choice and a sin. Thus, I was able to deceive myself for many years believing myself to be better than my sign toting, gay bashing counterparts, never recognizing the arrogance of judging another's life sinful -- until I met Cooper.

He was four-years-old with dirty blond hair, cut in a chili-bowl style, always seeming to be in need of a trim, giant blue-gray eyes filled with spirit and an intelligence every teacher wishes for each of her students. From his dough-boy fingers sprang such detailed pictures of cowboys on horses and princesses in ball gowns they put the stick figures and scribblings of the other students to shame. Full of questions and quirky insights, this bright and funny little boy quickly endeared himself to my heart. But something beneath the surface of his sunny demeanor began to slowly unfold along with the school year. I first got a glimpse of its dark underbelly three weeks into the school year.

It was picture day and Cooper came through the classroom door dressed like a little gentleman. When told how handsome he looked he expressed disgust for the cute sweater set and bow tie his mother sent him to school in. He spent the morning looking longingly at the frills and bows being paraded by the girls. An hour before it was time to have our pictures taken I realized Cooper had been in the bathroom an unusually long time. Knocking lightly, I asked if I could come in and when Cooper opened the door it was clear he had been crying. Alarmed, I bent to scoop him up and comfort him.

“Hey buddy, what’s this all about?”

Cooper didn’t cry easily. He was tough. Only yesterday I’d seen him slammed to the ground with such force it sent me scurrying to help, but before I was halfway to him, he had jumped up, brushed the dirt from his shirt, and taken off in pursuit of whoever he had been chasing.

“Boys can’t wear dresses, can they?” he sobbed.

“Well, I suppose they could if they really wanted to, why?”

“My mommy says they can’t. Boys wear pants and girls wear dresses, but girls wear pants too, don’t they?”

“Well, Cooper, I’ll have to give that some thought.” I said, side-stepping his question, “So you’re upset because you don’t like your clothes today?”

Wiping his cheeks dry with his chubby baby-fist, he nodded yes, never moving his gaze from his tan Buster Browns.

“How about I make you a deal? Right after pictures we’ll come back here and you can change into your shorts. You have a change of clothes in your bag, don’t you?”

Heaving a shaky sigh he again nodded, this time glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

“Well, I’ll let you be the first to change, then I’ll help you make the coolest hat in the class. We’ll make yours first, now, how does that sound?”

His eyes shot directly at mine, and my efforts to cheer him were finally rewarded with a genuine smile of pleasure.

“I can make it any color I want?”

“Absolutely!”

As the school year moved from one month to the next, so did my conversations with Cooper, delving deeper and deeper, working their way to the heart of his discontentment.

One cool October day, Cooper was mixing red paint with white to make pink, the color we were learning to spell that month.

“Pink used to be my favorite color.”

“Yes, I know, Cooper, you love pink.”

“Mama says I can’t like pink anymore. I have to have a new favorite color.”

“Oh? Why?”

He slapped his brush into the center of a large white glob of paint and continued talking casually, relaying information as four-year-olds will, with no agenda or realization of the impact of his words on me.

“Pink’s a girl color.”

“I don’t think so, Cooper. I think pink is just a color.”

He paused, brush dangling inches from the reddish-pink globs dotting his paper, blue eyes earnestly searching mine.

“Really?”

The uncertain awe of his voice made me want to hold him tightly and whisper, "You are just fine exactly the way you are."

“Yeah, really.”

He studied my face like a serious old chemist searching for the proof to support his theory, before turning on a smile that was both happy and coy.

“Okay, well, pink really is my favorite color, Ms. Pamela, but you can’t tell my mommy, okay?”

We sat for a moment locked in understanding before he turned his attention back to the paint waiting to be made pink -- his secret favorite.

November brought more insight into the battle Cooper struggled with daily. Planning for the Christmas pageant started the day after the big Thanksgiving feast. Preparing for our program, I asked the children, individually, what they wanted for Christmas.

“I want a Barbie dream house, but I’m not allowed to ask Santa for it.”

“Why not, Cooper?”

“Barbies are for girls. I’m a boy, I can’t play with Barbie.”

Coward that I was, I let the subject drop, but during the quiet times of my day would pick it back up and allow it to challenge my belief that one's sexuality was a matter of choice.

In December Cooper fell in love with Jason, a riveting, boisterous boy, Yang to Cooper’s Yin. Beautiful, careful drawings soon overflowed from Jason’s cubby, placed there lovingly, expressions of Cooper’s admiration. I waited to see Jason's response to the new attention from Cooper, and was pleasantly surprised to find he simply shrugged it off as he did the affection of almost every girl in the class. I guess it takes more than four years for little boys to learn cruelty. If only it would take longer for them to learn self-doubt and loathing.

One early March day, I was keeping Cooper company at the art table, his favorite center. He was drawing a family and singing along perfectly to the Italian opera coming from the CD player.

"Ms. Pamela?"

"Yes, Cooper."

"You like Josh Groban, don't you?"

"Yes, Cooper, I do. Very much."

“I like him too.”

“I know you do, and you sing his songs really well.”

“Thanks!” He beamed and put down his crayon to give me a hug I was happy to return.

“Do you like my picture?”

“I do, tell me about it.” I said, as I pulled him into my lap for a little snuggle. I held his picture in front of us where we both could see it and waited to hear what he had to say about the Crayon family smiling back at us.

“Well,” he began in his little professor voice that never failed to amuse me and always made me want to ruffle his hair or pinch his cheek, “This is my family. Not the one I have now, the one I’m going to have, you know, when I’m big.”

Taking his picture back, he slid from my lap and settled in the chair marking his place at the art table. He went back to concentrating on the drawing in front of him. We sat beside each other in tiny, tot-sized chairs, each happily involved in our own activity, he planning the family yet to be, and me mixing together paints for the day’s art activity.

“Ms. Pamela?”

“Yes, Cooper.”

“Boys have to marry girls, right?”

“Boys can marry girls if they want to, Cooper, but they don’t have to.”

“But they can’t marry boys, can they?”

I paused to weigh my answer. This was a Christian school which expected its teachers to teach and follow a set of values laid down by the church, but this was a little boy whom I loved and knew was struggling and conflicted. It was hard to find a line which allowed me to teeter between the two without doing damage to either.

“Cooper, when you get big you can marry anyone you want.”

He put down his crayon and looked up at me, questions raced across his face. I reached over and gave his shoulder a small reassuring squeeze and smiled. His confusion left no room for a returned smile.

“But I shouldn’t want to marry a boy, should I, Ms. Pamela?” The tentative hope in his voice broke my heart. Keenly aware of the caution required, I searched for the right words.

“Cooper, when you get big, and don’t live with your mommy and daddy anymore, you can decide who you want to marry. You can choose anyone you want.”

“Can I choose Jason?”

Wishing I had paid better attention during tap lessons, I gave his more precise question the consideration it deserved, then took the coward's way out.

“Cooper, I doubt you and Jason will still know each other when you’re both big.”

I knew I'd let him down before I looked into his upturned face. Even still, the disappointment reflecting so brightly from his eyes slammed into my heart like a bullet. I was ashamed of myself. I was ashamed to be a part of anything that caused such a bright, wonderful little boy to question his worth. I was ashamed to have ever been so stupid as to believe that sexuality is anything other than something we are each assigned at birth.

Throughout the year I watched Cooper’s turmoil and confusion grow. I watched as he struggled daily to make peace with what his parents told him was acceptable and what he felt inside. I watched this lovely boy being torn between pleasing his parents and being himself, and the dawning realization that who he was, somehow, was wrong, and the price this knowledge extracted from his happy, easy nature.

I taught Cooper how to read, how to spell all of his colors, and say them in French, Italian, and Spanish, but I fear I failed to teach him the more important lessons of life. How who we are is always enough, and choosing to love is more important than who we love.

The Bible says, a little child shall lead them, and so it was with Cooper and me. He led me to the dark part of myself, the part I didn’t admit to. He led me to understand that we are all made in the likeness of God and God does not make sin. I don’t have it all figured out yet -- still don’t know how to make my peace with what I’ve been taught and what I now know is true -- but four-year-olds don’t make choices about sexuality, they simply are. I don’t know for sure who Cooper will end up loving, but whoever he chooses will be lucky to be loved by such a bright, sensitive, loving man, if those parts of him survive the turmoil of his growing up.

Oh how I pray they do.