WAY OUT PARENTING: “My genes made me do it!”—the 5 genes that make you a gay parent

Gays becoming parents really shouldn’t surprise anyone. Gay people, after all, are the product of straight people. It’s the twenty-first century, and by now we realize that virtually everything we do, everything we say, and everything that happens to us is in someway related to genes—even if the genes in questions haven’t been identified and tagged quite yet. Someday, in human genome laboratories, scientists will confirm what common sense already tells us: Gay people have some straight genes. That is to say, gays have inner straightness. Even the “gayest” person you can think of has straight genes. (By the same token, even white supremacists, evangelical Christians, army generals, Hell’s Angels, Pennsylvania Dutch dairy farmers, and Catholic bishops have gay genes—okay that last one is no surprise.)

Gay readers may protest the presence of straightness in their gene code—everyone has their prejudices—but it’s true. Gay people want children because their straight genes compel them to. Whether they like it or not, they too are ancestors of those first homo habilis cave dwellers. Their genetically controlled impulses cannot always be dispelled by Sunday brunches, rousing gay pride marches, political fundraising, or all the tea dances in Provincetown and Key West combined.

The Mommy and Daddy Genes
All women and men, gay and straight alike, have the Mommy and Daddy Genes. The Mommy and Daddy Genes are nature’s insurance that the human species would survive any cataclysmic event. Whenever birthrates decline and the species is threatened with extinction, the Mommy and Daddy Genes take over. Imagine for a moment that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il perpetrated a global nuclear holocaust and the entire human population was wiped out save for a small group of gay men and women holed up at a dinner party in one of their hermetically sealed gay closets.

Upon learning that the survival of the species was dependent on them, the straight Mommy and Daddy genes within these predominantly gay people would activate chemicals in the brain. Despite any inner gay revulsion, these gays would initiate all required Species Survival Techniques—including heterosexual coupling—to save humanity from total annihilation.

Short of nuclear holocaust, a number of other circumstances can also gently awaken the Mommy and Daddy Genes out of dormancy. The benign act of listening to a work colleague talk lovingly about his or her baby can cause this gene to activate neural receptors that make people thinking about having children. So can close contact with cute young nieces and nephews, students, or children playing in a local playground or park.

For parents who get pregnant the old-fashioned way, activated neural receptors is often enough for pregnancy to ensue. But when parenthood requires a great deal more upfront effort (adoption, artificial insemination, surrogacy), those receptors have to be more than gently prodded. And that’s why other genes play a co-starring role in explaining the amazing mystery of gay parenthood.

The Gotcha Gene
This gene is present in every human, and all of us have been under its spell from time to time. This gene facilitates revenge on cheating spouses, despised coworkers, and neighbors who play loud music or never cut their lawns. Gay people employ this gene to get back at parents or society as a whole. The gene causes them to have the following thought patterns, which further activate their Mommy and Daddy genes:
• “To hell with my parents. They’ve never treated me like part of the family. I’ll start my own family.”
• “They’ve been hiding me from their friends for years. Let’s see them hide their grandchild, too.”
• “This country can pass all the antigay marriage amendments it wants to. But it can’t stop me from populating the world with a new species of sympathetic people who will one day reverse all the amendments.”

The Dorian Grey Gene
Named in honor of Oscar Wilde’s character, this gene stimulates vivid, sensory pseudo-memories of a happy childhood (whether or not you actually had one): riding a bike for the first time, flying a kite on a windy spring day, blowing out candles at your birthday party, and the delight of staying up past your bedtime. These idealized pseudo-memories are responsible for the births of many children to straight and gay parents. In gay people who do not heed the siren call, however, another gene goes into action.

The Bored-To-Death Gene
When the neural transmissions from the Dorian Grey gene have stopped firing, this gene sends a final existential signal to the consciousness of the gay person: Your life is meaningless and you are bored to death. Once this signal has been transmitted, the gay person can no longer look at his or her life in the same way. He or she is forced to think thoughts like these: “If I order one more spinach omelette at one more brunch or play one more game of charades with friends on a Saturday night or pack for one more vacation or spend one more dollar of my abundant disposable income on obscenely expensive clothes that other people can’t afford, or drink cocktails at one more fundraiser I will shoot myself.”

The Jealousy Genes
Jealousy is a universal emotion triggered by several genes in our chromosomal sequence. Who hasn’t experienced jealousy toward someone with more money, better looks, a higher-status job, bigger home, or more luxurious car? Jealousy gives us the gritty determination to get what others have. This may come as a surprise to many, but gay people often feel jealous of straight people and their families. They want a family, too, and all the unique and special events that go with family life: reading bedtime stories, experiencing the “It’s a Small, Small World” ride at Disney World, attending curriculum night at school, hosting play dates and sleepovers, and becoming a soccer (or hockey) mom (or dad).

The I-Wanna-Grow-Up Gene
When the other genes have all failed to work their magic and a gay person reaches the age of forty and beyond, the I-Wanna-Grow-Up gene sometimes makes parents out of late bloomers. These gays, who still playing Halo, watch sci-fi like twelve-year-old boys, take long-distance cycling vacations, go clubbing, and refuse to dress us, look in the mirror and think, “Maybe I am missing something…”

© 2008 by Carrie Smith. All rights reserved.