Gay Path Dependence and The Little Mermaid
Confessions of a conservative mother of a gay son regarding those seashells
Bless me father for I have sinned. It has, of course, been 32 years since this particular transgression. Nonetheless, it haunts me to this day. I discouraged my then-five-year-old son from his fascination with Ariel’s seashell-clad breasts and imagining those same cartoon boobies un-shelled, and now, 32 years later, he is gay.
As I have mourned many times with you before, my adult 37-year old son is afflicted by “same sex attraction”, and it still shocks me to my core. I have spent over a decade on my knees praying the gay away (of course, loving the sinner, only hating the sin and all the sinner’s boyfriends). But as we all know SSA is unnatural, I torment myself over the nurturing decisions I must have made which would have caused him to suddenly decide he was attracted to men at age 25!
Was I not caring? Did I not spend hours watching Hello Dolly with him as a child and entertain his Barbara Streisand impressions? Did I not get him the Aladdin Barbie doll he so specifically wanted for Christmas that one year? Did we not scrape pennies to put him in modern dance when he was in junior high as he asked? And all those lovely women we encouraged him to date, so Catholic, such fervent believers that marriage is between Adam and Eve and not Steve and that the act of creating a child was meant only for the sacred bounds of matrimony? Am I to believe this was all a façade?
What choices did I make to set him on this path to such a sinful lifestyle? Each time I ponder this question, new memories of my own failings emerge, and this time, as I suffer through trailers of Disney’s live-action remake, I realize back in 1991 when I surely sent him on the path to destruction and eternal damnation.
He was five at them time, and he had mentioned to his younger brother that he thought Ariel was “sexy” and he wanted to see her “without her seashells.” Imagine, I had somehow been raised a 5 year-old pervert. Thank goodness, his younger brother, a pure soul to this day, came immediately to tell me of this heart-breaking development. Well, I broke the VHS tape of The Little Mermaid I had bought for my children at Wal-Mart right then and there, despite the facts that the animation was beautiful, the songs were classic, and the plot of the headstrong princess who shaped her own destiny rather than await the rescue of a prince kissing her without her will while she lay asleep or in-state was the perfect message for my two daughters.
Then I scolded him horribly and sent him to his room without supper. Oh father, and now he is gay! Perhaps I should have sat down with him to have a very non-awkward chat about the glories of the female anatomy. Perhaps, a lesson that women were only to be seen without their seashells once you had committed to them in marriage. But no! I certainly overreacted and scolded the straight away. What have I done? What have I done? Please God, forgive me.
