As a same-sex couple, my wife and I want our sons to be proud of unconventional families. We want them to know it’s OK to be different.

I didn’t grow up in a house where my parents said things like, “Yes, boys can marry boys. ” My mom worked in a salon, but she never painted my brother’s nails. We didn’t attend gay pride celebrations.

My parents didn’t say much of anything, really, about gay people or queer culture. In spite of that, when I came out in college, I instinctively knew my parents would still love me. Being bisexual and dating a woman wasn’t an easy road for me to navigate, but my parents tried to keep up.

My wife never had to come out to her parents because they already knew. My inability to appreciate queerness until adulthood felt like a barrier as I entered the LGBTQ community , but through the years I’ve cultivated incredible friendships and a deep love for my queer bubble. Being able to blend my family into this world has been a privilege I’ve never taken for granted.

Still, I wonder what my young life would have looked like with examples of the queer experience, whether in movies, on TV, or in my real world. Same-sex relationships were normalized for my wife, Sam, when she was much younger than I was. “I never really had to come out,” she told me.

“When I was 15, I had a girl in my room, and we were kissing. My mom walked in without knocking, and when she saw us, she just closed the door. ” When her mom asked about the girl the next day, Sam said, “it was in a normal way, not a coming-out conversation.

” Her dad finally noticed when girls began staying over and Sam’s bedroom door was closed. They never had a conversation about her sexuality. With two contrasting adolescent experiences, Sam and I have talked a lot about how to raise our own kids.

We want them to have a different childhood from either of us. We want their queer community to feel special to them, but normal, too. We can read them books and answer their questions, but infusing their lives with the language of our family’s experience, and engaging with the queer community, may help them avoid a future of shame surrounding their identity.

Adolescence is fraught with pressure to fit in — for both the queer and non-queer communities — and I want my kids to grow up with the knowledge and confidence that it’s okay to be different. In fact, I want them to cherish these differences and value their unique qualities, and those of their neighbors from other cultures, races, and ethnicities. I don’t want them to have to guess how we feel about them, or leave them with unanswered questions.

I want to initiate conversations while they’re still young, in the hope that they grow up knowing that they can not only talk to us about anything but also feel free to embrace their own identity. Whether or not they identify as queer, they’ll have the tools to be confident in themselves as they mature into adulthood. It’s a privilege to teach my kids that they are part of a world in which we can learn about and celebrate our otherness, and in my family, that begins with immersing them in queer culture whenever possible.

My goal is not only to normalize their familial experience but also to remove some of the shame that may inevitably surround their identity. I know that shame is waiting for every child as they grow up. The outside world finds them eventually, and there are always people looking to exploit their vulnerabilities.

By raising my kids with a knowledge of diverse experiences, I hope to give them the confidence to be who they are and openly love their family and themselves. .