When Ed tells his friends that his is considering leaving his long-time lover, they don’t take him seriously.
In Michael Downing’s novel, “Breakfast with Scot”, Sam and Ed have a stable and loving relationship, a large comfortable home in the suburbs and successful careers. For Ed, the crisis which spells doom for their coupledom is an eleven-year-old child Scot whom Sam feels duty bound to adopt.
Scot is the offspring from Sam’s ne’er do well brother and his compulsive and neurotic girlfriend, Julie. Julie places Scot in a boarding school and proceeds to kill herself with narcotics. Sam considers his wayward and itinerant brother to be an improbable role model for Scot
Sam and Ed’s neighbors on their elegant cul-e-sac are surprisingly sanguine and encouraging toward the two guys seeking adoption. Indeed, they are smugly gleeful in their warnings about how their life “carefree” existence will change.
Ed’s one-word explanation for their tolerance:
“Cambridge”. (Massachusetts, you know.)
Sam and Ed’s “tolerance” is swiftly challenged by the odd behavioral quirks and habits of their charge. Scot likes Pink Gardenia bath splash, white patent leather belts with pink dancing dogs and charm bracelets. When Scot is caught applying make up during lunch period, Ed has to go to the school to explain what he plans to do; Ed suggests that he just may have to drown him in the bathtub.
The teacher doesn’t even blink:
“Cambridge”, you know.
Friends reassure Sam and Ed that it is perfectly normal for boys Scot’s age to want to play with dolls and dress up in bras an panty hose. The couple are nevertheless embarrassed and unforgiving of Scot’s feminine habits; they have bought into the myth that kids raised in a gay household will grow up gay. The irony is that they have no conceivable responsibility for Scot’s divergent predilections, since they heretofore had nothing to do with his upbringing.
Cambridge: how blessed they are, they don’t know. In Florida and Utah, they would be legally prohibited from adopting Scot in the first place, regardless how profligate the “natural” parents might be. They would be denied solely on the basis of their being a “non-married couple”.
Misgivings and myths still abound regarding the effect of gay couples on their children. Charlotte Patterson, an expert in child psychology, is often quoted in child custody cases. She has researched extensively on the effect of same sex couples on their children’s sexual preference. She determined that the majority would grow up to express heterosexual preferences with the proportion of gays similar to that of any random population sampling.
Go To Page: 1 2
