My personal perspective, having lived in the DC area most of my life and moving to MA shortly after (or was it just before? I don't remember), is that yeah, I was a little worried about how to explain it to my young kids. Turned out not to matter. I personally don't think the government should give a rat's ass who you love.
I was half-kidding with my above remark, but thinking about it; I could not live in a country where that would be the case. I would think that even if big parts of a country work like that, in 'well educated' parts of the country, your kids would've seen some amount (edited) of gay people together already which means there is nothing to explain (it being already natural). If that would not be the case, it means there is some kind of suppressing force at hand which I would not be able to live with (I'm not gay, but i'm very much against the ignorance which disallows / restricts people while there is no solid or even non-shaky argument against it).
Also, it is not known what population of a country is in fact gay. I read somewhere between 2 and 15% depending on a lot of factors. The issue is ofcourse that in most countries most gays did not (and maybe will never) come out, so it's hard to analyze anything based on that. But if 2%, it's still 2 out of 100, so in your neighborhood there will be always a few around and they ofcourse find partners from all over.
I'm not totally sure how a conversation like that means - as some same-sex marriage opponents seem to think - that one has to start describing the intricacies of sex, anal or otherwise.
I do think it's utterly disappointing that the primary reason people seem to think that denying same-sex partners from getting married is because they are too much of a pussy to explain to their kids that gay people exist and can love one another.
Because some same-sex marriage opponents are obsessed with the intricacies of anal sex (whereas the typical preadolescent child really doesn’t care about the intricacies of any kind of sex). Heck, some of them are probably more obsessed with this topic than the gay men who do it.
You should explain it to your kids, since one of your kids might be LGBT and it would be good for them to know that their parents will accept them.
For more detail read "I want to expose your children to homoseuxality" http://seldo.com/weblog/2011/08/11/i_want_to_expose_your_chi...
In fact, I may be the only male in the house that uses 'gay' as a reference to homosexuality. I think to the kids gay = wimp and FWIW fag = asshole. I think. It's hard to figure it out sometimes. I just caution them that there are plenty of people who find certain terms hurtful still and they should be mindful of who is within earshot.
But that's how I've always treated profanity.
So at least we should send a strong signal that we ALL want Internet Freedom.
I very much do NOT WANT this SOPA and any possible legislation after it to become a polarizing talking point in a speech. It’s a twisted bastardization of a real issue, which is how I feel the gay marriage dabate has become.
The LGBT rights movement was hardly slacktivist 'awareness raising'. It was real struggle with real costs which is generating real results.
It more or less comes down to a numbers game. Not everyone will proactively go out of their way to take action (or will only do the very minimum, like changing their profile picture). To expect everyone to be proactive is unrealistic. The advantage that awareness gives is that it reaches out to the masses potentially hitting those who have the aptitude and attitude to take firm action. You reach enough of those people and over time influence starts to propagate upward throughout the entire structure -- but again, that takes time. People and the structures they live within are not changed over night.
Politicians are paid by lobbyists or have their own monetary interests to pass SOPA, and massive businesses support such a bill.
On the other hand, no one* in Washington really cares about "gay marriage". They just pretend to because there is opposition to it by their voters.
So, they can give you "gay marriage" rights, because it doesn't affect any economic or power interest. In the large scheme of things, gay marriage is an insignificant novelty, while SOPA is part of Washington's and corporate America's vision of the future.
[*] Well, some conservative republican politicians might care, but those are in the minority, many more are just putting on an act (like those that are all about christian family values, and then they are busted with some prostitute.