Inter-Varsity Press seems to have branched out into the satire market with A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. (What my mother would have given to have this important volume in her hands twenty-some years ago!) Here's a classic comic moment from the introduction:
I told her, "Mom, you saw me play with Barbie dolls. You allowed me to use makeup and to fix my hair in front of the mirror for hours. My brothers never did any of this. Why didn't you stop me? What were you thinking?"
Later on it gets even more devastating:
"Doctor, ... my son Stevie ... [is] a beautiful little boy, a special child. But..." She hesitated. "Stevie's fascinated with little-girl things. Even more so than my daughters. In fact, he just loves the colours pink and red. He even... well, plays with Barbie dolls and... dances around the house on tiptoes like a ballerina."
As I listened, Mrs Johnson gave me a few more specifics. Her son was five.
"I've been noticing this kind of behaviour for almost two years," she explained.
To me, that length of time was significant. It is okay if a little boy wonders what he would look like wearing long blonde curls and so he tries on a wig, simply to be silly. There is nothing particularly alarming about that. But if he keeps on doing it and has little interest in "boy" things, there likely is a problem.
I am finding it very difficult to believe such stuff can actually be written -- by doctors no less -- without tongue firmly in cheek.
Really, this is not me. I was being ironic by putting it in my post last week.
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