There was a big cufuffle a week or so ago because of some words uttered by a child on PlaySchool, which is a superb preschool childrens program on the Australian federal broadcaster, ABC. The little girl was telling about a trip

I’m Brenna, that’s me in the blue. My mums are taking me and my friend Merrin to an amusement park. Lots of different rides to go on. Here’s the merry-go-round. This is one of my favourite rides. I love riding the merry-go-round

In a staggering display of a collective Freudian slip the conservative side of politics expressed outrage at the introduction of a lesbian theme to the preschoolers program. I say "Freudian slip" because nowhere in the program did it indicate that it was, in fact, a lesbian relationship. Brenna could have been referring to her adoptive mother and her biological mother or to her biological mother and her biological father's new wife or a number of other family configurations that have nothing to do with a lesbian relationship. In spite of this there is a reasonable chance that her biological mother was in a lesbian relationship and that the other woman was her mothers partner.

In a blow to those who were living under the delusion that the ALP were any less socially conservative that the Libs, their current leader Mark Latham was similarly outraged.

It is important to understand exactly what the outrage is about and it is not about the exposure to the existence of lesbian relationships since children are increasingly exposed to this in their real life kindergarten experience. Noone in their real mind would suggest that children growing up in a lesbian household should be denied access to preschool learning at a kindergarten and, as such, other children will know and talk to children with two mums. The outrage is presumably that including it in a television program somehow legitimises it in a way that experiencing it in real life at kindergarten does not. A bit of a tenuous argument in The Green Man's opinion.

It seems that many people in Australia cling to the myth that all Australians are blonde haired and blue eyed and grow up in a heterosexual family with two loving biological parents. Your children know that this is not the case. They experience the diversity of the Australian family experience at kinder and at school.

It makes The Green Man pleased that he lives in such an enlightened and free society. There are repressive regimes where freedom is restricted in these things and parents have their children taken away from them pursuing a relationship with another of the same sex. Sadly, once again, the bastion of the free world, USA, falls into this category. Liz Ditz of I Speak Of Dreams reports on the fate of a resident of the State of Idaho who is allowed access to his two children only if “...the defendant does not reside in the same house as his homosexual male partner.” Read his story here.

Following that logic he is presumably allowed to engage in homosexual acts in private to his hearts content but live alone and he can have access to his children. On the other hand he could be perfectly celebate but share a house with another man and he is not allowed access to his children. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It seems in Idaho you can emotionally abuse and/or neglect your children to your hearts content if you are heterosexual but you are not allowed to love them if you are homosexual. How sad!

The Green Man sits firmly in the heterosexual camp and yet he does not feel threatened by the existence of homosexuals nor does he feel the need to pretend that they don't exist. Further he cannot understand why other heterosexuals do.