The family, key to education for sexual tolerance

Education for equal rights begins with instilling certain values in the family.

This June we celebrate Gay Pride Day, with which the LGTBI community remembers the first public demonstration against homophobia.The LGTBI community remembers the first public demonstration against homophobia, following the events at the StoneWall bar in New York.

The protests against the police forces that violently broke into the Greenwich Village neighborhood took place in 1969. 21 years later, on May 17, 1990, the World Health Organization eliminated homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Since then, being attracted to people of the same sex has been considered a sexual orientation.

Education is essential to curb discrimination

However, historical events do not have an immediate impact on all social or personal environments. even today, it is still considered important to educate minors in sexual tolerance..

The family is the point of origin of this education against homophobia, since it is the first nucleus of influence of the person. The adults in this group are therefore the ones in charge of educating by word and attitude.

In order to achieve satisfactory results, it is first necessary to understand the reasons why human beings tend to reject others. Group identity is one of the bases: people who do not have a very strong self-identity feel more comfortable in the group; they define themselves in relation to that group and are not flexible with those who are different.

However, a person with a strong individual personality is more likely to understand that everyone is different and that there are many diversities in people's identity. That is to say, someone with a marked individuality and who understands that there are different individualities does not tend, in principle, to reject the other, the one who is different.

Childhood, an age for building values

In childhood, the family is key to avoid this rejection of those who do not belong to our peer group, while in adolescence, friends come to occupy the first place in terms of influence.

Although in the new school and entertainment environment, discriminatory behaviors towards people with homosexual orientation may appear, if during the first years the values of tolerance and respect have been solidly instilled, it will be more difficult for homophobic behaviors and attitudes to flourish, as well as behaviors of integration and support will appear, as well as rejection towards people who are against these rights.

Parents must, above all, watch their words (sometimes simply learned expressions without an excluding intention) and loudly condemn behaviors against the LGTBI community that occur in the environment.

A false belief held by many adults is that validating other sexual tendencies will foster an environment of debauchery or induce them to have another intimate orientation.. This is totally wrong because if they learn from an early age that there are different options, they will learn to respect any type of orientation, and also, in the case that they are not heterosexual, it will facilitate the integration of their sexuality in their identity and normalize it in their environment from the beginning.

Tips for

These simple tips can help to overcome some natural barriers that arise between parents and children when talking about sexual orientation. From Clinicas Origen we recommend:

• When faced with homophobic news, express rejection and verbalize your opinion on the matter.

• When talking about boyfriends and girlfriends, remember that they can like girls and/or boys, that they can also have a partner of the same gender.

• Educate in values such as respect for diversity in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation.

• Naturalize homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality, at the same level as heterosexuality when they appear in series, books and movies and in other areas of the social environment.

• Naturalize when a partner's parents currently have a same-sex partner. Explain the family diversity that exists today.

• Finally, ideally, parents and educators should, if possible, agree on times and guidelines for sexuality guidelines, so that the child perceives consistency between the two most important environments in which he or she moves.