I can't stop looking at this blog. The "Born This Way" blog features childhood photos submitted by readers that reveal something about their LGBT identity, some at a very young age.
As a parent I have observed the extent to which all three of my kids came "prepackaged." The 13 year-old who doesn't like to express her feelings was once an eighteen-month-old who used to hold in silent tears whenever she fell and scraped her knee. The ten-year-old who folds her own clothes without being told and has all her stuffed animals organized at the foot of her bed was the one who already knew how to dress herself in color-coordinated outfits at age two. (As for my four-year-old who owns a hundred toy cars and trucks, trails dirt into the house, knocks holes in our dry wall, and gives me the big-brown-puppy-eyes-look when he knows he's in trouble--I can only imagine what ten years will bring.)
All this to say: the idea that sexuality comes with the package when a child enters the world has never been a difficult concept for me to grasp. Yet still I find myself surprised and fascinated by these photos and the short essays that accompany them. While I know that not all gay men and women fit the stereotypes, it's apparent that many who do fit them more closely expressed themselves early on.
