I can hear the faint anguished cry of our ancestors.....good God what the hell happened?

Yes, that's your son wearing a dress.

Yes, Anthony, Michael and Thomas spend naptime dreaming about being Snow White. Or maybe Lady Gaga.

Yes, you helped the grown-up world destroy some of his capacity for make-believe.

The reason that you are troubled by the sight of your little boy dressed as Snow White is that, like most of us, you are still battling your internalized homophobia.

Good luck to you and your family.

He'll have a headstart on getting a job @ Salon

He likes to twirl. He likes color. That's it. Four-year-olds don't do connotation; they do senses and story. That's it. Here's hoping he grabs another opportunity -- or got whatever it was he needed to out of this one. This from a mother of three sons, one of whom was an inveterate twirler and is now a connoisseur of tasteful hetro porn, and another, age 10, who loves pink. Let them love whatever and don't worry about it.

and you sound like a man who would love him still if he was gay.....

But you know what awaits him in the world.

That's what troubles you.

You know.

1. The child's desire to wear a dress does not signal a deviant, Roman Empire-style collapse of Western civilization.

2. The author is not a terrible person.

Oh yeah- we had the dress years too (and it was every day - your situation was HALLOWEEN - that's when people get to play out their fantasies/dreams!). I took to making them since he went through them so fast (imagine little sequined tubes with elastic straps). We were progressive and liberal but still had our squeemish moments (like the time he wore a dress to my company picnic). But I had told myself that I wasn't going to make rules that really had no health/safety/manners rules behind them and we figured he'd either outgrow it or this is who he was and we'd adjust. Yeah, kids will make comments but I found it wasn't a problem to tell the 11 year old who questioned why he was wearing sequined Hello Kitty wedges that "he's five- he can wear whatever he wants".

I will admit that we finally drew the line when he was starting kindergarten. He could still wear dresses at home and on the weekends but I wasn't going to subject him to a K through 8 in a dress. Kids memories are too long. By then he had outgrown it.

My advice to anyone in this situation is to have a sense of humor, pick your battles and above all appreciate that being an individual is a GOOD THING.

Who are we to condemn?

Well, I think you should subtly encourage your son not to wear a dress because dresses are designed for women and men's bodies are different from women's bodies.

I personally don't care about anyone's sexual preference, but why do we allow the gay community to stereotype being gay as men acting like women and women acting like men?

These are just people who have difficulty in accepting the fact that they are a man or a woman.

However, the gay community tells gay men to act like a stereotype of a woman and gay women to act like stereotypes of men.

All gay people should be allowed to be their true selves and not be dictated to by people who have their own selfish definition of what gay is.

Why the vision of his gay vegan wedding? Leaving aside for a moment the idea that cross-dressers are always gay (they aren't), why does gay mean vegan? I have been vegetarian for 20 years and am just about vegan. Last time I checked I am not gay. The only vegans I know are straight, and all my gay friends are massive carnivores. Just because Ellen and Portia are gay vegans means that the two things are the same? Talk about a victim of stereotypes. Sexual orientation and concern for one's own health and compassion for animals have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

At a guess, you're troubled because you don't want to see your son get the shit beaten out of him by folks that aren't as progressive as you or I. It's a nasty world out there, and no one's crueler to children's innocence than other children.

One day soon your son will hack you to death, cook your severed corpse over a propane grill and serve you up.

With Fava beans and a nice Chianti!

Halloween was just one day for dress-up, the day that you had a specific kind of costume. Seems that nowadays, the store-bought costumes, especially those Disney princess kind have gotten a little better -- not just the plastic smock with a picture of who you were supposed to be. I always felt sorry for those kids -- I was lucky enough to have a mom who let me paint on the butterfly wings she cut out an appliance box. Everything now seems so specific and branded. I'm always happier to hear about a kid who wants to be a lizard rather than Buzz Lightyear.

But my brother and I spent countless hours playing with our odd assortment of dress-up clothes. Most of them were muu muus and bathing suit cover-ups that had belonged to my grandmother, with an odd assortment of (adult sized) high heels, belts, scarves, and, our favorite -- a wig. Not a fantasy type wig -- sort of a brown, short, straightish wig, that my mom got on a lark in her early 20s, and had occasionally worn for fun to have short hair. So, with a big sister, and a closet full of wacky lady clothes, my brother was constantly in some sort of ridiculous drag. He would give these hilarious performances, that were clearly his take on how fussy and bossy and vain adult women could be. This never went out of the house -- but friends who came over played too. I remember one friend of his rolling on the carpet he laughed so hard. My dad laughed until he cried a few times too. My brother really was very funny as a kid.

And as he grew up, not much changed. He wasn't ever gay, or a transvestite. He works in comedy.

(p.s.a. - get kids wigs for their birthdays! They're really fun. Have given them to various kids with rave reviews!)