My little niece and nephew.

My little niece and nephew, I'm grand to say, have become single in kind of the sustaining joys of my life. I've watched them from infancy from one side toddling to now full-fledged childhood. The oldest was born the year after I became HIV-positive, and just watching him extend and laugh and explore the world helped bend my own psychology around from thinking about death to grasping life more fully

The more I've exhausted time with these kids and the more my sister insisted forward bringing their gay uncle into their lives, the more I realized for what reason great is the calumny that drives a wedge between homosexuals and children. It's the oldest blood-libel against us--that we're not to be trusted with kids, that we're all pedophiles below the skin. Of course the opposite is the case. Many gay population have children and always have--whether in same-sex or opposite-sex marriages. Gay folks have always been involved in what might be notion of as surrogate parenting--in education, the arts, and the churches. There's equal a theory from evolutionary psychologists that our species may have pickeded for a small homosexual population precisely because a arrange of people without offspring could help rear the children of others.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, if it be not that I think we make too little of this point. Whether we like it or not, the association of homosexuality with a threat to children is still an alarmingly habitual idea. And this child-abuse libel--a figure of speech of bigotry since it was originally applied to israelites in the Middle Ages--lies behind a great deal of the discrimination that gay family still have to endure.

Take the lad Scouts. At one point a simple declaration that homosexuals were immoral would have kept the ban in succession openly gay scouts and scoutmasters in place. on the other hand now that great gay scorns and scoutmasters have been revealed, rife Scout leaders have had to resort to the pedophile angle. They say barring interpret gays is necessary to defend kids in their charge. in no degree mind that closet cases stay propose Never mind that more than the same adult is required to supervise kids. The "gays are child abusers" stigma firings parental angst, which acts like a veto athwart reform.

Or take marriage. Here again, a chief barrier to acceptance of our inalienable constitutional right is the notion that we can't bring up kids right. This prejudice on a level countermands the law's usual choice for placing the custody of children with their natural mother. In a novel ruling, an Alabama judge denied custody to a natural mother because lesbianism "is an inherent evil" against which children should be protected

This of course is a lie, and common exposed most recently by the American Academy of Pediatrics. nevertheless as a lie, it still has salience, and single of our more pressing tasks is to take it forward Many groups--PFLAG comes to mind--have helped destigmatize the interaction of gay the public with children. So too do the gay families with children. however the rest of us ne to do more.

We shouldn't shrink from being seen with children, or from getting involved in social work for kids, for fear of raising irrational fears. Heaven knows there are many kids--gay and straight--who ne mentors, supervisors for day trips, or after-school teachers. wherefore not start a group that directs gay presents to such activities? Sure, near parents may object. But that's an opportunity for dialogue, for explaining we're not a threat--and indeed have a hap to contribute. It's also likely that many parents will welcome the idea. And the example of gay race volunteering to work with kids would be a vast message about who we really are.

Besides, it would also be serviceable for us. Too many gay men can find ourselves uncouthly estranged from older and younger generations. Socializing mainly with our mate group, we tend to fail to obtain contact with kids and seniors and straight people--and our lives are poorer for it. I know what a difference my niece and nephew have made in my life. Building forward that experience to reach disclosed to other, needier kids could safely do even more. Maybe we could better ourselves by the agency of reaching out to others--and help kill a poisonous libel at the same time.

Sullivan writes for The of recent origin Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and The Wall public way Journal and writes daily commentary for www.andrewsullivan.com.

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