There was a great video getting sent around the blogosphere earlier today — which has since lamentably been made private by its uploader — with a young kid learning about homosexuals and just sort of going ‘oh, ok’ and reacting the way children do to any new fact they encounter. It’s a wonderful example of the ease with which children can ‘get’ homosexuality.

But it’s also a lesson, I think, that the sorts of awkward things we try to avoid talking about with our kids, things like sexuality and homosexuality and racism, are exactly the sorts of things they need to learn when they’re young. Whether we like it or not, it’s very hard to break the prejudices of our youth. Growing up in a family that eschews acknowledgment of homosexuals will betray an implicit otherness to children. But talking about these things in a straight-forward manner, invariably works.

A few years ago, at the dinner table with my dad, my sister, and her daughter we were having a conversation and homosexuals came up. My niece asked what that was and I explained it very matter-of-factly as my sister and father looked on with shock. After I finished my explanation, she got a look on her face that meant she thought it was weird that some men like men the way most men like women, but once she knew it wasn’t a soul shattering experience.

It’s not that the new generations are inherently more accepting, the conversations are just happening earlier.