Earlier this spring, my daughter told me about a disagreement she had with a friend at school.  The kids were apparently doing some typical family role playing game (they sometimes say, "let's play family").  The discussion of marriage had come up.

My daughter had suggested that two of the girls could be married.  A sweet friend responded with incredulity: "Girls can't marry girls!"  My daughter insisted that, of course, girls could marry girls.  This assertion was met with hysterical laughter, evidently from a number of kids.

Her feelings weren't hurt by this.  I think the kids were being pretty gentle with each other.  But she's her father's daughter and she was motivated to get to the bottom of this question.  She can't live with uncertainty.  She has to know the answer.  Can girls marry girls, she asks me.

My daughter is not even five years old.  She's starting kindergarten this fall. She is a sophisticated thinker, but I'm not going to complicate the issue with political or legalistic uncertainties and contradictions.  To her, of course, marriage isn't a government-sanctioned legal status.  To her, marriage means you choose the person who you will make a family with.

 So I tell her.  Yes. Girls can marry girls.  And boys can marry boys.  I acknowledge that most of the time girls marry boys, but not always, and that's okay.  I tell her that when she grows up, of course, she can marry either a girl or a boy.

She takes it in and agrees what I said makes sense.

The next day, I hear about her next conversation with her friend.  "[Name withheld] said that girls can't marry girls and she said that she is telling the truth.  I trust her. She wouldn't lie."

Uff da!  Now we must discuss the difference between believing something that isn't true, simply holding a different opinion, and actually lying.  I try to keep it in 4 year old terms.  It's challenging.  I'm not sure if she is really ingesting much, but in the end she agrees with me that a girl could marry a girl if she wanted.  After all, the family we know down the street includes two women who are "married."

My daughter later relays this issue to another one of her peers, this time in my presence.  I just listen to the two of them.  At the end of my daughter's reenactment of the dispute from school, her friend yells with self-assurance, "Well, of course girls can marry girls! I know that!"

So it's settled.  Apparently, my best efforts at persuasion aren't enough for the 4 year old brain.  What she needs is direct evidence and the confirmation from a friend. 

She must be growing up.