Man pulls son from center after ‘cross-dressing’ play
By Shawn Donnan
Associated Press Writer
BALTIMORE – Henry Holmes went to his son’s day-care center thinking he’d find the boy playing with blocks. Instead, he found 6-year-old Gerald wearing a dress and playing house. “There he was with this long dress on that a little girl wears. One of those long white dresses with sequins in it,” said Holmes, who removed the boy from the day-care center.
Holmes belives the Social Secur-A-Kiddie Child Care Center was, possibly unwittingly, encouraging his son to be homosexual.
“I’m from the old school,” Holmes said. “Some 6-year-old child does not need to be exposed to wearing dresses.”
Day-care officials, however, said the dress was Gerald’s choice, picked out of a selection of dress-up costumes kept for the children.
And education experts insist there was nothing to be concerned about.
“When a child at 3 or 4 puts on a dress they’re not cross-dressing. It’s simply play,” said Barbara Willer, spokesman for the Washington-Based National Association for the Education of Young Children. “Thete’s absolutely no research evidence that nontraditional gender behavior creates homosexuality.”
Holmes said a staffer told him Gerald was just participating in the “housekeeping” part of the curriculum.
“I said” ‘Miss, I know how how to sew, cook, iron — and I never wear a dress to do it,’ ” Holmes said.
Holmes removed Gerald from the center, where the boy was enrolled in a $95-a-week alternative kindergaten program, and on Monday enrolled him in kindergarten at a public elementary school.
Linda Budd, the center’s executive director, said staff members met with Holmes and agreed to tell Gerald that his father didn’t approve of the dress. But, she said, they would not stop the boy if that’s what he wanted to do.
“Most of the parents in our center are quite amazed that this is a concern of one of our parents,” she said. “We’ve never had complaints like this before.”
Such “dramatic play” is a harmless and common component of day-care curricula, Willer said. “I’m sure that there have been any number of little boys that have put on earrings or put on shiny jewelry or put on dresses that are not gay.”
Holmes also complained to state child-care officials that the area where his son was playing was unsafe and improperly supervised.
State officials investigated but found nothing wrong with the center, at the Social Security Administration headquarters outside Baltimore, said J.C. Shay, a spokesman for the state Department of Human Resources.
The center occupies space in Social Security’s Operations Building but is not amanged by the agency.
Shay said the state considers Gerald’s choice of a costume to be perfectly acceptable.
“It would be the same as if sa 6-year-old girl may be dressed in a shirt and a tie and daddy’s coat,” he said.
Holmes said he discussed the incident with his son and explained that other children might tease him for wearing a dress.
To his dismay, he said, the boy responded, “I don’t care.”
Information for this article was contributed by The Baltimore Sun.