The creepy cashier and lessons in a heteronormative society

On the occasion of the United States Senate filibustering a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" I thought I would share an anecdote from several weeks ago.

I waited in line at the grocery store as the middle-old aged clerk (65-70 years old) struck up this conversation with the young daughter (~6 years old) of a woman buying groceries ahead of me:

Clerk: Hello there young lady.  Do you have a boyfriend?

Girl: No. [giggles, looks away.]

Clerk: Do you want to have a boyfriend?

Girl: I don't know. Maybe.  [looks away]

Clerk: Will you be my boyfriend?

Girl: NO!

Clerk: Why not? You'll get free groceries...

Girl: No.  [looks away].

Clerk: How about this, I'll give you a week to decide.

[Genuinely amused, the mother shakes her head, mumbles a few words about the girl being high maintenance, and then looks up as she hears her daughter, upon leaving yell:

Girl: Good luck, sucker!

Now, I laughed too.  The clerk was just silly. The girl was predictable.  The mother was amused.  And I got to thinking, would people have reacted this way had the girl instead been a boy?  What if the elder clerk was in fact a homosexual, and thus innocently struck up the same conversation with the woman's son.  I doubt anyone (I included) would have acted the same way.  People would say, "Oh, how dare he try to make her son GAY!" "God, he's such a creepy molester!" "What is he, a Catholic priest or something?"  In other words, they are afraid of such behavior, because it might influence the boy.  It might shatter his world view of boys + girls = love.  Quite simply, when the heterosexual "norm" of our society is enforced, even by slightly creepy, but good-natured clerks, we all laugh and move on.  Because we think that society is grooming everyone to be either gay or straight.  Straight is ok.  Gay? No homo.

I doubt it's so straightforward that society's influences play such a large role.  If they did, we wouldn't have had people identify with homosexuality in the dark ages of sexual identity (pre-gay rights/civil rights movement, which is by the way ongoing: see the link above).

I hope my (future) children grow up in a world that embraces both the straight and the gay clerk.  I have enough faith they will know how to figure out their own sexual identity, regardless of some old grocery store clerk's influence.