You might enjoy reading Dan Savage’s memoir The Commitment, or at least one particular part I’ll try to quote without running afoul of the copyright. The context of this scene is that he and his boyfriend Terry adopted a boy they named DJ, in the 90s when this was much less common. When DJ was six (and Dan and Terry were coming up on ten years together), same sex marriage still wasn’t legal in the US, but it was legal in Canada, and of course they could still have a public commitment ceremony. But they wrestled with the idea, and encountered some unexpected resistance from their kid, who had somehow managed to absorb some very strict views on gender and marriage from the other kids at his Montessori preschool. In time, though, he not only came around; he even announced (albeit in a very 6-year-old way, not like the OP’s 13-year-old) that he wanted to be gay and marry a boy too:
A few weeks later, DJ woke up in the middle of the night with an earache. I got some Children’s Tylenol into him, and we curled up together on the couch in the living room, waiting for the medicine to do its job. We talked about skateboarding. We talked about school. We talked about the cosmic injustice that earaches represent. Then we talked about sex.
“Dad? I want to be gay with Joshua when I grow up.”
It was a radical change of topic, but it wasn’t a bolt from the blue. DJ had been asking questions lately about what exactly “gay” meant. He knew he had gay parents, and that gay marriage was always in the news, and that if his parents married, it would be one of those gay marriages.
Despite our best efforts to explain what gayness was without popping in an old Chi Chi LaRue video, DJ was still a little fuzzy on the concept. Apparently, he had concluded that being gay meant living with your best friend. I didn’t want to tell DJ that he couldn’t be gay when he grew up, but I didn’t believe he was going to be gay when he grew up. As best anyone can tell, most kids, over 90%, will grow up to be straight, whether they’re raised by gay or straight parents. I almost told him he wouldn’t be gay. He plays with trucks. He likes Power Rangers. He threw a perfect spiral the first time he picked up a football. He was throwing it to me and I dropped it, naturally. The kid is straight.
But on the off chance that he wasn’t going to be straight, I started naming all the couples we knew, gay and straight. And DJ joined in. There was Eddie and Mickey, Billy and Kelly, Laura and Joe, Grandma and Gramps, Mark and Diane, Shirley and Rose, Brad and Rachel, Nancy and Barrack, David and Jake, Amy and Sonya, Henry and Beth, Maureen and Ed.
“Most of the men we know are with?” I asked.
“Girls,” DJ said.
“That’s because most men wind up falling in love with women when they grow up. And most women wind up falling in love with men. Those men are called straight. Men who fall in love with men, like me and Daddy, are called gay.”
“Am I going to be gay?”
“I don’t know, DJ, but probably not. Most men aren’t gay. You could be gay when you grow up, but it’s much more likely that you’re going to be straight, like Uncle Billy, or Uncle Eddie, or Tim, or Brad.”
“But I want to be gay, like you and Dad.”
Ah, I thought, somewhere a fundamentalist Christian’s heart is breaking. This is precisely what they worry about when they condemn gay parents. Our kids will want to be gay. They will want to emulate their parents and adopt their sexuality. If you believe, against all evidence, that sexuality is a matter of choice, it may be a rational fear. But sexuality isn’t a matter of choice. It’s an inborn trait. And DJ could no more choose to be gay like his parents than I could choose to be straight, like mine.
“It’s not a decision you get to make,” I said. “It’s not a decision I got to make. It’s a decision your heart makes.”
“When?”
“When you’re older,” I said. “One day, your heart will let you know whether you’re going to be the kind of man who falls in love with a woman or a man.”
There was a long silence, and I thought DJ had fallen asleep. He was curled up next to me, resting his head against my side, and I couldn’t see his face. I stayed very still, giving him enough time to fall into a deep enough sleep that I could carry him back to bed without waking him up. I was also savoring the moment-- not the conversation, which, in all honesty, had scared the shit out of me. It was the kind of Very Important Father Son Talk that you can’t enjoy as it’s happening because you’re so worried that you’ll say the wrong thing and Fuck Your Kid Up Forever. No, I was savoring two delicious, intoxicating sensations only parents ever experience: the scent and weight of our children.
I’m sure you can relate to the fear of saying the wrong thing and fucking your kid up forever. But I think you’re doing great so far, and if you do mess up at some point, that will matter far less than your willingness to keep trying, and your unconditional love for your child.