Petrow, a North Carolinian (and native New Yorker) who embraces his native Southern charm without letting it overpower, has made a career of advising straight people on dos and don'ts apropos of LGBT people.
"Manners is about the language we use," he says. "And good manners are guided by fundamental respect."
To that end, he advises LGBTs to accept that not every inappropriate comment or question indicates homophobia.
"I find that most straight people are well-meaning," Petrow says. "They want to say and do the right thing."
We all seem to know people (gay and straight) who wouldn't recognize the "right thing" if it was spelled out for them in a rock-and-roll anthem. And Petrow himself is no stranger to sexual-identity and gender-based insults.
"People don't say these things to our faces that often," he notes. "Most people have a pretty strong filter on themselves."
Comments that are clearly hateful should not be ignored, he says, but addressed politely.
For the most part, he says, straight people just want to be prepared when attending their first same-sex wedding ceremony. They wonder what to say to a friend whose daughter has just come out as a lesbian, or whether drawing My Family Tree is still an appropriate exercise in elementary schools.
Gay people have questions too. How to refer to your child's surrogate or sperm donor? And, if my son agrees to be a sperm donor for a friend, aren't I a grandmother?
We may be weary of the phrase "now more than ever."
But consider that Petrow's first book of manners, in 1995, predated online dating, chat rooms, instant messaging, and sexting. It was before Ellen, Will & Grace, and Queer Eye; before newspapers published gay and lesbian wedding announcements; before People magazine put "the pregnant man" on its cover, setting off a firestorm about transgender people and their pronouns; and before Hallmark decided (in 2008) to launch a line of same-sex wedding cards.
So now more than ever, an update is in order, and Petrow calls this one "a comprehensive womb-to-tomb guide" to LGBT life.
"This [new] book is meant as a comfortable place for straight people to learn more and for gays to slip in and out of as needed."
Details about Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners: The Definitivek Guide to LGBT Life are at stevenpetrow.com
Contact staff writer Dianna Marder at 215-854-4211, dmarder@phillynews.com, or @marderd on Twitter. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/diannamarder.
