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I was so affected by the tragic shootings that took place in Newtown, Connecticut, as we all were.

Columbine was so frightening. And the media took off with it, like everything else, so it instilled more fear in people. You're looking around at school for kids like the ones who committed the shootings, and you feel wrong for doing that, you know?

I think that we should take the tragedy that happened in Newtown and have a full comprehensive dialogue about all issues, whether it has to do with mental health, whether it has to do with the social decline of our young people and some of the things that they are exposed to, whether it has to do with the firearms and guns.

It's a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.

I used to shake my head when I heard about mothers who were shocked - shocked! - when their kids came out. I didn't understand how they had missed seeing something so essential when looking at their children. But too many parents see only what they want to see, and that's true whether our kids are gay or straight.

That thing of briefly losing sight of a child happened to me when the kids were younger, and you can't see them in the supermarket or wherever. It's a terrible, terrible moment... the most unimaginable horror.

As a newspaper reporter, I covered and was around a fair number of crime scenes involving juvenile delinquents, and few things bothered me more than listening to their parents. Crying, ranting, proclaiming how great their children were despite being kicked out of school or previous run-ins with the law.

It's up to each person's parents whether they think it's too frightening or too violent, how much their kids can handle, what they want to teach them, what they want to show them.

My parents were children during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it scarred them. Especially my father, who saw destitution in his Brooklyn, New York neighborhood; adults standing in so called 'bread lines,' children begging in the streets.

The main concern was making sure the kids didn't get caught in the middle.