"How can my son not be straight after all I've said and done for him?"
About this Quote
Parental devotion curdles into entitlement in that single, jolting line. Rod Stewart frames straightness as a repayment plan: after "all I've said and done", the kid owes him conformity. The gut-punch is the grammar of ownership - "my son" - followed by the rhetorical question that doesn't seek an answer so much as moral backing. It's the language of a generation that learned tolerance as a talking point but still treats identity as a choice, a phase, or worse, a public referendum on parenting.
The intent reads less like cruelty than panic: a father trying to reassert control over a story that has slipped out of his hands. The line stages a transaction - love and labor in, heterosexuality out - revealing how easily care becomes a ledger. Even "straight" is tellingly blunt, not "happy" or "safe" or "authentic". The priority isn't the child's interior life but the parent's social comfort: the fear of whispers, of being judged, of having your family deviate from the script you thought you wrote.
Coming from a rock star, the irony is rich. Stewart's persona was built on rebellion, loosened rules, and swaggering refusal to be boxed in. Yet here he sounds like the very establishment that once clutched pearls at rock music. That tension is the cultural moment in miniature: celebrities who sold freedom confronting the limits of their own imagination when freedom shows up at the dinner table.
The intent reads less like cruelty than panic: a father trying to reassert control over a story that has slipped out of his hands. The line stages a transaction - love and labor in, heterosexuality out - revealing how easily care becomes a ledger. Even "straight" is tellingly blunt, not "happy" or "safe" or "authentic". The priority isn't the child's interior life but the parent's social comfort: the fear of whispers, of being judged, of having your family deviate from the script you thought you wrote.
Coming from a rock star, the irony is rich. Stewart's persona was built on rebellion, loosened rules, and swaggering refusal to be boxed in. Yet here he sounds like the very establishment that once clutched pearls at rock music. That tension is the cultural moment in miniature: celebrities who sold freedom confronting the limits of their own imagination when freedom shows up at the dinner table.
Quote Details
| Topic | Son |
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