This past Monday was errands day.
My children and I had a list of things to do around town. Mondays are usually busy around the ranch, but I try to let the kids choose one thing they want to do each week. They work hard around here. They help move animals, pull weeds, stock shelves in the farm store, bus tables in the restaurant, wash dishes, and do countless other jobs that come with building a family business. If they want a little fun at the end of the day, I try to make it happen.
This week, they chose the arcade at the movie theater and ice cream afterward.
Their favorite ice cream shop is also probably my favorite. They use local ingredients, organic milk, and seasonal flavors. In a world increasingly disconnected from where food comes from, it feels refreshingly grounded.
After the arcade, we walked over for ice cream. My children barely noticed the decorations. One daughter pointed out some rainbow shirts and wondered if they were new. Then she returned to the far more important business of choosing a flavor.
Standing behind us in line was a father with a young daughter.
“Dad, what does that flag mean?”
He started answering.
Then came the follow-up.
“What about that one? Why is it different?”
I could hear the hesitation in his voice. He was trying to explain a complicated subject to a young child while standing in a crowded ice cream shop with half the line listening.
As I listened, I found myself wondering why this conversation was happening in an ice cream shop at all.
For many Christians, questions of sexuality are not merely political issues. They are moral and theological ones. Others see the issue differently. Regardless of where someone lands, I am increasingly convinced that parents should be the primary people introducing these conversations to their children, not corporations, marketers, or ice cream shops.
I have written before that childhood deserves protection. There will be plenty of time for discussions about sex, relationships, identity, and all the complicated questions of adulthood. Childhood is brief. Once innocence is gone, it does not return.
My question is not whether businesses have the right to express their values. In a free market, they do. This very ice cream shop has values. They support local agriculture, source organic ingredients, and tell the story of where their food comes from. Those values are part of the reason I choose to spend my money there.
But there is a difference between communicating what you believe about food and farming and introducing conversations about sexuality to young children standing in line for ice cream. I would find it equally strange if an ice cream shop decorated itself around heterosexual relationships. I would find it strange if every scoop came with messaging about dating, sex, or adult identity politics.
Sometimes families simply want to buy ice cream.
Years ago, when I owned several restaurants in Los Angeles, these conversations happened inside our company, too. Every year, someone would ask what we were doing for Pride Month. Should we make a rainbow cake? Special decorations? A themed promotion?
One year, the conversation came up in a leadership meeting. Before I could even formulate an answer, my COO looked across the table and said, “Nothing. We are not participating in that.”
The conversation ended almost immediately. The reason his response surprised me was that he was openly gay. Looking back, I think he understood something many businesses have forgotten. Not every business needs to become a platform for every social cause. Sometimes a restaurant’s job is to serve food, an ice cream shop’s job is to serve ice cream, and people from very different backgrounds can gather around the same table without every purchase becoming a statement about who they are.
Of course, consumers have choices, too.
A few years ago, I stopped shopping at a large retailer after it began selling children’s products that crossed a line for me. Among them was a swimsuit designed for young children that included features intended to accommodate anatomy that did not match the sex of the child wearing it.
As a mother, that felt like a step too far.
My children did not know all the details, but they knew we no longer shopped there. If someone suggested a trip to that store, they would simply say, “We’re done with that store.”
I was hardly alone. Many parents made similar decisions, and over time, the company dramatically changed course. What I do know is that consumers have a voice. Businesses make choices. Customers make choices. That is how the free market works.
Which is why I found myself standing in that ice cream line wrestling with what to do. I genuinely like this business. I admire their commitment to local agriculture. I appreciate the quality of their ingredients. My children love their ice cream.
I am not planning a boycott.
But I may send a letter and ask a simple question: Why are we mixing conversations about sexuality with a place designed for families and children?
My mother was in a same-sex relationship for several years. The woman she was with remains close to me today. She reads nearly everything I write. She defends me online when people get angry. She jokes that her two greatest joys are watching old Lassie reruns and keeping up with whatever my brother and I are doing.
She is hardly the only person I care about who sees these issues differently than I do. That is one reason I find these conversations more complicated than the culture warriors on either side often make them out to be.
As I stood in line that day, I found myself thinking about another lesson I learned years ago.
In 2018, after moving to my farm in California, I hired a woman who cleaned houses on weekends and picked citrus during the week. She was one of the toughest people I had ever met. She worked jobs many men would avoid. She was broad-shouldered, weathered by the sun, physically strong, and deeply devoted to her faith.
Back then, I looked at her and made an assumption. Because she did not fit my stereotype of femininity, I assumed she must secretly want a different life.
Looking back, I am embarrassed by how certain I was.
She had a husband everyone adored. Even her own sister constantly talked about what a kind and loving man he was. Together, they had six children.
Several years later, I attended one of their daughters’ quinceañeras. I watched those children dance for their family. I watched a father dance with his daughter. I watched their mother beam as she looked around the room.
And I realized something.
I had looked at another person and assumed I knew what fulfillment should look like for her.
I was wrong.
The problem was never that she was missing something. The problem was that I lacked the humility to see that fulfillment sometimes looks different than what our culture tells us it should.
That lesson has stayed with me. Maybe we would all benefit from a little more humility. Parents should be allowed to parent, businesses should be allowed to sell the products they choose, and customers should be allowed to spend their money where they choose. Children should be allowed to be children.
And sometimes ice cream can just be ice cream.
