In Honor of Marriage Equality....

Since the CA Supreme Court is listening to arguments on the validation of Prop 8 today, I wrote this little piece up using some of what I had written before but then adding some to it and posted it to my facebook where all my Christian fundamentalist uncles could read it.

Homosexuality: A Mother’s Perspective
Written by Becky

At times in our lives we have defining moments that change us. As a parent of a gay child, this was definitely one of those moments. Before we were labeled “diverse”, we were pretty much the average American family. We were middle class. We raised our children with family values that any parent would be proud of. We took them to church. We spent time with them at their schools. We were the envy of a lot of our family and friends because none of our children had ever been in any kind of serious trouble a day in their lives. Our kids were straight A students, worked since they were in their early teens earning money to pay for their first cars and part of their clothes. They were responsible and hard working. All of them graduated in the Top 10% of their classes with honors. What more could we ask for?

Looking back, I guess I knew my son was a little different than most of the other boys. I had helped to raise a lot of them in my job as a child care provider. He was never rambunctious in the way a lot of them were. I remember an aunt buying him a toy Jeep at 5 years old and thinking he would never play with that. He was creative and intelligent and would rather be doing some kind of art project or baking cookies with his great-grandmother who adored him.

He never had an interest in girls. My husband thought maybe he was a late bloomer, like himself, but we were soon to learn otherwise. My son had always had trouble with transitions to new things so I wasn’t all that concerned when the anxiety showed its ugly face when he was transitioning from high school to college. It was never this bad though. He was vomiting and crying before he would leave to go in the morning. I was at a total loss as his mother not knowing how to help him feel better. It was at that time that I suggested counseling. It didn’t seem to be helping at all. The only thing we learned from it is that he didn’t really want to be a doctor like he had been planning all his life. He was worried about telling us that. Doug and I assured him he could be anything he wanted to be in his life. We would support him in any career path that he chose for himself.

On Martin Luther King Day, when my son was 19, he came out to me, his dad, and his sisters in e-mails. It was very short and to the point simply saying that he was still the same person and he would answer any questions we had. I couldn’t sleep that night due to nerves about a class I was teaching that evening. I got up checked my e-mail and that’s when I found it. I went in, woke his father, and said “Adam is gay.” His response was “Oh, he is not. Go back to sleep!” One of my daughters was not surprised by this revelation at all, the other more so. When we got up the next morning, my husband and I went in Adam’s room. I gave him a hug and told him I would always love him and it was okay. Adam’s father was worried that it was something he had done or not done as a parent. I did express my upset that he would never get married or have children. He told me he wanted to adopt and that maybe someday the laws would change and he would be able to marry too.

We eventually sought out another counselor which did help Adam tremendously. It was like a load was lifted from his shoulders after he came out. It had been eating away at him for so long.

In the following days I did a lot of educating myself about homosexuality. I had always believed that gay people were born that way from the times that I had read about it or listened to people talk about it on talk shows. Even though our church was adamantly opposed to it and taught about the “sins” of homosexuality, I didn’t believe that. Why would God make somebody gay and then send them to hell for it? That is not a loving God. I still believed this to be true.

I bought some books and started reading. I did a lot of reading and Doug did too. We had no problem loving and accepting Adam for who he is, but how would our families take the news? Well some took it very well and were supportive and some were not. Some remained neutral (at least to our face) and one person even called me up wanting me to attend a Christian “gay reparative therapy” conference.

Well in my reading, I learned that all major medical, pediatric, psychiatric, and psychological organizations oppose this kind of therapy yet these organizations are still going around preying on distraught parents who want to change their children because they are afraid for their salvation or afterlife if they accept their sexual orientation. What they do is make the parents feel miserable and guilty wondering what they did wrong in raising their children and make the homosexual feel distraught, anxious, depressed and sometimes suicidal. They have little or no potential for changing. In fact, several leaders of these organizations have come forward saying they do not work. Some have even been photographed frequenting gay bars. I believe those that say they do work are simply oppressing their homosexuality and eventually the walls are going to come crashing down.

I was angry and hurt to receive that phone call. I was even asked “Don’t you believe God loves homosexuals?” What? Well of course I do! God made my son gay and God would want him to live his authentic life in a committed relationship with somebody he loves. Pretending to be somebody you are not is deceitful and has the potential to ruin many lives. I was happy my son was brave enough to share with us who he was!

So this week I made a commitment to tell at least three people my story. Why? There are still a lot of people in this world who don’t think that gay people deserve the same rights as everybody else. They are not “special rights”. They are human rights.

To be fired from a job because a person is gay is deplorable. Gays and lesbians are not allowed to serve openly in the military. So when they are furthest from home, they are not allowed to talk about or share openly about the people back home that they love and care about for fear of being discharged. Horrible crimes against gays and lesbians happen every day because of the homophobia that still permeates our world.

Homophobia is being taught from the pulpits of our churches. There are many things written in the Bible that are not followed today even from the most fundamental believers in the Bible yet they still choose to ignore what science has learned about homosexuality and preach about this. Imagine a 13 year old gay kid sitting in church listening to this and think about what he must feel. It is hard enough to accept a sexuality that is different that most people but to sit in church and to be told you are going to hell for being who you are can break you from the core. I am a moderator on a forum with over 4000 gay and lesbian teenagers and I have seen their pain. Most of them turn completely away from God eventually because it’s too painful to sit in their churches anymore and here this stuff. If this what Christians really want?

Today, the California Supreme Court will hear arguments again on the validity of Proposition 8 which banned same-sex marriage after over 18,000 couples got married. If you think that gays and lesbians cannot love with the intensity that any of us love our spouses, then spend some time with them. It is excruciatingly painful to have their relationships invalidated again and again.

So you might ask “why is marriage important”? Marriage offers 1,138 Federal benefits and responsibilities, not including hundreds more offered by every state. We have domestic partnerships in Oregon but if a same-sex couple crosses the border into Idaho and has a car wreck, one partner could be denied hospital visitation rights because our laws don’t cross borders. If these two people have children together, even though our laws in Oregon recognize both partners as parents and will protect them, if they move to Idaho and the non-biological parent suddenly dies the other partner will almost certainly have to go to court to fight for the right to raise the children they have already been raising since birth. Separate is not equal. Even in Oregon, domestic partners have to take additional legal steps to protect their families costing thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Marriage really is a civil right. People can choose right now if they want a religious ceremony or a civil ceremony or both. The same would happen for same-sex couples. No church would be forced to grant same-sex marriages who were opposed to them and I don’t know any gay couple who would want to be married in those kinds of churches anyway. Fortunately, there are many churches moving toward acceptance of gays and lesbians. I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting such a church yesterday.

I truly believe this will be an issue we will tell our grandchildren and great-grandchildren about and they will wonder what all the fuss was about. The same thing happened when interracial marriage was being fought for. The world did not come to an end. People are people and everybody deserves to be treated equally under the law. My gay son deserves the same rights as his two straight sisters.

For the facts on marriage equality, please visit:

http://www.marriageequality.org/index.php?page=why-marriage

 

I sent it far and wide and all responses have been positive except from my fundamentalist preacher cousin. He and I had quite a lengthy discussion this morning or should I say he felt the need to "save my soul" because he was sure both me and my son were destined for hell. I just responded the best I could and let it bounce off.

 

I sent this out to my PFLAG e-mail list. One of the moms posted it to CafeMom. Currently it is the number 2 post of the day! There was only a couple Bible thumpers respond negatively. It has over 40 positive responses from other mothers. Cool huh?

 

Thanks Tom and everybody else!