Gay Role Models

I met some of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence tonight.  First off... a word about how amazing these people are. They are drag nuns who do community service. I can't even believe that this is a thing.  But I love love love it.

I asked one of the sisters, "What do you wish someone told you when you were a young gay kid?" 

The answer was interesting. I had hoped for some sage words of wisdom and encouragement I could pass on to my kid, but instead I got a bittersweet piece of retrospective.

He (she? I am unclear on how to use pronouns for male cisgender drag people) said that he just wished he had role models. Adults who were where they are and know what they are going through and can give an image of hope for a positive life and future.

Why is this bittersweet?  Okay, well, it didn't answer my question. But I love that my son does have gay role models in his life. Several of them, but most specifically a guy at church who volunteers teaching Sunday school and children's ministry. Rhett is a great guy who is young and fun and openly gay.  Being gay is just a small percentage of who Rhett is in my son's eyes. In my son's eyes, Rhett tells better jokes than anyone he knows.  Rhett throws himself completely into every game they play, even if it means eating 17 jalapenos, which somehow equals "hero" in the eyes of a little boy who cringes when pasta sauce is too spicy. Rhett sings well. Rhett is a good actor in the skits that they sometimes do in church.   But my son also knows that this great Christian adult happens to be gay. He has met Rhett's boyfriend. And my son sees that his straight daddy is also best friends with Rhett, and that gives my son a lot of hope too.  That he won't lose all his straight friends when he comes out to them. And that he will not have to choose between love and church. Because the two should never be mutually exclusive.

My son also does theatre. I hate to promote stereotypes, but some are true, and the gay male theatre stereotype is true. We have met many straight males. But it seems like over half of the men running theatre programs in our area are gay. And that's fantastic.  My son sees gay couples at cast parties. And he sees Human Rights Campaign Equality stickers on practically every car in the parking lot. He knows his directors and choreographers and producers are gay. But mostly he just loves them because they are great artists. And my son wants to be an artist when he grows up. Not just a gay man. 

But I know that we are so, so lucky. In a fairly large suburb (over 100,000 people) with something like 30 churches, we are one of only two churches I know of in town that truly welcomes full participation of gay members. That means that all the other little kids growing up in the other churches in my city do not have these role models. And I am certain that some of those kids are gay.

And the school district where we live is really conservative too. When you search for "gay straight alliance" on the schools websites, it seems like none of them have them. I have never seen a local GSA represented at any local PRIDE thing or gay community events, so I am pretty sure they don't exist.  If there are gay teachers in the schools, no one knows about it. Heck, there are rarely male teachers in the schools. They are all older white females.
 
Little kids need gay role models.  I hope that young gay men understand the importance of being involved in the community, and I hope that community organizations, YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs and churches and schools, understand the importance of supporting openly gay individuals. Because little kids NEED role models that remind them of themselves. They need people to show them that, even if they don't have classic cisgender heterosexual visions of a happy future, that it's okay. That happy and gay can be synonyms. They certainly aren't antonyms.

Pulse

When I heard about what happened in Orlando last night, I almost couldn't think about it.  I had to sort of look at it and then look away and not think about it.

When he was eight years old, already identifying as a part of the LGBTQ community, my son could not understand why it upset his grandfather to hear him identify as gay.  I explained that his grandfather was just scared for him.  This of course necessitated an explanation.

"Why would he be scared for me?"

"Because people sometimes really hate gay people. Like the way they used to hate Black people."

"Like Martin Luther King Jr.?"

"Yup."

"They killed him.  Do people want to kill gay people?"

            How does a mother answer that question?   
        In my opinion, one must tell the truth.

"Yes, some people do. There was a gay politician named Harvey Milk who fought for gay rights, and someone murdered him, just like Martin Luther King."

"Do people still want to kill gay people?"

"Um... yeah, some, but mostly it's getting a lot better. It's getting so much better."

Castro memorial - June 12

So how do I explain this???

I believed it when I said it.  That it was getting better. I am an optimistic person. There is no way, two years ago, that I could have possibly known that the worst LGBTQ violence in our history was yet to come. And a man was arrested in Santa Monica on his way to LA Pride. And there is no evidence that the two were tied together in anyway. It's not one isolated incident of awfulness. It is evidence of a resurgence of hate.

Hate that could cost my son his life. It hurts. So. Bad. 

We are pulse. As a mother, I know the fear. I know that all those victims have moms who have cried tears of fear that someday someone's illogical hate for their child, based on just who they love, would result in pain . And they probably have relaxed over the years and started to think, "It's okay. It's getting better. But here it is. 

I love my son as who he is, and his trailblazing childhood confidence as an out gay kid has made me a better person. If I could pray a prayer and make him straight again, I would not ever do it. 

I want so badly to just be 100% okay with my son being gay.

But I am never going to be okay with knowing that people want to kill my son just for who he is.

 I don't know if that will ever stop hurting. 

Beautiful Thing

My husband and I watched this movie tonight, Beautiful Thing, and while it was a good movie, it really made me think about something else that really is a beautiful thing in my life.

In the movie, the young man, Jamie, goes to a gay bar. His mom finds out. She confronts him about it, and he tries to lie. And it makes her so sad. Like it would any mom. 

"Why do you just talk to me, Jamie?"

"I'm knackered." 

"Jamie. Please. Just talk to me."

 "What about?"

"I'm your mother."

"Some things are just hard to say."

"I know. I know that."

 "You think I'm too young. You think it's just a phase. You think I'm gonna catch AIDS and... and everything." 

"Don't cry. It's alright. I'm not gonna put you out in the morning like an empty bottle." 

Jamie is wrong about his mom. She doesn't think it's a phase. She loves him for who he is. She's crying and upset because she found out that he's been bullied about it for a long time.

And I'm sure she's crying because she feels that there's grown a distance that she never intended there to be between her and her beautiful baby boy.  It's like, after you give birth to a baby and they put that baby in your arms and you spend your first few days just holding that child to your chest, and you think feel in your soul that you are one. That although this tiny little person is now outside your body, you will always feel as absolutely close as you do at that moment. 

No mom wants to imagine her son hiding out in a closet. 

When I go to PFLAG meetings, sometimes the topic comes up of the moment we found out. I try not to use the phrase "coming out" when I describe my son's story, because that seems to suggest that there was a closet that he was in, but in my son's case, well, he never felt the need to shut the door. 

And that is a beautiful thing. 

The door has always been open. Because there are gay people in our lives. Because I talk about issues facing LGBT people. Because I explained what the news and the supreme court victories meant. Because I listened when he was four-years-old and said his male camp counselor was cute. And so his daddy and I chose our pronouns carefully after that and checked our assumptions. We couldn't assume he'd marry a woman, because he might not. So we talked about families, not "bride and groom" or "husband and wife."  When we talked about his future, we used words like "someone you love," and we started paying attention to the homophobic language around us to try to shield him from it. Because you just never know.

And when he was old enough to feel something that he realized was different,  he had words to talk about it, and when he had something to say, well, he said it. 

There are no proverbial closets in our home. And that is a beautiful thing. My son is open with me. As open as any boy will be with his mom, I suppose. He probably won't tell me about his first kiss, but I didn't tell my mom about my first kiss either. 

My son is in the early stages of puberty. It's late childhood, It's that age, and he is aware of all the sexual references in society and pop culture. But  when he wants information about sex, he doesn't Google it. He asks me. Because he knows he'll get an honest answer. He'll get a kind, non-binary, love-centered, truthful answer. He knows that when I don't know something, I'll find the answer. 

And so my son and I talk about things. I know he has a crush on Karan Brar. And that he doesn't like when Karan Brar takes roles where he does a fake accent. 

Although sometimes I feel really sad for my son that he doesn't know anyone else his age who thinks like he does, I know it is just because too many parents build accidental closets. They build them when they speak in binary terms like "man and wife." They build them when they silently let crazy Uncle Henry rant about "dykes."  If you fear that someday your child might come out to you, just don't create a home with closets. Don't let binary-biased language go un-checked in your home. Build a home without closets and there won't be one for your child to come out of. 

Pride

What a roller coaster this past week has been!  Wednesday was a holiday, Veteran's Day, so the kids were home with me instead of at school. We spent most of the cold fall day inside, and my two kiddos really enjoyed each other's company and enjoyed the time, space, and freedom to be themselves.
For my son, being himself sometimes means dressing up like Glinda and singing Wicked songs on his karaoke machine.  Which he did. While I painted his little sister's nails.

While my daughter's nails dried, he sat down next to me. "Mom, paint my nails too."
We have been down this road before, when Jude on The Fosters painted his nails, which of course lead to my son wanting to paint his nails.
"Are you sure," I asked.
"What if the kids at school make fun of me?" he considered.
"Well, that could happen. You could just tell them that they are your nails, and you like them this way. If they don't like them, then they should just be glad they aren't their nails."
"Yeah!  That's what I will do. I really want blue nails!"

So I painted his nails. And I genuinely didn't think that much about it after wards. I naively believed that the kids at school wouldn't notice or just wouldn't care. When he was crying when I got home, I couldn't even figure out what it was about.

My son didn't stand up to them like he'd imagined he would. He crumpled into a pile of sadness. Worse, he actually lied and told all the kids in his class and his teacher that his mother made him do it. Sigh. His teacher must think I am a sick woman.

That night I asked him if he wanted me to take the nail polish off.  Oddly, he didn't. He apologized over and over again, although I said he didn't have to say he was sorry or anything, that I understood why he lied, although I did wish he'd handled it differently. He insisted that the next day, if anyone said anything, he'd stand up to them and tell them he likes it.

Of course I spent the next day worrying about his nails, even though I hadn't worried at all the day before.  And of course it was old news, and no one said anything.

I wish all gay kids could know that about... well... almost everything that makes them different. Yeah, there are going to be kids who discover your differences and laugh. And run around telling everybody. And sadly, they're probably going to laugh too. Because different things make us uncomfortable, and for some odd reason, discomfort makes us laugh.  But then, as quickly as it happened, it's over. People don't laugh forever. The newest thing to laugh about becomes old news overnight. Annie was right; the sun will come up tomorrow.

But on Thursday, to make my son feel better, I'd asked him if he wanted to go to a local gay pride march I happened to know was happening on Saturday.  I'd been debating on it, since we are crazy busy lately and a little under the weather, but I decided that if he wanted to go, we would go. Of course he wanted to go.  "Mommy. Do you think those proud adults [he takes gay "pride" quite literally] ever went through stuff like this when they were little?"
"Like what? Getting made fun of?"
"Yeah. I am almost certain that they did."

Even within the gay community, I've seen some odd reactions to my tiny little gay kid. He looks younger than his age, so that doesn't help.  Since some of them spent years confused by social messages before figuring out that they truly were gay or bisexual or whatnot, some LGBT adults are not so understanding of my little gay son. I think some people even think I am trying to push this on him.

Why.... the... hell.... would I push this on him?  What mother wants to walk this journey? This journey that leaves me feeling alone, frustrated, confused, and scared so incredibly often?

Anyhow... for that reason, I am not a big fan of gay pride events. I feel like people are going to take one look at our very stereotypical hetero family and be like, "What are you doing here?"  But you know... things are changing, because that's really not how it is.

I registered us for the event, and I told the organizers my son's story. I told them we were going because he obviously needs proud adult gay role models.

So, we went. All of us.  Mom, Dad, and Two Beautiful Kids. And my two beautiful kids picked a sign that says "Gay is beautiful" to carry.  One guy who looked at us (probably assuming that we were just really awesome activist ally parents) said, "See, if more parents were like this, then we wouldn't need events like this." I assume he meant that if all straight parents raised their kids to truly believe that all forms of love are beautiful, then there wouldn't be a need to stand up and proudly declare sexual differences. That's true too. But we were there to support our son. Who needs pride.

At the event, one of the organizers remembered me and picked my son out from the crowd. He brought him up on stage and told his fingernail story and asked for anyone who has "got his back" to raise their hands.  As the crowd raised their hands and cheered, I realized my kiddo was a little bit of a hero that day.  It made his day. And mine too. What a journey.

 Most of these adults came into their own as teenagers or young adults, even though many of them say they knew as children, but the average coming out age in American is getting younger all the time.  It is currently 12 years old.  If that's the average, then someone has done their research, and someone has to have stated a younger age, or else it wouldn't be "12" if you average in the kids who still come out in their teens.

Which means my son is not alone. There are other gay kids out there. And their moms and dads are going through this too.  Yet I bet we all feel so alone.  If you are out there, please email me. We don't have to be alone. We can have each other's backs too.
lovingmygaykid@gmail.com

He said that F word in church...

We checked out a new church today, one known for valuing inclusion.  The church we currently attend is gay affirming, but there are only a few gay people at our church, and we talk very little about issues pertaining to the LGBT community, so we went to this other one, just to see what it would be like.

I should preface this with some truth that probably will not surprise you. I've been a Christian since I was a teenager, and I've spent most of those years watching the church judge and hurt every gay person unfortunate enough to attempt to believe claims that "all" are welcome. Although I have seen much progress in the church, the church as a whole has a long way to go. Even affirming churches are full of open and welcoming people who just don't understand straight privilege. It's progress, but we've a long way to go.

This church we attended was out of this world. Like seriously... this is what heaven will look like.

 If you had told me ten years ago that in 2015, I'd be sitting in a church with beautiful stained glass windows and a traditional pipe organ, listening to a gay pastor preach a message on inclusion, taking communion from a transwoman, feeling empathy for the lesbian moms trying to keep their daughter quiet, admiring the artistic Dia de los Muertos altars, and praying up front with a beautiful black woman, well, I'd just never believe you. But I swear, this is the truth. It happened. A gender-creative individual dressed like Elton John sang in the chorus. My kids didn't notice that the greeter, Alison, had a 5:00 shadow. They only noticed her awesome high fives.  And that the service was long. My daughter definitely noticed that. She was ready to go about halfway through, but she hung tight and played with the beautiful sunflowers they gave us as a new visitor gift.

The preacher was an amazingly charismatic Mexican man who talked about how difficult it is to forgive and come back to the church. In the middle of his message, he talked about coming out to his mom. My son perked up a bit then. When the preacher said, "I went to my mom crying and said, 'Mommy, help! I'm a fag! I'm a fag! I don't know what to do."

My son's eyes bulged out of his head and his jaw dropped. He looked at me with that a face that said, "Did he seriously just say the 'F' word? What the heck? Is he gay or what? Why would a gay man use that word?"  My son doesn't know much about gay history or culture yet, but he knows that word is not cool.

As if reading my son's mind, the pastor went on, "Yup, that's right I said it. Reclaim it folks. If we aren't afraid to say it, we take away it's power to hurt us." And then he went on the explain how his mother trusted their religious family members who eventually turned him off to church and left him on a hiatus for over a decade. He has obviously since forgiven the church, since he decided to serve in the church. As have all of the beautiful brothers and sisters who worship here. Reconciliation is hard. I can't even imagine how hard it is. I tip my hat to their courage.

But I sure am glad that they have forgiven the church, because the church needs their gifts. I feel like I got a glimpse of heaven today.

By high school, I figured out...

... that I did not get along very well with most females.

The first time that I saw that poster, my eyes filled with tears, and I just thought, "Yes, yes, yes!" My entire childhood, I loved shoving my hair up in baseball caps. I envied the fact that boys got away with boxer shorts as an excuse for "underwear" (let's be real, they add a layer, but other than that, seriously... what is the point?) while I had to wear tight, uncomfortable "panties." Even the word "panties" still makes me cringe. What a terrible word. I never use that word. The generic underwear is enough for me. But I digress.

As a kid, I was gifted so many Barbie dolls that I didn't want. I never really did manage to playing nice for play dates with the girls in my class, with whom I was supposed to be building friendships to last a life time. Occasionally, I'd find another tomboy who'd want to climb trees with me instead of playing "makeover party," but those friendships were few and far between, and for some reason, they just always got cutoff by moving to a different school and growing apart.


  But by high school, I was really just over the notion that, because I was a girl, my close friend group was supposed to be girls. The skater guys were fun. They listened to the music I liked. Instead of catty gossip, the conversations around the lunch table were about random fodder like who ever came up with the leap year concept (I am glad to have existed pre-Google, where we mused about this stuff instead of just Googling it). I pretty quickly got accepted as "one of the guys" and got invited to punk rock concerts and midnight meteor shower parties. These were some of the happiest memories I had in high school. And then there was this one guy who loved fishing and cooking, neither of which he was initially very good at. He also loved talking philosophy for hours, and didn't care if I showed up in my pajamas. And although I was straight as straight could be, these were pure friendships. I'd listen to them pine over girls who were way out of their league. And they'd listen to me cry about how whiny and emotional my boyfriend of the moment was being lately. (Why do I pick these kinds of guys? I don't know).

 I'd spent most of my childhood thinking I was just she who "doesn't play well with others," but eventually, by high school, I realized that I just didn't play well with other girls. But society pushes kids so forcibly into these gender segregated groups on the playground, it is no wonder that it took me 9 years of public school to figure it out. In neighborhoods all over America there are neighbor kids of opposite genders who rush off to play with each other every afternoon, but then ignore each other on the playground at school the next morning.

 My son is falling into the same trap. He misses the female friend who lived on our block but moved away a few months ago. At school, he plays with a group of boys who are younger than him, and I sense he is unhappy with it, as he says, "Well, I mostly played with no one," a lot. Yesterday, we went to watch football with some friends of ours, and they have two little girls. My son and daughter are almost the same age as their girls, and all four of them had a blast playing together. When it was time to leave, we could barely tear them apart. They'd rode bikes, they made up creatives games, they joined each other's Minecraft worlds and.... well... to be honest, I don't really know what goes on in Minecraft world, but they Minecrafted, I guess.

 On the way home, my son mentioned that the girl his age reminded him of his cousin (who is his best friend). "Well, kiddo," I ventured, "You know what they have in common? They are girls. Maybe you should try to find some girls at school to be friends with."
 "No."
 "Why not?"
 "Because... the girls play with each other."
 "So why can't you ask to play with them."

 Silence.

 "Well... what do they usually play?"

 "Sometimes they sit in a line in the field and do each other's hair."
 "That puts you in a great position. You could just be the back of the line. You like doing hair."
 "Well, lately they've been doing other stuff anyway."
 "So, just go ask."

      After much convincing, my son realized that I am right (of course) and vowed that he would bravely attempt to play with the girls at school the next day. It's a very small school, so there aren't many options. I hoped the handful of girls his age would accept him. I even prayed about it.

 He even admitted that he'd like a change. Right now, he plays with a group of kids a grade or two younger than him. Apparently there is a boy a couple of years younger than my son who seems to kind of have a crush on my son. He follows him around and says, "You're handsome!" all the time. I laughed when he told me that, but my son did not think it was very funny. "It's kind of cute, kiddo."

 "Mom, no. I don't want anyone at school to know I'm gay."

 "Okay, I get that, but it is just a compliment; this kid doesn't know you are gay."

 "Yes, he does. I didn't tell him. No one told him. But somehow he just knows."

 It's funny that this happens. It happens in teenagers and reluctant young adults (and apparently my son's tiny elementary school too). I know that many experts deny that "gaydar" is real, but it never seems to fail that the more "out there" kid will find the one who doesn't want anyone to know yet. It is the plot of far too many gay ya lit books, and as of now... my son's elementary school playground drama.

 These are not the mommy troubles I'd imagined having with a nine-year-old boy.

 I asked him today if he played with the girls. He didn't. He chickened out. One of them said something bossy to him before science class and he got irritated and lost his nerve.

 See - every man in my life is sensitive and moody. Even my own son.

Explaining the "F" word

"Mommy, what's a faggot?" he asked as he walked alongside me, wearing his backpack, holding my hand, crossing the street towards home. My heart sunk as I asked a question I feared I already knew the answer to, "Why?" "Because someone called me one." I am finding that the biggest struggle of being a mom to gay kid is the reality that I so frequently am faced with questions that I don't know how to answer. Questions that I haven't anticipated, sometimes, or more often questions that I wasn't entirely ready for at that moment. And so often it feels like I am put between a rock and a hard place in being true to my parenting style of honesty and openness, of not hiding my kids from the real world, while still protecting this little child who I know faces an uphill battle, and may not be developmentally ready to process truths that I cannot fully comprehend myself. Statistically, I know gay kids are at greater risk for depression and suicide. Mental illness runs in my family. My son already struggles with legit obsessive compulsive disorder (and no, I don't mean he is tidy, I mean OCD, for real, like occasionally requiring a therapist to navigate the anxiety associated with it). I worry about his mental state. I watch him change his behaviors, his friendships, his clothing choices, etc., all the time to try to attract less attention from his male peers. I just want my kid to grow up to be himself. Is that so much to ask? "It's a cruel, derogatory term used for gay people," I responded honestly. "Oh. Yeah, I thought so," he said. "It is never, ever okay for someone to call you that," I continued, "What did you do? Did you tell someone? Where did this happen?" "On the playground during PE, and yes, I told the teacher." "What did she do?" "She talked to him about it. He said sorry." "What did she say?" "I don't know, I couldn't hear her. But I think she just told him he couldn't say that and that he had to say sorry." I really didn't know what to do with this in my head. In all truth, I don't remember entirely what I said to my son in the moment, other than that it was absolutely not okay, and that it was a serious word that deserved serious discipline, and that I wouldn't stand for anyone calling him that and getting away with a "go say sorry." My forgiving and accepting little man told me that he thought the kid really meant it when he said he was sorry, and that he didn't think the kid even knew what it meant. I half agree. I am a highly educated person, and I know enough about child development and youth culture to know that for some reason, friendly male athleticism, particularly in youth, involves an element of "psyching out" one's opponents, and that it has become popular among teenagers to do so with trash talk and name calling. I sort of understand the trash talk, but I don't understand the trend of name calling, especially using terms that can relate deeply and negatively to a person's identity. I also know that the term "faggot", among young men anyhow, has little to do with same sex relationships and more to do with belittling a boy's masculinity. But really, that isn't okay either. My son does not have gender dysmorphia. He feels comfortable in the boy skin he is in, but he doesn't define "male" in the way our society has come to socially define men. I need that to be okay for him. I need him to know that he doesn't have to live someone else's view of life. I need him to be okay with living his own. Of course, when I told friends, there was an outpouring of support, even from unlikely sources. No one, not even the Christian conservatives, like to hear about little kids using hate speech to make other little kids feel bad. And you have to wonder where the kid who spoke it heard it. My children, especially my daughter, have unfortunately picked up a handful of curse words, and I know exactly where they got them from: Me. Because I curse when I am angry. But not words like that. Not words meant to belittle a person based on any portion of their identity. No, not those. I thought, I hoped, that we had moved past that as a society. But apparently we have not. Because I'm guessing that seven-year-old kids don't pick up words like "fag" from television. In the end, I think what matters most is that the adults in the scene do everything they can to be allies. And my son's teacher forced a private apology. But what about the other 30 kids who just heard the word used on the playground? How will they learn that this is not okay? Ultimately, I made the ironic decision to pull my son out of this public school to put him where we felt he'd be safe, which was ironically, in a Christian school. The local Lutheran school proved to be a strong safe place for my son. A few months later, during a class activity, a kid pointed out to my son that he was drawing his self-portrait too "girly" for a boy, and my son took issue with this. After we discussed the issue with the teacher, she took the issue on and spoke to all of the kids about being accepting of everyone's choices in their art work and how they see themselves. She handled it with the dignity, grace, and attention that it desrved. It didn't become a huge issue, but it set the tone, and that is too be appreciated.