Hi John. I was raised going to a Baptist church, and consider myself very spiritual and close to God. My parents had my brothers and I in the church any time its doors were open. I loved growing up in the church.
I always knew I was “different,” but didn’t fully understand that difference until I got older. I am now 26 and came out to my mother about 10 days ago.
When I first told her, she cried, but her overall reaction was picture perfect. She said things like “you and the person you love will never be excluded from our family,” “the road that chose you,” “your father and I love you no matter what,” etc. I felt good about things—until I met with her a week later, and she told me she has been praying about my life style all week and “can’t come to terms with it.” She said that she could not go against her convictions.
She said that I would be welcome to family events, but that my girlfriend (soon to be wife) will not be invited. She said if she allows us to come to family affairs together, then it shows that she is okay with our homosexual relationship. (She’s also very concerned what my grandparents and “others” will think.) I was in shock. I responded by saying “You are also convicted about premarital sex, yet both of my brothers get to bring their significant others to family events.” I told her I could tolerate this for a little bit but that I wouldn’t do it forever.
I don’t understand how God is “convicting” her so strongly to the point where she doesn’t want to be a part of my life with my partner. Can you help me to grasp what has happened? How did she go so quickly from one extreme to the other in one week? Thanks in advance for your opinion! (P.S. She told my dad the same day I told her, and since then he hasn’t spoken to me at all. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl and never gone this long without talking to him… Help please!!)
So this happens. It’s awful, but it happens. I’m so sorry it’s happened to you.
The first thing is, your mom and dad might very well come around, and sooner than you might now expect. That’s just … part of the process. It’s so common: people come out; their parents freak; some time goes by; the parents settle down; the parents accept their new understanding of who their kids are, and go back to loving them the same as they ever did.
I’m betting that’s how this will go for you and your parents. Your mom’s initial response was her true response; that was the response of her heart. Now she has to go through the process of realizing that she has a very real choice to make between her dogma and her daughter. By saying what she did at her second meeting with you, she was—however purely instinctively—hoping that you would change: that the power of her conviction would change you back into the person that it best works for her if you are.
That effort of hers will fail, of course. And sooner or later she’ll know that it’s failed, that it can’t not fail. And then she’ll be forced to realize that she is going to have to change if she wants to keep you in your life, that literally the only way she can keep from ripping you out of her life is to adjust her theology.
And before long that won’t look to her like anything near the dramatic change it does to her just now.
She’ll see and/or learn how many other people have made that change, to no detriment at all to their faith or religious experience.
And then hopefully (if he hasn’t yet come around) she’ll talk to your petulant, childish father. (Sorry: but it drives me nuts when parents act like children toward their children.)
So hang in there. Let your parents trip. Don’t of course allow them to treat you shabbily or with any disrespect, and do refuse to attend any family event at which your partner isn’t lovingly welcomed. And always let your parents know that you’re more than willing to sit down with them and talk about all of this. This is your life; they’re your parents. They should very much want to at least talk to you about this new development in your relationship with them.
So let them know you’re there, you love them, you’re not tripping, everything’s cool, and then . . . see what happens.
And please let me know what does happen. If, say, three months go by, and they’re still freezing you out, or letting you know they think you’re … wrong for being gay, then it’ll be time for you to start constructing for yourself an interior life in which your parents don’t figure as, God knows, they should.
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My parents did that too.
Very first reaction: “I will always love you.”
Backlash reaction: ” I dont’ want you to be gay, stop doing that.”
Eventual authentic reaction: “I love you.”
Just don’t bee too surprised if the backlash lasts a good long while. I waited and waited for years, but eventually the third reaction came. I made them choose. Dogma or Daughter. I think coming out to the rest of my family (aunts, uncles, cousins) helped too, because even though they had asked me not to do that, it lifted a burden to have me, and their struggle, out in the open. Plus, they I got a ton of allies! So even if your parents don’t come around for a good while, definitely reach out to other family members.
The title of this piece is correct: “Mom’s choice”. I am also living in that limbo spot where some of the people I care about are learning that I am, in fact, gay – that I identify as Gender Queer or Third Gender, and that they have no clue what that even means. They are more sure of what it means for them…discomfort around me, coming to terms with my recent (and second) divorce from a heterosexual marriage, and “what will my religious friends think?”. I recently had a messaging exchange with a childhood friend, who asked me things like: “When did you decide that you were (seriously) “that way” – and “I am a sinner too, and just like me, when you recognize your sin, God is faithful and just to forgive that sin, and I am so glad he forgave mine…” etc.
When I asked her my two favorite questions…she couldn’t really tell me when SHE dicided that she was STRAIGHT. Nor could she tell me how much prayer, repentence, and intervention from God it would take to “make” her gay….
I stopped the exchange with: “I simply want you to think about those two questions, about the two great commandments (love God, and love your neighbor) and what kind of forgiveness might be needed for deciding for God what He thinks and who He loves and accepts.”
I will now wait. She may or may not think about it. Chances are, I just got dropped like a spiritually infected rock. But I can’t convince her, nor do I feel the need to try.
I, too, think that maybe your parents are still in the “OMG” reaction stage….you have challenged much of what they were raised to believe is true. It took me 56 years to come to terms with my gayness, and it will surely take time for those dogmas to be replaced, if they are. I too was raised in a strict Dutch Calvinist home, and some of my family are quite likely struggling with some of those same dogmas.
Blessings to you…and courage…being who God made you to be, and celebrating that with someone you love is a precious gift…please don’t let anyone tarnish that for you!
So, I read this letter out loud to my husband. At the end of the third paragraph, he interrupted me to say, “Who has she been talking to?” (Answered at the end of the letter: dad.) Husband was raised Baptist and is pretty familiar with this sort of reaction.
His advice is to say, “I know you know what’s right, because you did it when I first came out to you. You are choosing, knowing what’s right, to do what’s wrong. Call me when you decide to stop that.”
Allie, good insight from your husband.
Heh, do I ever know what you’re talking about!
You have to remember always, letter writer: Your mother is straight. You of course, already know this intellectually. But since you are gay, it’s a perspective you can’t truly know. I have asked my own straight mother about this: She can’t comprehend my or my partner’s LGBTQ-ness.
She is trying to come to terms with something she knows nothing about, can never fully understand, and which her faith tells her is “wrong.” Remember the intense thought, the questioning, the learning, the introspection you had to go through to get to this point in your journey? Sometimes you may have felt so confused, sometimes you may have denied, sometimes you may have been afraid and terribly hard on yourself. She needs to go through this too–and she’s lacking crucial information about your experience, in addition to feeing pressure from what “others” will think.
She is never allowed to treat you horribly or abuse you, but it would answer a lot of questions to consider her perspective. She is also human, and will make mistakes.
Is there a double standard about gay vs. straight relationships? Absolutely, without a doubt. Even with my family being as supportive as possible, there is still a gap. There are still noticeable differences between how they treat my partner and I and my older brother and his wife. Part of it is stigma, part of it is that there is no cultural script for my relationshp vs. my brother’s, and my family is not used to operating without one.
Give her time. I’m working on that with my own parents. I am learning patience with them, and learning to see them as the flawed, wonderful people that they are. This will bring you closer together as a family if you can stick it out through the tough parts.
Underlying all of this is the great divide of Christians – the question, does God love all people? The universailty of the love of God is being challenged today, and not only by fringe Christians like Westboro. Christian heaveyweights Like John MaCarthur, John Ankerberg, and others question whether God loves all people. In my opinion, this is the fundamental 20th century fundamentalist heresy. It is the theological foundation of the Christian right. They hate certain types of people, so they want God to hate them too. This mother needs Christ.
@Charles Stanley:
You wrote, “The universailty of the love of God is being challenged today, and not only by fringe Christians like Westboro. Christian heaveyweights Like John MaCarthur, John Ankerberg, and others question whether God loves all people. In my opinion, this is the fundamental 20th century fundamentalist heresy. It is the theological foundation of the Christian right.”
I couldn’t agree more. In both the Gospel of John and the First Letter of John, the writer(s) state, God is Love. Considering the eternal and unchanging quality of God, it is reasonable to conlude that that Love is Unconditional. The best we human beings are capable of giving is conditional. Herein lies the basic problem with any marriage these days. The only marriages that are truely healthy and long lasting are those where God is at the Center; where he is the Love that is shared between partners. There are straight and LGBT relationships where this is evident, because they are the most long lasting.
Several years ago, my own spiritual journey began with the premise that “God is Love.” When I finally saw how that that Love was Unconditional, my conversion became the sole focus of my life. The word “conversion” broken into its constituant roots means “to turn with.” That suggested to me a relationship. And in time that is what my faith became – a relationship with Jesus. Beliefs are unimporant next to that.
Actually sounds to me like someone else convinced Mom to change her original tune. Dad maybe?
If she turns you out, she is not being very christian. Christ never turned anyone away and always preached love. She and your father must think they are better than Chist to treat you this way. They will have to answer for their actions.
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