I have spent the last two weeks reading all the prop 8 diaries and thinking about how much I am willing to disclose. This is a followup to my daughter hanging herself for being outed as gay.
Those of you who read the interior comments I posted in the diary know that there were many things that never really added up.
The point of this diary is that the tipping point of the Brown V. The Board of Education was a long term study showing how segregation so destorted the psychological development of black children that they always rejected black dolls and only embraced white dolls. This was a visual demonstration that segregation could not result in equal while being separate.
Reading the comments in the diary I wrote was very healing. When I first attempted to tell the story on a woman's site I was appalled at what people wrote and I have pretty much given up contact with personal in your face humanity. This is turn has given me a lot of time to think and meditate.
I have wanted to find solutions not wallow in self pity. And most assuredly save any gay teens possible.
What I got in touch with from the comments in the diary was that understanding and acceptance on a whole was truly healing. Enough to make the pain of sharing worth while. Enough to make me read the other diaries which I always find emotionally disturbing. Enough to make me want to think of ways of addressing this with positive action.
I and my husband never handled this well from the beginning. First, he was dying and second, I wished I was. Initially my goal was to peacefully bury my daughter and do nothing that would bring more shame on her memory.
The shame and blame for a suicide is incredible. My husband went into complete denial and to spare him, I capitulated. I had not given any of the issues personal thought prior to this. In my growing up time, sex was such a non topic of discussion that to this day I remain amazed at how naive I was.
The school my daughter attended used the shame and blame to keep us from doing anything. Had it been a death by mysterious incident we would have hired a lawyer.
Instead we were given the reason of my daughter being gay at an all girl's school at 13 as something beyond the pale. Why had we sent her there? How could we not have known? We must have been really detached parents, etc. And underlying this, was the acceptance that if you were really gay you would just want to die.
In the three funerals for our daughter in Los Angeles, Boerne,Texas, and Toronto, Canada the focus was on how to minimize the shame. In LA, it was not to tell the truth. In Toronto, it was leave now and quietly. In Boerne, it was we knew there were major problems and suicide pacts but we paid no attention and thought you knew.
Like the rejection of being black by black children, being gay is a traumatizing experience. It is more than being fringe and outcast. It is being denied your right to exist as who you are. While some may know always, many only begin to understand who they might be at puberty. As difficult as it is accepted to deal with hormones; gay teens not only have to deal with them==they have to reject them.
What surprised me by the comments of the Kos community is how many gays admitted to being suicidal themselves at one point. This trauma is instituted and reinforced by society. God, help us all if it is taught that being gay and coming from a gay family is just one aspect of being human. No it has to be an abomination.
This is a secular civil rights issue. Being gay as an abomination is Biblical and it is a particular religious belief. In the grand scheme of things, there is far less attention paid to it Biblically as adultry and the fundies have worked their way around that with their high divorce rate.
ACTION:.. When I became aware of how many lawyers etc. there are here and that this will be a question of law, I found a way this site could contribute best. I would like us as a cross representation of society to present an amicus brief to the California Supreme Court. Attached to the brief, could be all the personal stories of the pain and tragedy enforced by legally labeling a segment of society an abomination as an enforcement of religious Biblical beliefs.
It looks to me like there would be hundreds of personal stories of just how difficult this pain is to deal with. It is a politics of personal destruction. It is confirming that no matter you skills or your talents; you are not worthy to be a full citizen with the same rights as everyone not gay.
Since I am not a lawyer, I have no idea how to go about this but I have faith in this community.