As we all wait with bated breath for President Obama to “evolve” on marriage equality, I’ve been witness to an “evolution” that is much more personal and important to me. It’s an evolution that not only encompasses marriage equality, but homosexuality in general. And although it’s not complete yet, I’d like to share my mother’s evolution on the subject.
Out of all the people I’ve come out to, my mother has been the toughest nut to crack.
My coming-out didn’t really have any effect on most of my (mainly Republican) immediate family. My brother, whom I was scared to death to tell for some reason, told me it didn’t change a thing between us, and he meant it. My sister-in-law actually set me up with my last boyfriend. My nephews know, and despite the fact that children can be immature about these things, my being gay hasn’t mattered one iota.
My mother, on the other hand, hasn’t been quite as accepting.
A little about my mother before I continue. Mom is almost 61 years old, and she has spent 59 out of those 61 years not really knowing any openly gay people. She came of age in the Cold War-era Midwest, the daughter of a very, very conservative pastor within the Conservative Holiness Movement. You can imagine what she was taught about gay people.
I don’t have to imagine it. I remember my mom telling me when I was younger that all gay people get AIDS. I asked, “All gay people?” and she said, “Yes, all gay people, sooner or later.” When I was struggling with the reality that I liked other boys and not girls, this idea frightened me. I didn’t want to get AIDS and die. I didn’t want to burn in hell. And, perhaps more than anything, I didn’t want my mother to reject me.
This, among other things, kept me from coming out from the moment I accepted my sexuality (around the time of my high school graduation) through my sophomore year of college. When I finally decided to start coming out, I only told a very few close friends. The idea of telling my mom scared me like nothing else. I tested the waters by revealing to her that I supported same-sex marriage, and her reaction was to scream, "That’s against the Bible!" Obviously, coming out to her was not going to be easy. But I realized I couldn’t live a truly open (and, it follows, happy) life without coming out to my mom. Toward the end of my sophomore year, I decided I’d tell her – after the summer was over and I was ready to move back to college.
Then, one day before the summer, something changed my mind. I went on a day trip to Cleveland, where I occasionally enjoyed going to a theater that showed independent films. On my way out, I noticed a newspaper box – only this one was filled with issues of the local gay newspaper. On the front page were several LGBT people. I don’t remember what they were doing, but they looked really, really happy. I realized I wasn’t happy. And I realized I couldn’t be happy until I was out of my closet. I was sick of hiding, sick of waiting, sick of procrastinating.
So on the drive home, I called my mom. It took a while, but after some stammering, I finally told her I was gay.
Her initial reaction was disbelief. She thought it was a big joke. Then, when she realized it was no joke, she cried. We had a long talk about it. While she didn’t disown me, and while she assured me she still loved me, she wasn’t happy. At all. She told me never to bring any guys around her house. She asked me if I was worried about getting AIDS. She told me I wasn’t born gay because God doesn’t make gay people. I was glad I got it out of the way, and I was happy she didn’t have a worse reaction, but it was not a pleasant experience. And it confirmed that my mom’s views on gay people had not changed one bit.
After that, my sexuality didn’t really come up much. It just wasn’t discussed. Every once in a while, my mom would find a reason to express her disapproval. One time, she told me the Bible calls homosexuality an abomination, and when I asked her if she thought I was an abomination, she said, “I guess so, that’s what the Bible says.” Every anti-gay word she uttered was the equivalent of a knife sticking into my gut. Many people probably can’t fathom what it would be like for their parent to openly think of them as “less than.” Let me assure you, it’s no picnic.
I had to keep on going on, though. What else could I do? My mom seemed like a lost cause.
Then, thanks to my sister-in-law’s matchmaking powers, I met my most recent boyfriend, John, who worked as a nursing assistant at the nursing home my sister-in-law worked at. Sparks flew on the first date. Within a month, we were official. I was head over heels. My mom knew I was seeing him, but we didn’t discuss it much. I figured she disapproved, but was respectful enough to keep her disapproval silent (I was a grown adult, after all). I’d go over to his apartment and spend the night, and I’m sure my mother understood what we were doing (it wasn’t Scrabble). And I understood that my mom didn’t approve. Fine. I didn’t care. John was mine, and neither my mom nor her interpretation of the Bible could take him away from me.
But my mom was curious. She began poking around and asking questions.
Shortly before my birthday, a week or so after John and I became “Facebook official” (because you’re not in a relationship until you broadcast it to your Facebook friends), my mom and I had a surprising conversation on the phone. She told me, “I want to meet John. I heard you two are official now, and I think I should meet him. He can come over and have birthday cake with the family.”
One of my friends assured me it was a good sign. A great sign, in fact. I wasn’t so sure. I was having the most functional, wonderful relationship of my life, and for the first time in forever, I was really, truly, genuinely happy. I didn’t want my mom to rain on my parade. Nor did I want to expose John to my mom’s unpredictable bouts of homophobia. But, after a conversation with John about the situation in which he told me he was prepared to meet my mother, I decided to go through with it.
So, on my birthday, after a lovely dinner during which I was so nervous I was almost sick, John and I went to my mom’s. It was so awkward and formal at first. Nice-to-meet-you’s and heard-so-much-about-you’s were thrown about, and then silence. Thank God, my mom is something of an interior decorator. John, ever the interior decorator himself, commented on how much he loved the antiques. He had my mom there. They launched into a long, ridiculous conversation about home décor, which I (not so much the interior decorator) tuned out – but I was glad they had something to talk about. The evening wasn’t going to be such a disaster after all.
But then, later in the evening, something happened that made my jaw drop. John, who lost his own mother to cancer when he was quite young, called my mother “Mom.”
And then, something else happened that made my jaw drop. My mother beamed. She loved it.
After we left, John said, “She’s sweet. We should have her over for dinner sometime.” I just looked at him with disbelief. Relieved disbelief, but disbelief nonetheless. Maybe my mom was reachable after all.
As time went on, John and I became more and more distant. It was nobody’s fault, but the relationship just wasn’t working anymore. Eventually, we ended our relationship. Shortly after we broke up, I told my mom, “John and I aren’t together anymore. I thought you might want to know.” She said, “You thought right. Why not?” I didn’t want to talk about it, so we didn’t.
Days later, I overheard my mom on the phone with my aunt. She said, “No, they broke up. I don’t know why. I really liked him. You know, he called me 'Mom.'”
I was still pretty bummed about not having a boyfriend anymore, but this warmed my heart in a way I can’t even communicate.
My mom’s outward signs of homophobia became less and less frequent over time. They didn’t go away, though. After Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling on Prop 8, she said, “God’s going to judge him.” I asked her why she insisted on saying hurtful things about gay people to me when she knew I was gay. She didn’t have a reply. Her heart didn’t seem in it. After that conversation, it didn’t happen again.
In fact, during the DADT debate in late 2010, she told me she thought gays and lesbians should be able to serve their country openly. On another occasion (I’m not sure what prompted it), she said she thought gays and lesbians should be protected from employment discrimination. It seemed like she was undergoing a very real evolution on the issue.
Fast-forward to last week. My mom and I had had very little conversation about homosexuality, my romantic life (then again, aside from a failed first date and a few dead-end encounters, it has been pretty much non-existent since John), or gay equality. After the New York marriage equality victory, I wondered what my mom was thinking. Surely she was thinking something, because it was so close to home (we live about 15 miles from the New York state line) and the Christian radio station she listens to is based out of New York. But she didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t handle the silence anymore. Finally, I just braced myself and asked her what she thought.
She said pretty much what I expected: “I believe marriage was established by God between one man and one woman.” But she added: “I don’t think it’s a big deal. It doesn’t matter one iota to me if two men or two women get married. I still don’t think it should happen, though.”
I was pretty floored. It wasn’t an endorsement, but her response was so much tamer than I’d expected. My mother, the conservative Christian who came from a preacher’s family, doesn’t care if two men or two women get married?
Leave it to me to debate, though. I asked, “Why don’t you think it should happen?”
She told me she didn’t feel like arguing, that I wasn’t going to change her mind, and that she doesn’t believe “gays” should be able to marry. I said, “Why don’t you say ‘you’? Don’t say you don’t think gays should be able to marry, say you don’t think I should be able to marry.”
She didn’t really have a response to that. But it changed the entire tone of the conversation.
I asked, “Don’t you think same-sex couples should be able to visit each other in the hospital?”
It was an odd thing to say, but it was the first thing that came to mind. My mom replied, “What are you talking about? What does visiting each other in the hospital have to do with marriage?”
I said, “Everything. How can they be sure they can see each other in the hospital and make end-of-life decisions if they’re not married? That’s something reserved in many cases for married couples. Do you think it’s right to discriminate like that?”
She replied that no, she didn’t think it was right.
I continued: “And what about Social Security? Don’t you think same-sex couples should get the same Social Security benefits as opposite-sex couples?”
She replied that yes, she supposed they should.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I said, “So you think I should have the same rights as a straight person?”
She said, “Yes, but I still don’t think it should be marriage. That’s my personal belief.”
I said, “You’re entitled to your personal belief. So is the church.” I then told her that legal same-sex marriage would have no effect on the church’s ability to marry whomever they wanted to marry. My mom, somewhat of a sheltered person when it comes to these kinds of things, seemed like she was hearing this side of the argument for the very first time.
After a while, she finally said, "Well, when you put it that way, I guess it should be legal." Then she asked, “Why? Are you planning on getting married or something?”
Somewhat (okay, very) stunned by the whole conversation, I said, “No, it’s just important to me that my mother supports my rights.”
She said, “I support your rights. Do you want to get married someday?”
With tears welling up in my eyes, I said that I did want to get married someday. I asked, “So if I got married, you’d support that marriage?”
She said, “Yes, I’d support it. I may not completely agree with the idea, but I’d support the marriage.”
This was the first time we’d gone in-depth about this stuff since I came out. My mom said, “I guess you won’t give me any grandchildren.”
I said, “Of course I will. I want to adopt.”
She seemed to light up, and she said, “You want to adopt? Really? Well, you’d better hurry up and meet somebody and adopt then.” Laughing, she added: “The older you are when you have children, the crazier they drive you.”
I thanked her for being supportive. She may not have come all the way, and she may still harbor personal opposition to homosexuality, but she said some surprising things. Things that make me have hope for the future.
My mom isn’t there yet. But you have to understand something about my mom – she’s a stubborn, proud woman. To get her to change her mind on anything – and especially something like this – is a milestone. That she said marriage between two men or two women should be legal is huge. She’d might as well have joined PFLAG.
Mom will get there. I know it. As I date more and eventually (hopefully) meet “the one,” I know my mom will come around and realize there’s nothing different between my relationship and her relationship with my father. Prejudice is a difficult thing to shed. My mom has about 60 years of it to lose. Having this conversation with her seemed unfathomable only a year ago. She’s light years beyond where she was on this issue then. Even when she told me about her “personal belief” regarding homosexuality, it seemed forced, not from the heart – like that’s what she felt she had to say because that’s where her church is on the issue, and that saying anything else would just be too radical a change.
She’ll complete her journey. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not a year from now, but I know my mother, and I know she’ll get there.
And who knows – maybe it will be sooner rather than later.
I'll leave it to Lady Gaga to wrap up this diary:
We can’t underestimate the importance of the President’s support, but I think progress starts at home, with that invaluable exposure to a gay loved one. Feel free to share your own “evolution” stories below.