...and a little inspiration.
First, the tough part. A friend told me today of a family in her hometown (Stowe, VT) who recently lost their son to suicide. The teenager was the younger brother of one of her brother's close friends. My first question was, "Is he gay?"
For some, that must seem like a non-sequitur, but when a teen kills her/himself, that's one of my first concerns. A statistic I’ve seen commonly quoted is that 1 of 3 teens who commits suicide does so because of their sexuality (a United States HHS report in 1989 suggested 30%). My friend said she didn't know if this young man was gay or not. All we know for sure is that it leaves a hole in a family and a small town. My heart goes out to that family.
This all reminded me of someone who was a hero to me back in the year 2000, which, only eight years ago, seems like a more innocent time by comparison.
At the time, Vermont was approaching legalization of civil unions – and that was virtually unthinkable to me. I had only been out for a few years, and legal recognition of ANY kind for same-sex relationships in the United States seemed like a pipe dream, even in the pragmatic, live-and-let-live New England I knew. I was raised that being gay is something other people are, and there's something wrong with them.
Unfortunately, it seemed natural that legal recognition for same sex couples would bring out social conservatives’ venom. It did. And one mother's letter gave me hope.
Her name is Sharon Underwood. She wrote to the Valley News in White River Junction, Vermont, at the end of April of that year. I needed to read her words at that time. I only wish my mom were so vehement a defender of my rights:
Sunday, April 30, 2000
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT/Hanover, NH)
As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be. Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.
I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.
My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay. He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.
In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.
You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.
At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.
If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?
A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."
You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart. He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.
You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.
How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage. You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.
The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"
Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?
I was touched by this letter because of the humiliation her son suffered his entire childhood. I went through the same thing. My family wasn't as supportive. Denial is powerful.
I married the love of my life this September in Humboldt County, California, and then watched the Proposition 8 campaign unfold over the following six weeks. I wish I had remembered this letter sooner. It would have been comforting to read as I sat sleepless in the dark in the wee hours of November 5th, watching returns come in.
It saddens and angers me that, some days, it feels as though we have not come much further in defusing, debunking, and exposing the hateful rhetoric used by religious conservatives to strip gay people not just of civil rights, but of dignity, grace, and outright humanity. I should print this letter and read it to remind me that everyday people who aren't gay people are still standing up for us in little and big ways every day, somewhere.
I hope that, if we ever raise children, by the time they reach their teens, they can at least look forward to loving someone and knowing that when they marry, regardless of whom they marry, no one will be able to vote on their marriage. No one will be able to say, with a vote, "All men are created equal...except you."