Profile: Warrior Mom Colette Beighley

I did a post about the Beighley family back in July, 2007, and how Colette [pictured at right in the photo] had rallied to support her gay son, Ari. I received a nice e-mail from Colette when she discovered the post via one of her sons. She has now been spotlighted in an article in the Grand Rapids Press (http://blog.mlive.com/grpress/2008/02/warrior_mom_colette_beighley.html). It is unfortunate that there are not more mothers like her in terms of loving and accepting their LGBT children. Just ask my blogger friend Java Jones who has taken two gay teens into her home because they had been thrown out by their parents. Not surprisingly, not everyone is supportive of what Colette Beighley is doing, particularly the alleged Christians who use the Bible as an excuse for bigotry and small mindedness. In my view, Colette is a heroine. Here are some story highlights:

A few days after her 16-year-old son, Ari, told her he's gay, Colette Beighley gave him a book, "Coming Out: An Act of Love." He read it, then came downstairs to the kitchen, where his sister was hanging out with a friend. "Thanks, Mom," he told Beighley, then put the book face down on the counter, hiding the title. "I flipped the book over, title facing up," Beighley recalls. "I said, 'Ari, that's not how we're gonna live.'"

Her life hasn't been the same since. Beighley, 50, is the West Michigan field organizer for the Triangle Foundation, Michigan's leading advocacy organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The Detroit-based foundation opened its first-ever office in Grand Rapids a year ago. They didn't interview anyone else for the job, says Sean Kosofsky, Triangle's director of policy. After they heard Beighley's story and saw her passion, he says, they didn't need to.

"She's much more of a warrior mother now," Ari says. "If she sees inequality, she'll go to war for that. She has this sense that what she's doing absolutely has to be done." Beighley has spent the past year getting used to being a public face and voice for a cause that riles a lot of people up. "I've been interviewed a lot of times, but there are stories I've never told," she says. They reveal why she does what she does. It's not just because her son is gay.

They moved to Spring Lake when Ari was 11 months old. David is a Muskegon High School graduate and his family lives in West Michigan. "We thought it would be a lovely place to raise a family," Beighley says. "It is a lovely place to raise a family. Unless your child is gay." In the days after Ari came out, "I went into management mode," Beighley says. "I went to the book store and bought every book on gayness and read them. I sat in the cafe at Schuler Books on Alpine and just wept." She learned about a workshop for families in New Mexico called "The Experience: Coming out Powerfully." "We all got on a plane and went," she says -- David, Colette, Ari, sister Chloe, brother Nathan and his wife, Sarah. Their son Collin couldn't attend, but lent his full support.

"First we told our closest friends," she says. She pauses, looking out her dining room window at the steadily falling snow. "For many, that was the last time we talked to them. "A lot of people hung in there for a while," she says. "Then they wanted us to do something." Do something? "Fix him," she says. "Send him someplace. "I had this belief that once people knew Ari is gay, they'd say, 'I have loved this child his whole life,'" Beighley says. "In this Pollyanna sort of way I thought maybe they would use that opportunity to re-evaluate their beliefs. That it would be an opportunity to see things differently."

In the weeks and months after Ari came out, David, a licensed marriage and family counselor, lost nearly 70 percent of the business at his counseling practice, Beighley Consulting Associates, in Spring Lake. His ministerial license was revoked by the Wesleyan Church. "I remember sitting on the bathroom floor, saying to my husband, 'I only have one path here and that is to be completely out and do it without shame," Beighley says. "I can't be silent about this anymore." She smiles. "If I ever write a book, I'm gonna call it 'Musings from the Bathroom Floor.' "I said to him, 'You may have to make a different choice that honors your faith tradition. And I totally understand if you don't want to go down this road with me. This may be the place where we part."

She is making things happen, says Sean Kosofsky, director of policy at Triangle in Detroit. Beighley works with Concerned Clergy of West Michigan, an organization of supportive pastors and church leaders. She's on the advisory board of the new lesbian and gay resource center at Grand Valley State University. She has befriended state legislators, Kosofsky says, drummed up volunteers and donors and connected with prominent West Michigan people. "She's classy, she's articulate, she's beaming with positive energy," Kosofsky says. "She's a case study for how homophobia can tear apart heterosexuals. What a profound capacity this woman has." Beighley says she would do this work even if she didn't get paid. "This is not a new thing for me," Beighley says. "It's not that suddenly, because my kid is gay, I changed my opinions. But because my kid is gay, I can't be silent."

Here's the link to Colette's blog, Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Gay: http://www.chanceofgay.org/