Son of Homophobic Father Says Life Gets Better

Isaac Katz (pictured at left), is the son of the well known homophobe, Jonathan Katz who was removed earlier this year from a group of scientists selected by the Department of Energy to work on tackling the BP oil spill because of his extreme homophobia. Isaac has written a strong column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which describes Isaac's own coming out story which he wanted to make public in the wake of the recent spate of gay teen suicides. Personally, I cannot imagine what it must have been like for this young man growing up. The good news is that his messages is that It gets better. It is a message that I hope more of out gay teens - and gays coming out in mid-life after marriage and a losing attempt to be straight - will take to heart. Here are some highlights from an article about Isaac's column as well as the column itself:
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Isaac Katz came out to his parents as a gay man this summer after returning from college. He did so about a month after his father, a Washington University professor, was booted from a panel of scientists assembled to help stop the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Gay activists pushed the Obama administration to remove Jonathan Katz because of an essay he had written and posted online declaring himself a proud homophobe.
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In an essay he submitted to the Post-Dispatch to publish, the physics professor's son, Isaac Katz, comes out publicly — not as a jab to his father or to embarrass other relatives, he said.
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Rather, he said, he hopes the personal account of his struggles will help others, particularly in light of a spate of recent suicides by young gay men who had been bullied because of their sexual orientation. . . . . Katz's father was offered a chance to respond to his son's remarks. He did not reply.
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Here are highlights from the column itself:
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I am now 22, and, as it happens, I am gay. Further, I, personally, was depressed throughout much of my adolescence. Although anti-gay bullying was never a problem for me as a student at Clayton High School, being in the closet hardly helped my mental well-being. I was hospitalized for depression the summer after my sophomore year in college and tried to overdose on pills later that fall.
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My father is a physics professor at Washington University. Years ago, he wrote an article on his personal website in which he justified homophobia as a "moral judgment" about a person's actions. . . . Though one should "not engage in violence against homosexuals," my father argued, one should 'stay away from them." The last line of the essay is as follows: "I am a homophobe, and proud."
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It is harder to stay away from homosexuals, I would imagine, when your son is one. When I told my dad I was gay, his immediate response was, "No, you're not." (My mom, by the way, was and is more supportive.) When my insistence finally overrode his denials, he echoed his online essay that I should deny who I am rather than to engage in an act so abhorrent as to love another man.
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I can't change my dad's thoughts about homosexuality overnight. Underlying his opinions and those of other homophobes is the belief that homosexuality is not ingrained within gay men and women, that someone attracted to people of the same sex should simply choose not to be a "practicing homosexual." That this idea is absurd should be obvious to all straight people, unless they can identify a time in their lives when they chose to be straight and not gay, and would gladly become intimate with a same-sex partner if only they chose to.
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Last spring, almost three years after attempting suicide, I graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. Once I accepted myself, coming out to my parents was a rather easy thing to do. . . . I am happier than I have been in many years. To struggling gay and lesbian teens in St. Louis and beyond, then, as a young gay man I gladly repeat Dan Savage's words: It does get better.