Coming Out for the Holidays: Family Acceptance Could Save Lives

As I noted in my most recent VEER Magazine column, studies indicate gay men are significantly more likely to attempt suicide than their straight counterparts, with the numbers increasing exponentially during the holidays.  To me, the reason for this phenomenon is: (i) the family rejection many gays have experienced, (ii) alienation from the religious backgrounds in which they were raised and (iii) the forced effort to be "happy" during the holiday season.  Indeed, my holiday seasons during the first years of my "coming out" journey could be best described by two words: depression and therapy.  It took literally years of therapy to overcome the emotional and psychological damage I suffered from my Catholic upbringing.  And deep depression can lead to suicide attempts.  I survived two such attempts, both of which sent me to the hospital.  Thankfully, that was years ago and I have moved on in my life and I now find myself in a very different place emotionally and psychologically. But many in the LGBT community, especially those still in the early stages of "coming out" still find the holiday season to be challenging at best.  As a piece in USA Today notes, how families react to those coming out can literally make a difference at times between life and death.  Here are article highlight:

Holiday gatherings feel fraught for many families, but around-the-table affairs can put distinct pressures on those newly out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Maybe your cousin is going by different pronouns than last year. Perhaps a nephew makes first mention of a boyfriend from school. How a family reacts to such revelations can seriously impact that relative's wellbeing, said Jaime Grant, director of the LGBTQ advocacy group PFLAG.

Grant, a lesbian, was shunned by her mother when she came out in the early '80s. She missed a decade of holiday gatherings thereafter, she said, carrying a rejection that led to years of drug addiction. LGBT youth who feel highly rejected by families are three times as likely to use illegal drugs, according to 2009 research from San Francisco State University's Family Acceptance Project. They're eight times as likely to have attempted suicide. 

"It’s not just a feel-good thing. It’s a life-saving thing," said Grant, now a mother herself. "One of my kids is bi, and he is coming home for Thanksgiving to talk to me about his first semester at college — new crushes, student government, the whole bit."

Here's how to best offer support should a newly out guest join your table for the holidays, according to PFLAG.

First: Thank them for opening up to you“The first thing to say is, 'I feel so honored, blessed, happy, like a treasured person in your life that you want to share this with me,'" Grant said. "And then listen." Show interest and empathy. For some, coming out is a struggle, she said. For others, it's exciting. The person may offer up preferred pronouns, or mention a previously undisclosed partner, but don't rush the process or overstep by asking prying questions, Grant said.

Set the tone for acceptance among your familyReactions from family members may vary from surprise, to gladness, to dismay. Let them know how to address this new-to-them aspect of your guest's identity and that you expect them to be treated no less than anyone else at the table, said Marsha Aizumi, a PFLAG national board member from Pasadena, Calif. If a relative's coming out announcement came at the dinner table, "I would jump up and immediately give them a hug," she said. If unkind remarks fly, call them out; the brief discomfort doesn't outweigh any potentially damaging effects.

Help relatives process the new infoWhen Aizumi's transgender son came out during the holidays, she dealt with feelings of shame, fear and doubt. Family members might need time beyond a holiday to fully process the new information, she said. You can lift some burden from a newly out family member by having a dialogue and educating family members who have questions or seem less accepting. While it's important to allow space to reflect for yourself and others, Aizumi said, make clear to the newly out relative that you still love that person. "My son needed to hear it more than ever," she said.

Own your mistakes with graceEven family members striving to be inclusive can let an unintentional pronoun slip. Opportunities for fumbles and unintentional hurt abound as family members adjust and learn more about a newly out relative's orientation or identity. Fostering grace is key for all parties. There's nothing wrong with simply owning a mistake. 

Follow up after the holidayIn the days following a holiday gathering, check in with your newly out family member. Remind them you appreciated their presence. Ask them how they thought it went. Understand their journey with your family goes beyond this first holiday. Ben Hodges, the son of PFLAG President Jean Hodges, first introduced his partner to his family 21 years ago. "Remember that telling family and friends you are LGBTQ is a process," he said. "This is a healthy dialogue that will not be resolved over the holiday meal."

Sadly, far too many families do not follow this wise advice.  I was lucky and was fully accepted by my parents and siblings and aunts and uncles.  Even with such support, coming out was a difficult process.  Roughly 40% of homeless youths in America are LGBT, most having been disowned and discarded by their falsely pious parents who call themselves "Christian" or, in some cases, devout Muslims.  With three children of my own, I truly cannot fathom how anyone "Christian" can discard their own children due to the writings of ignorant, uneducated and unknown Bronze Age herders.   In memory of my parents, I endowed a scholarship fund to help graduating LGBT high school seniors who may have found themselves without parental financial support.  If you are inclined to donate to the fund, you can do so here.  The donation is tax deductible.

Promises From a Christian Pastor/Parent

My dad at about age 20

Friday was the eight anniversary of the day I lost my father after he had battled a lingering illness.  It is always a strange day for me since September 26th is also my son's birthday.  I guess bitter sweet is the best way to describe the feelings I experience: sadness about my dad and joy about my wonderful son.  Coincidentally, on Friday, one of the staff from the Hampton Roads Community Foundation - which administers the George D. and Marion Phelps Hamar/HRBOR scholarship I endowed in my parents memory - called me because the Foundation is updating its website and adding more history/details about the various scholarships that it administers.  Among the questions that were ask was what motivated me to use a chunk of my inheritance to create the scholarship which benefits LGBT graduating high school seniors from the seven cities of Hampton Roads.  In a nutshell, I said I wanted to (i) honor my parents for how they embraced and supported me when I came out, and (ii) help LGBT youth who might not have as supportive of parents (this area still have far to many Bible thumpers).   My father was not the easiest of parents, but when the challenge came to accepting me, he met the test.  A piece in Huffington Post by a pastor and parent (he has two young children) summarizes to me what moved my father - and my mother to do the right thing.  Here are excerpts:

Sometimes I wonder if I'll have gay children.  I'm not sure if other parents think about this, but I do -- quite often.  Maybe it's because I have many gay people in my family and circle of friends. It's in my genes and in my tribe.

Maybe it's because, as a pastor of students, I've seen and heard the horror stories of gay Christian kids -- from both inside and outside of the closet -- trying to be part of the Church.

Maybe it's because, as a Christian, I interact with so many people who find homosexuality to be the most repulsive thing imaginable, and who make that abundantly clear at every conceivable opportunity.

He then goes on to expound on how he will love and support his children shoud they be LGBT.  He then says this to the horrid Christofascist and homophobes who might be motivated to reject their children:

Many of you may be offended by all of this, I fully realize. I know this may be especially true if you are a religious person -- one who finds the whole topic disgusting or unpleasant.
As you've been reading, you may have been rolling your eyes, or clicking the roof of your mouth, or drafting familiar Scriptures to send me, or praying for me to repent, or preparing to Unfriend me, or writing me off as a sinful, evil, Hell-bound heretic... but with as much gentleness and understanding as I can muster; I really couldn't care less.
This isn't about you. This is a whole lot bigger than you.

You're not the one I waited on breathlessly for nine months.

You're not the one I wept with joy for when you were born.

You're not the one I bathed, and fed, and rocked to sleep through a hundred intimate, midnight snuggle sessions.

You're not the one I taught to ride a bike, and whose scraped knee I kissed, and whose tiny, trembling hand I held, while getting stitches.

You're not the one whose head I love to smell, and whose face lights-up when I come home at night, and whose laughter is like music to my weary soul.

You're not the one who gives my days meaning and purpose, and who I adore more than I ever thought I could adore anything.

And you're not the one who I'll hopefully be with, when I take my last precious breaths on this planet; gratefully looking back on a lifetime of shared treasures, and resting in the knowledge that I loved you well.

If you're a parent, I don't know how you'll respond if you find out your children are gay, but I pray you consider it.

One day, despite your perceptions of your kids or how you've parented, you may need to respond in real-time, to a frightened, frantic, hurting child -- one whose sense of peace, and identity and acceptance, whose very heart, may be placed in your hands in a way you never imagined -- and you'll need to respond.

If that day should ever come for me -- if my children should ever come out to me -- this is the Dad I hope I'll be to them.

My dad wasn't a church goer, but when it came to honesty, integrity and supporting his children, he was far more Christian in his behavior that the hate merchants of the professional Christian class - where lying is the norm - and the leadership of falsely named "family values" organizations. 

Baptist Church Goes Rogue By Accepting Gays

The New Heart Community Church Congregation

I recently wrote about the Southern Baptist Convention's steady decline in membership over the last seven years under the increasingly toxic leadership of ultra-conservatives who make hating gays a number one priority for the denomination.  These membership loses stem not only from younger Baptists drifting away from the SBC but also from entire parishes deciding to leave the SBC as did my father in law's church some years back.  The reason?  The SBC is too extreme and is on the losing side of the culture war that many no longer wish to fight.  Now a Baptist church in California has committed the ultimate SBC heresy of accepting gays - even those in committed relationships.   The story also underscores the power of coming out to friends and family as the way to open hearts and minds.  The SBC's Albert Mohler and Richard Land must be having apoplexy. Here are details from Queerty:

A Baptist church in Southern California has done the unthinkable: Its members have voted to welcome the gay community, going against the Southern Baptist Convention’s strict views on homosexuality.

“We will accept the LGBT community even though they may be in a relationship,” pastor Danny Cortez recently wrote in a letter to Patheos blogger and founder of Unfundamentalist Christians, John Shore. “We will choose to remain the body of Christ and not cast judgement. We will work towards graceful dialogue in the midst of theological differences.”

Cortez is the pastor at New Heart Community Church in La Mirada, CA. Earlier this year, he told members of his congregation that he did not believe homosexuality was a sin, and pleaded with them to consider changing their views as well.

[I]t turns out the change wasn’t all that sudden. In his letter to Shore, Cortez writes that it took him 15 years to reach the decision.

“I recently became gay affirming after a 15-year journey of having multiple people in my congregation come out to me every year,” Cortez explains. “It was especially the testimony of my gay friends that helped me to see how they have been marginalized that my eyes became open to the injustice that the church has wrought.”

But what finally did it was Cortez’s 15-year-old son, Drew, who came out to Cortez last August. In his letter, Cortez writes:

In August of 2013, on a sunny day at the beach, I realized I no longer believed in the traditional teachings regarding homosexuality.

As I was trying to figure out what to tell my church, I was driving in the car with my 15-year-old son Drew when a song on the radio came on. I asked Drew who sang it, and he said, “Mackelmore.” And then he asked me why I was interested in it. I told him that I liked the song. He was startled and he asked me if I knew that the song’s message was gay affirming. I told him that I did know and that’s why I liked the song. I also told him that I no longer believed what I used to believe.

As we got out of the car, I could tell he was puzzled. so I asked him what he was thinking. In the parking lot, he told me in a nervous voice, “Dad, I’m gay.” My heart skipped a beat and I turned towards him and we gave one another the biggest and longest hug as we cried. And all I could tell him was that I loved him so much and that I accepted him just as he is.

Though the majority of New Heart Community Church members voted to change their official views, many have refused to accept the decision, and plan to separate from the church on June 8.

The church is also at risk of being excluded from the Southern Baptist Convention being held in Baltimore later this week.

A Story of Family Acceptance

I have noted many times on this blog as to how fortunate I was to have parents who accepted me without hesitation when I finally came out of the closet after decades of denial and endless amounts of self-hate.  Indeed, to reflect my endless gratitude and appreciation to my parents, I endowed the George D. and Marion Phelps Hamar/HRBOR Scholarship that benefits LGBT graduating high school students (a link to the scholarship is at right on this blog).  But far too many LGBT individuals are not as lucky as I was.  Some find themselves disowned and cut off from their families both emotionally and financially.  This past weekend, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni shared a story of his own father's method of dealing with having a gay son.  Some of Bruni's father's initial ways of dealing with the news and his assessments of those who are not accepting of gays are reminiscent of my own dad's views.  Here are some column highlights:

FOR a long while, my father’s way of coping was to walk quietly from the room. He doesn’t remember this. I do. I can still see it, still feel the pinch in my chest when the word “gay” came up — perhaps in reference to some event in the news, or perhaps in reference to me — and he’d wordlessly take his leave of whatever conversation my mother and my siblings and I were having. He’d drift away, not in disgust but in discomfort, not in a huff but in a whisper.

And I was grateful. Discomfort beat rejection. So long as he wasn’t pushing me away, I didn’t need him to pull me in. Heart-to-hearts weren’t his style, anyway. With Dad you didn’t discuss longings, anxieties, hurts.

But at some point Dad, like America, changed. I don’t mean he grew weepy, huggy. I mean he traveled from what seemed to me a pained acquiescence to a different, happier, better place. He found peace enough with who I am to insist on introducing my partner, Tom, to his friends at the golf club. Peace enough to compliment me on articles of mine that use the same three-letter word that once chased him off. Peace enough to sit down with me over lunch last week and chart his journey, which I’d never summoned the courage to ask him about before. 

It’s been an extraordinary year, probably the most extraordinary yet in this country’s expanding, deepening embrace of gays and lesbians as citizens of equal stature, equal worth. For the first time, an American president still in office stated his belief that two men or two women should be able to marry. For the first time, voters themselves — not lawmakers, not courts — made same-sex marriage legal.

He’s 77. Closing in fast on 78. Hasn’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since Kennedy. Pledged a fraternity in college. Served as an officer in the Navy. Chose accounting as his profession. Remained married to his high school sweetheart, my mother, until she died in 1996, just shy of their 40th anniversary. He still mentions her daily.

She was the freer spirit, and I told her I was gay back in 1981, when I was 17. She implored me not to tell him — too risky, she said — and to let her handle it. A few years later, she informed me that she’d done so, and that was that. Dad said nothing to me. I said nothing to him. 

I was sure that he’d resolved simply to put what he’d learned about me out of his mind and pretend it didn’t exist. I was wrong. He was mulling it over, trying to figure it out. “It was just so unusual to me,” he recalled, groping for the right word. 

He’d heard it said that gay people were somehow stunted, maybe even ill. But that made no sense to him, because he was confident that I was neither of those things.  He’d heard it said that peculiar upbringings turned children gay. “I thought about it a lot,” he said, “and I came to the conclusion that it had to be in your genes, in you, because I couldn’t think how the environment for you was any different than it was for your two brothers.” 

He said he worried that I was in for a more difficult, less complete life than they and my sister were. I asked him why he’d never broached that with me. He said that it would have been an insult — that I was obviously smart enough to have assessed the terrain and figured out for myself how I was going to navigate it.

[W]hen I would write candidly about my life, as I did on occasion, he’d flinch a bit. Still does.

But he has decided that such writing is necessary. “There’s prejudice out there, and it’s good to fight that,” he said, adding that visibility and openness are obviously integral to that battle. “I’m convinced that people who don’t accept gays just don’t really know any of them.”  He’s increasingly irked at his political party, which he thinks is signing its own death warrant with its attitude toward gays, toward guns, toward immigrants. 

[H]e’s not prepared to say that what two committed men or two committed women share is anything less than what a man and a woman do. In any case, he noted, society is moving in only one direction on this front. And he’s O.K. with that. 

He shook his head: “I almost think I love you more for it — for being what you are rather than what was expected of you.” 

For far too many years I tried to be what I thought was expected.  Yes, I have three amazing children as a result, but it cause me, them and their mother much avoidable misery.   As for my dad, he went further than Bruni's father - he left the GOP in disgust over its anti-gay agenda.  Sadly, my dad did not live to meet the boyfriend, but he accepted my ex and the two of them used to call each other and chat on the phone.  That men like Bruni's dad and my late father can get it give hope that we are going to win the war against the Christofascists.

A U.S. Airman Comes Out to His Dad

By now, countless blogs and web sites have posted this You Tube video in which Airman Phillips comes out to his dad in Alabama via telephone from Germany. But in my view, it bears further promotion. Coming out to my parents was one of the hardest and most terrifying things I've ever experienced as I worried about whether they'd accept me for who I was/am or reject me. I suspect many of us share these feelings and dread when we make the fateful step of being truthful to our parents. Like Airman Phillips, I was lucky and my parents never wavered in their love and support. Sadly, not all of us are so lucky. Hence my decision to establish a scholarship for LGBT students in honor of my parents. My heart goes out to Phillips and I hope he discovers how liberating it is to be "out" and that all the energy he expended on keeping his secret can now be directed toward positive endeavors.

Former Villanova Athlete Reveals He Is Gay

This week seems to be full of individuals coming out of the closet. Tony Perkins and his fellow Christofascists must indeed be convulsing and twitching. The latest to join the list is former Villanova basketball star Will Sheridan. To make matters worse in the eyes of the religious extremists, Sheridan was out to his team and accepted. He even dated men while playing for the university's team. In an interview, among other things, Sheridan stated "I'm proud of who I am." Kudos to Sheridan and those like him who continue to show the lie of the anti-gay stereotypes promoted by the enemies of the LGBT community. One can only hope that individuals like Sheridan and Don Lemon will open some hearts and minds in the black community. ESPN has an lengthy article on Sheridan and his decision to go public about who he really is. Here are highlights (read the whole piece):
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I just said, 'I need to tell you something … I'm gay,'" Sheridan said. "I'm gay." Those two words are the last hurdles to be cleared in sports, the five letters strung together that critics insist would destroy a locker room and more, destroy the athlete who utters them.
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Yes, there are plenty of gay athletes we know of, but few men and fewer still from the major team sports. On OutSports.com, a website that covers the gay and lesbian sports community, numerous stories can be found of gay team captains and star athletes -- and the teammates who accepted them -- but for the most part, these stories come from high schools and smaller colleges and now even the highest positions in professional sports.
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But in terms of American athletes being out publicly at the highest levels of competition (pro leagues and the revenue sports in Division I), former NBA journeyman John Amaechi; ex-NFLers Esera Tuaolo, David Kopay and Roy Simmons; Glenn Burke and Billy Bean from Major League Baseball; and former college football players Dwight Slater (Stanford) and Akil Patterson (Maryland) are essentially the beginning and end of the list. And, like Sheridan, all of those players came out only after their playing days were over.
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Which is why now, four years after his Villanova basketball career ended, Will Sheridan feels compelled to talk. Not because of Bryant or Avery. He decided to speak publicly months before either incident occurred. But because he just doesn't get it anymore. The big deal. The turmoil. The stigma. He's proud of who he is, confident, comfortable, borderline arrogant even. And although it wasn't easy, his wasn't the torturously impossible and lonely road so many presumed it would be.
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"I'm trying to have a voice, and I want that voice to reach as many people as it can," he said. "I mean, look at me. I'm black. I'm gay. I'm like a quadruple minority, and I feel like a little piece of me resides in everybody. Maybe there's a kid out there who doesn't think he's OK, and he can look at me and say, 'OK, he played college basketball. He went overseas. He has a music career and now he's living his life. Now he's who he wants to be and he's happy and confident and comfortable.' It's my responsibility to talk about that."
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[B]y the time Sheridan graduated from his Catholic university, most of his teammates knew he was gay, and they didn't care. Amaechi is on the record as saying the same thing happened when he was with the Utah Jazz. More and more, coming-out stories -- especially among the younger generation -- include teammate support or, at worst, indifference. Sheridan told Nardi first and over the years told other teammates as he grew comfortable and trusted them. There was never, Nardi joked, "a team meeting to discuss Will being gay." It was simple and private, friends and teammates sharing personal information about one another.
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The locker room dynamic, team chemistry, none of it changed. He and Nardi would room together for three of their four seasons, and Sheridan remained a popular teammate and vital part of the Wildcats' success.
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Evidence of the team's unity and comfort lies in one simple nugget: Jay Wright never knew his starting power forward was gay until after Sheridan graduated. No one ever went to him with a complaint or a worry. No one even bothered to tell him. "After I found out, I was like, 'Did you know?' And all the guys, they were like, 'Yeah, Coach, we knew,'" Wright said. "They just didn't care, and I guess I was just oblivious."
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Sheridan came out to his parents at the end of his freshman season. He describes the conversation as "epic," stretching out the word and his arms across the table at a New York City restaurant to emphasize just how epic it was. Perhaps naive then -- "I figured I was in college and my tuition was paid for by my sport, so you love me for me, right?" -- Sheridan now understands better his parents' struggle to accept his sexual orientation.
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"I don't care how open-minded you say you are, as a parent you project so much on your kids without even realizing it," Sheridan said. "You want them to be the best at everything, and you have dreams of what your life will be and their life will be. To them, this was just no way. Denial. It didn't fit with who I was, or who they thought I was. I was perfect. This didn't work."
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But after the initial shock wore away, Josie looked at her son and saw something that had been missing -- happiness. He was always a good child ("too good to be true," his high school coach once told her), but a tickle in the back of her mind, a mother's instinct, told her he should have been happier. And she could never figure out what was missing. Until she saw it.
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Josie Sheridan always preached unconditional love, and she meant it. And when the test came -- when her son, whom she calls her best friend, sat her down -- loving him wasn't hard. But accepting the news was. . . .Although his mother quickly came to grips with her son's news, Sheridan's dad took time. A long time.

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As the article continues, I'm glad to say that Sheridan's father has come around. Too often I suspect parents worry more about what others may think or their own dashed expectations than they do about their own child. As I have written before, I was lucky in that both my parents took my coming out in stride and accepted me.

Memorial Scholarship In Memory of My Parents.

The last five and one half years have been a financial Hell for me beginning with being forced from a larger local law firm for being gay, followed by a divorce from Hell where an anti-gay judge - who actually note that being gay was a "choice" - stripped me of pretty much everything I owned, and finally ended with me being forced into bankruptcy because of the former happenings. With the loss of my mother earlier in the year, I will soon - hopefully within a week or two - come into enough of an inheritance to clear up the last of the debts plaguing me and pay off in full amounts owed to my former wife under the divorce decree and finish repaying loans made to me by the boyfriend without whom I would not have survived in more ways than purely financially. It will also allow me to do something to permanently honor the memory of my parents (pictured at right on their wedding day): establishing a scholarship fund in their names. The scholarship will benefit graduating LGBT high school students in Virginia seeking to continue their education at a college or university.
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I am working with the Hampton Roads Community Foundation which will manage investing the scholarship fund (HRCF currently administers 55 scholarship funds) and the application administrative process. I hope to promote additional future contributions to the scholarship fund through HRBOR (HRBOR's name will also be attached to the scholarship) and other organizations as a tax deductible charitable vehicle to provide assistance to LGBT youth who often face difficulties in backward states like Virginia and who may have lost family support because of their sexual orientation. With the support of others, it is my hope than the scholarship can grow to eventually serve multiple students each year in perpetuity.
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Education was always important to both of my parents and played a role in the lives of myself and my siblings. As I have written about in the past, both immediately and unwaveringly supported me when I came out my often turbulent coming out journey. With this scholarship perhaps it will be a vehicle for youth who were not as lucky as I was in terms of parental acceptance.
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The HRBOR - Hampton Roads Business OutReach - name will also be attached because founding HRBOR has been a labor of love and did much to replace the supposed circle of "friends" who largely abandoned me when I came out nearly a decade ago. Attaching the HRBOR name will also underscore that members of the LGBT business community - even in generally reactionary areas such as Hampton Roads - can and do make a difference and improve the community, one of HRBOR's goals.
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Once the scholarship is fully in place - the first award should be in May/June, 2012 - I will do a follow up post with details and how tax-deductible contributions can be made to the fund.

It Get's Better - Formerly in a Straight Marriage With Children and Gay

It will be ten years ago this fall that I told my former wife that I was gay. In the wake of that revelation, my entire world as I had known it began to collapse with the consequences ranging from a horrible divorce to being fired for being gay to two suicide attempts. Along the way I began this blog to tell my story and vent my feelings of loneliness and often despair as a form of therapy. Since then much has changed - and for the better, including my wonderful relationship with my partner and acceptance by and reconciliation with my children.

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But there are still many, many gays out there across America (and some I know locally) who are still struggling to achieve a level of peace with who they are and at the same time fighting the sense that they have failed their families somehow for merely being who God made them to be and by having tried albeit unsuccessfully to live up to family and societal expectations. If anyone doubts me, peruse some blogs such as Conflicting Clarity; A Journey By Myself; Too Late for Regrets; New Day, New Life, where the author said this:
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My situation is like the snow. I can push it aside and move it around all I want, but it is still there. Push enough of it together and it becomes a bigger pile. Add the lying, cheating, and guilt and the pile grows bigger and bigger until you have an immovable mountain of snow. It never really goes away until the sun melts it. The only way to bring light to this snow pile to possibly melt it down is.....?
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The pain and heartache is palpable. And you will not find any truly selfish or self-centered motivations. Only the desire to tell and live the truth - doing the least harm to others as possible. Living a life of secret hell and self-loathing is exhausting. I've been there and done that. And if there are victims in these scenarios, it is both the gay individual and their straight spouse, not to mention the children involved. And who are the ones responsible for these damaged and conflicted lives? Folks like Pope Benedict XVI, Maggie Gallagher, Bryan Fischer and leaders of "ex-gay" ministries who deliberately spread a message of homophobia and the myth that sexuality is a choice.

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The good news for the writers of these blogs is that life can and will get better. It won't be an easy path as I know all too well. But things will get better. Looking back on how I once lived and how I always felt an actor on a stage playing a role scripted for me by someone else, I could never go back to it. That's not to say all of the past was bad because it wasn't. I'm just saying that it could have been better if I had lived more honestly both with myself and others far earlier.

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I hope that the authors of the blogs mentioned and the countless other individuals out there struggling down the path toward self acceptance and living honestly don't loose sight of the fact that it does get better. It may seem like an eternity at the time, but it will get better. I'm proof that is does.

An Amazing Teacher - Joy Newcom

In the course of surfing the Internet and checking my Google search agent results I came across a blog post by a straight teacher that I found amazingly moving and most relevant in light of the recent anti-gay behavior of some public high schools and/or parents of gay teens. Would that there were many, many more teachers who could grasp the lesson Joy Newcom seems to have taken to heart. Admittedly, I was also moved because the story told by Marc Wheeler (pictured at left) is in many ways similar to my own (and probably many more in the LGBT community) Except that, in my case, it took me another two decades to accept who I was and to try to come to terms with the fact that I'd been born gay for some unknowable reason. Marc accepted that truth in college. In her post, Joy demonstrates a wonderful level of empathy and an ability to see Marc as another human being and an equal child of God. Why more people - especially those who claim to be Christian - cannot learn the lesson she espouses is troubling. Thankfully, time and the younger generation do seem to be on the side of what is right and good in terms of gay acceptance. Joy Newcom and Marc Wheeler are exceptional individuals and I encourage readers to read Joy's full post. Marc also needs to be credited with proving that living out and openly can impact others in a tremendously positive way. Here are some highlights from Joy's remarkable post:

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This blog is not like others I've done. I'm basically sharing my homework with you, because I feel the topic of my assignment is worth sharing. My task was to interview someone who is gay, asking him or her to describe any difficulties that occurred while growing up, attending school, and coming out to family and friends. . . . when it came time to choose [an interview subject], Marc Wheeler, now a working actor living in West Hollywood, Calif., it seemed the full-circle choice. This homegrown Iowan was the first openly gay student I ever taught. I realized I didn't know much about what life was like for him during the years he was a student in my classroom. It was time to learn.

We talked for two hours one night, and I learned a lot that will help me as I teach others who happened to be born gay. I have always respected Marc for his willingness to openly share who he is with the world. I hope you do too.
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Marc Wheeler is likely not the first gay student I have ever taught; however, he is the first student I taught who openly identified himself as gay. In fact, I am fairly confident that I taught students born with a same-sex orientation before Marc came along in 1997 – whether any of us knew it at the time or not.
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By the time Marc, a 4.0 GPA student, was ready to attend college in the late 90s, his identity as a man who happened to be gay was something he was ready to define and accept. However, his parents were unaware of his sexual orientation and related identity struggles. . . . The admission was something he had feared happening in elementary and middle school, for at that young age, Marc believed identifying himself as homosexual would mean – according to what he had learned from his experiences in churches (i.e., Pentecostal, United Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran) – that he would “burn in hell.”
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Because I have always known Marc as a male who happens to be gay, I was not aware – until this paper – of the intensely personal identity struggles he navigated, particularly in relation to his father. I was aware that his father was having a hard time reconciling Marc’s sexual orientation; however, I wasn’t aware of how long it took and how isolated Marc felt during that time. The ability to have conversations with family members about important topics is a valuable part of belonging to a family unit. As I teach, I will now be more aware of the personal pain and toll that is exacted on students who are not only far from home, but also emotionally isolated from people who define key relationships in their lives. Children depend on primary relationships to help them form their identities. I hope to become even more sensitive to the difficulties that face young men and women who come to an awareness of their same-sex gender orientation without the full support of their parents or siblings.
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What I will remember most about this conversation with Marc, however, are the stories about other children calling him “faggot” or “gay” beginning in elementary. . . . Marc helped me understand the extreme difficulty present in those moments. Teachers might be insensitive to the harm that occurs from name calling, and it takes great courage for the victim of the slur to make the offense known. As Marc explained, sharing news of the incident is practically an admission of its truth at a time when the student might not yet be ready to bear the consequences. “When children identify someone as gay,” said Marc, “they may well be right, but it is so difficult to admit, because you are not yet ready to accept all that goes with it.” I want to be a teacher that any student would be comfortable coming to.
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To help, I will continue to support GSA events and create a classroom environment that upholds all students as valued members of society, while including lessons that highlight the harm of discriminatory language and actions. Thank you, Marc, for being my teacher.
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Thank you Joy for your insights and reflections. And thank you Marc for your courage and strength.

A Father Remembered - Three Years Later

Today is the third anniversary of my father's death (pictured above with my mom on their wedding day entering my grandparents' home where they held their reception). It was mid-morning three years ago when I received the call at my office that I needed to get to Charlottesville as quickly as possible because he was going fast. By the time arrived, he had already died - at home and in his own bed, which had been his wish after a lingering and painful battle with multiple myloma, a form a blood cancer. I missed a last goodbye by about an hour. As I have written before, he was not the easiest of fathers by any means even though in his way he did care so much about his children. My sister's death five years earlier had devastated both he and my mother beyond description. Complicating our relationship immensely, of course, was my at the time growing up, unacknowledged - even to myself -fact that I was gay. With my dad, like everyone else in my life, no one was ever allowed past the secret glass wall I maintained around myself.

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Sadly, he never got to meet the boyfriend, who I believe he would have loved. He did fully accept my former partner and the two of them used to chat on the phone from time to time. Even though my dad had his share of demons, growing up as an orphan as he had, when it came time, he deliverd what I needed most. My advice to parents: there is no greater gift that you can give to your gay son or daughter than to accept them for who they are and embrace the partner in their life as your child as well. My dad had stated once that he viewed it as having gained another son - which is as it should be. My dad taught me many things - some good and some not so good - but on the most important issue, he got it right.