1.
First my mother who was not the 1st person I came out to, but the first family member. I was 19. Unchartered territory. And my belief was that I was about to lose my entire world because as much as she loved me, I had no idea how she was going to take the news.
My purpose was selfish. To stop living a lie and confront the consequences of being honest. Because that is something all LGBT people face: consequences for trying to just live in the same world as anyone else. worrying about the same things as anyone else. your kids' scraped knees, the mortgage, the job, the heart break, the dream, the disappointment.
For years I had to do all of it alone. Until my family caught up to where I was. And I made the difficult sacrifices. I took, yes, the higher road because these people who raised me mattered to me. so i took the hits and the jabs from friends and some family. until time the great leveler just evidenced that I was who I had always been. A funny, insecure, passionate person with a red hot temper who cried during happy endings and really, just really only wanted love.
Well, that conversation with my mother wasn't as bad as I thought. But it was for a few short years a painstaking evolution. And ultimately my mother surpassed even her own expectations. She witnessed how I fought and wouldn't back down and held my ground. And what started as a negative reaction for fear and worry of her child, turned into her own blossoming.
When my mother died I packed up her whole apartment and all her belongings and momentos. It was years later that I opened an envelope full of cards she was sending back to my step-father, her ex husband, at a time they were considering getting back together. And I found this letter she had planned to send back with all the cards he ever gave her and she had kept. I keep this as a note in my cell phone to look at it whenever I need reminding that I can have an impact on a person's life. (I have taken liberty to edit for structure but content is intact):
From my mom to my step dad: "I am writing this not for my sake but yours. I want you to think about something I have come to understand. Maybe I am wrong but I feel that I have accomplished an immense soul searching in the past four years and for that I'm grateful to my son. He has opened vast horizons for me and I want to get to this world before I depart it."
She went on to explain that this was why she wasn't going back to him. It was time for them to let go because she found her own strength to live life for her.
2.
Since coming out I have had many many difficult conversations with my birth father, and we oscillated many times and years between being close or completely apart. The hardest conversation I had with him wasn't coming out to him. It was telling him for the first time what I really believed about God and religion. I listened for many years about his, in my view, fundamental beliefs about religion. I never challenged him. I didn't think I had enough Bible learning to have an academic conversation about scripture and interpretation.
I constantly felt apologetic. "Gee, my poor minister father's older son is gay. let me keep a low profile. let me bow my head when we pray in public even though I never would at home. let me agree where I can and swallow what I refute. let me be as dutiful and compliant a son even though no amount of love would rub the stain of the sodomite off me as he quoted to me Leviticus, Romans and Corinthians."
After a few years living as a gypsy following the deaths of my mother and maternal grandmother, I found myself living with my father's mother. Living with his mother gave my father opportunity to leave me pamphlets on my bed about transitioning from gay to straight. It was literature aimed at younger people discovering their sexuality (I hate the phrase "questioning their sexuality"). I had just turned 40. I was never doubtful of who I was. And certainly not at 40. I had already been through so much in my life, including my mother's fight with cancer and having the bitter privilege of giving her permission to let go and leave her suffering and have her pass away in front of me as I closed her eyes - as I told her that she brought me into this world and I helped her into the next one. I DID THAT. I own that. For the same woman who unbeknownst to me at that time was grateful to me for her self growth and awareness and was ready to get to the world she unfortunately never got to explore.
But damn it all if she didn't get to posses her own self discovery before the end. So no, I had no doubts of being gay and those transitioning pamphlets couldn't have made me more angry than any bible verse or literature thrown at me. And that was when I told my father to meet me in a park, on neutral ground, so I could tell him that I didn't believe what he believed. That I didn't subscribe to any literal translation. That I believed the true Godliness in living is being kind to other people. That was my only holy scripture. And after years of being tolerated I told him that loving me was not enough. And I had no doubts that my father loved me deeply. But I couldn't ask for anything less than acceptance. I couldn't ask him to give me any less than I expected and received from my friends. I was through with allowing him the exception because he was my father. If anything, I deserved it all the more from him because he was my father. And I know it hurt him to say it as much as it hurt to hear it, but he said it all the same with the full confidence of his beliefs - acceptance of my being gay is something he could never give me. And that was the day our relationship ended. And all my sense of obligation, pacification and subjugation with it.
3.
Why am I writing about this now? These two relationships? Because oddly enough, I find myself having to defend myself for being gay because of the election. Because the subjugated son became the dutiful friend trying to appreciate everyone's point of view. The Libra in me balancing the scales. And I realized that I was reliving the dynamic of allowing people who say they love and support me to live the illusion that voting for the Republican ticket in 2016 isn't exactly the opposite of loving and supporting me. And I can't do it anymore. Just as I needed to come out to my mother so that I could live an honest life - and just as I needed to confront my father so that I could be free of a self-effacing life - I tell you now, either I inspire you or for my own self preservation I free myself of you. I just won't allow you to pretend that you are just voting for strong borders and bombing ISIS or repealing health care. You are voting for one of the most anti gay tickets and platforms in our modern history.
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