Love, Ellen: A Mother/Daughter Journey (28 page)

John’s son was small when his parents divorced and chose to live with his father. Saying that his son’s well-being has always been of the utmost importance to him, John added that the boy is now a young man—twenty-one years old and “110 percent masculine,” complete with girlfriend. John, his son, the girlfriend, and her parents all get along well.

John recalled that once his son had a friend over for the night, when he was younger. The friend knew that John was gay and asked, “Your father isn’t going to come in here in the middle of the night, is he?”

John’s son replied, “My mother’s a sexy, attractive lady. If we were at her house, would you ask if she was coming in here in the middle of the night?” What a kid.

In Philadelphia, I saw another example of true, positive family values when I met Chuck and Jay. They treated me to a visit to the Philadelphia Art Museum—which is a joy, especially with a wonderful Impressionist collection. Then we met Jay’s daughter, Jen, for lunch in the museum restaurant. She was home from college for spring break—a lovely young woman, very bright, friendly, and focused and planning to go into civil rights law.

Jay and his wife divorced when Jen was four. Their relationship was amicable almost from the start, and they wanted their daughter to know that she had the love of both parents. Jen had her own room in each parent’s home, and Jay remains friendly and in close touch with his ex-wife and his former in-laws. I could see that Jen loved both her Dad and Chuck. It was evident how much she appreciates and respects their caring, committed relationship.

Our discussion at Harvard-Westlake about gay parenting reminded me of a few encouraging news items I have read about gay and lesbian couples adopting children; something that is happening more and more. New Jersey, obviously an enlightened state, has just passed a law giving gay and lesbian couples the right to adopt. On one of the news reports, there was an interview with a woman from an organization that calls itself “profamily” and opposes gay adoption. She said how selfish it was to deprive children of what they need most—a mother and a father.

To me, the true profamily stance would be to recognize that what children need is a parent or two parents, who love them unconditionally, who give them a safe, loving home filled with joy and laughter and mental stimulation. Furthermore, unlike heterosexual couples, who often have unplanned pregnancies, gay couples must go to a great deal of trouble to become parents. Their children are truly wanted, and they are part of a true family.

Since many dysfunctional, abusive households have a mother and a father present, it’s clear that being heterosexual is not necessarily a qualification for being a good parent.

I recently met a woman writer for a gay newspaper who said she and her partner have four children. The daughter had to explain this fact to her two best friends at school. The daughter told her friends that she has two mommies, and their response was, “Oh, that’s neat.”

I was introduced to a man in New Orleans not long ago who identified himself as a gay foster parent. He told me his amazing story: “Three years ago, I took on a twelve-year-old boy who could spell his first name and that was as far as he could go. The state said he was nothing but a ‘special ed.’ child—but the real causes were abuse and the prescribed drugs that he was strung out on. Now, three years later, he’s in ninth grade, he’s getting more A’s than B’s, and he has just blossomed. He plays five instruments and he tap-dances, and all the people at P-FLAG just love him. As a child he was abused by his parents and thrown around the system for four years in several two-parent foster homes and four institutions before I got him, and he was just shell-shocked, like a Bosnian child. Now he may end up being a medical doctor—that’s his goal. So in three years he’s gone from kindergarten to ninth grade.”

Then this wonderful father laughed and added, “And as far as I know, he’s going to be a straight boy.”

To which I replied, “He’s just going to be what he’s going to be.”

My new hero of the moment (I meet so many) agreed and said, in a down-home accent that was music to my ears, “My kid hugs on everybody and everybody loves him.”

Then there were the two men I met in the South who told me they have two adopted children—a boy, six; and a girl, two—the joy of their lives. I asked to see pictures, and they proudly showed me the happy, smiling pair—both black. I told them they were very brave—a gay white couple living in the South and adopting black children. They said it hasn’t been a problem at all. One of the men is a “room mother” and helps out at school events. He was there the previous day for a party and some boys were asking his six-year-old son, “How come you’re black and your Dad’s white?”

His son said, “Look, I have a birth mother but I don’t know her, so I have two dads. OK?”

Remembering them, I could not be more proud of their family and their community for teaching and practicing love and acceptance. I really believe that these tolerant communities represent the majority of Americans. I am convinced that it is the intolerant people who are in the minority and on the fringes of society.

In fact, that point was raised by one of the gay students when he stood up and said that the majority of his straight peers treated him with respect and dignity. But there was one student who was overtly intolerant and belligerent.

Someone suggested that perhaps the intolerance grew from that person’s insecurity about his own sexuality; in order to compensate, the other student was just trying to show how macho and mean he could be. This brought to mind Shakespeare’s lines: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Another student, who is straight, asked a follow-up question. He said he had tried to talk to a fellow student about tolerance, only to be given a lecture on the immorality of homosexuality. He wondered if there was a way to talk reasonably to a peer who is intolerant.

Ellen thought about this question and then said, “It’s hard to be rational with irrational people, especially when they’re convinced that they’re right and you’re wrong. I don’t know what it taps into, and …” she sighed, “sometimes people hide behind religion and the Bible, and don’t get me started on that.” El did get started, though, enough to say, “A lot of these people who are so hateful are using God and the Bible to justify their hateful actions, and that’s just the opposite of what I believe God is—which is Love.”

There was quiet as many young people nodded in agreement. Ellen said that people who justify intolerance by citing specific passages in the Bible ignore other passages—passages which don’t support their argument. She also questioned the idea of following a narrow, literal interpretation of rules laid down thousands of years ago. “I know this from doing interviews that when somebody sits there with a tape recorder and has every single word that I’ve said on tape, and the article comes out and I’m misquoted. … Here’s a guy with a chisel and a stone, and he’s writing the words out. Something’s gonna get lost in the translation.”

Everyone laughed.

As we laughed, I had some of my own thoughts on this complex subject.

M
ANY OF YOU
reading this may know from your own experience that when you or your family member comes out, it can call into question some of the religious values you have been taught. This is a highly personal issue, and it is not my intention to tell you what and how you should believe. By the same token, I am alarmed by the increasingly strident rhetoric of extremist groups who are making all possible efforts to dictate what and how you believe. Because of my own religious values, I feel a need to speak out against their hypocritical message.

In
Angels in Our Midst,
given to me by Mary Fisher, AIDS activist and author, I saw this letter:

And they call themselves Christians? How could they be so heartless? How could so many have gone so far afield from the teachings of the One they profess to follow?

The activist Paul Monette wrote of “a world that wallows in holy wars and ethnic bloodbaths.” Regarding the movement toward greater visibility for gays and lesbians, he told of a friend who was “worried about the backlash, having an instinct for the savageries of which religion is capable.” Monette used the terms “Stepford Christians” and “Christian Supremacists.”

There are enlightened Christians everywhere who embrace the teaching of love and don’t fall for inflammatory rhetoric like the rhetoric of televangelists whose main message seems to be “send money.” I recalled a night when I was channel surfing and saw some “Christian” network on TV with a ranting minister saying, “Now, child of God, send in a thousand dollars right now.” He kept saying “child of God.” What a subtle message to those who aren’t mentally alert. We’re each and every one of us a child of God and we don’t have to send a thousand dollars to anyone to prove it.

The bottom line is that no one person or group has a monopoly on God or faith. I appreciated that sentiment, and the live-and-let-live philosophy, expressed in this letter, which followed the coming out episode:

Contrasting with that truly Christian attitude was a disturbing letter shown to me by my good friend Dr. Jim Gordon, a psychologist and fellow activist. It was from a Baptist minister writing to a gay magazine, and it included rhetoric such as “this sickening perversion”; “those who are enslaved in this type of lifestyle and feel they cannot be free or know they can in fact be normal”; and “sinful, learned behavior.” Almost laughable, if it were not so malevolent, was his comment, “We love you people but hate your lifestyle and wickedness.”

That’s not love by anyone’s definition. Behind the doubletalk, what he’s really saying is, “We despise you and we are spreading a doctrine of hatred, fear, ignorance, and religious extremist supremacy.”

It’s very hard for me to read the hypocrisy of so-called men of God, knowing as I do all the wonderful, brilliant gay men and women I have met all over this country of ours—men and women, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers—who are doing good in all walks of life and are contributing to our society in magnificent ways.

However, our country, where “all men are created equal,” also has free speech as its cornerstone. Hence, we must let the extremists rant. But because we too have that right of speech, there are times when we must reply.

Wouldn’t it be better if the inordinate energy and money spent by right-wing religious extremists to rant about what others do in the privacy of their own homes could be spent in causes that are actually family-friendly? Not long ago there was an article in the
Los Angeles Times
about the casualties of the Orange County welfare system—a real-life horror story. It mentioned one mother who has five drug-addicted babies, each by a different man, and each man now in various state lockups.

In four out of five cases of child abuse, the mother or father is a drug user. Now, there’s a project for the fundamentalists. Go after abusive parents; educate women having multiple babies by multiple fathers; go after drug dealers and users. More than 4,600 children are under the court’s protection in Orange County. Here’s a startling figure: Since 1990 the number of children whose cases end up in these courts has risen 54 percent.

And then there’s the terrifying phenomenon of kids and guns. Children bring weapons to school and murder their classmates. It’s happening all across the country, even in “all-American” towns where people tell themselves, “It can’t happen here.” Where is the outcry on behalf of those innocent children whose lives are being taken from them? Think of the good these preachers could do. While they’re at it, the inner cities could also use some help—there are more than 58,000 gang members in Los Angeles County alone.

If we need an example of how we can make a difference in these children’s lives, just think of the gay foster parent who transformed a drug-addicted boy—a kid that the system almost gave up as a lost cause—into a well-rounded good student.

I am heartened by stories of those who question hateful rhetoric. When I was in the South, I heard of a Baptist couple who stopped going to their church because their pastor said such demeaning things about their gay son.

At an HRC dinner in Atlanta I met an African-American mom, Heloyse. She and her gay son sat next to me at my table. He was a fine man, successful in business, and his mother loved him just as she did her other two children. When we talked about mothers who, on the grounds of religion, reject their gay sons and daughters, Heloyse said, “Well, we’ll just have to pray for them.”

Religion should never be an excuse not to love. That’s what I said to the young gay woman I met in the Midwest who told me, “My mother won’t have anything to do with me—she’s Catholic.”