The Part of Our Family’s Story I Learned not to tell in the Eighties and Early Nineties

Joe and Caity have given me permission to write the following. I figure it’s time to come out of the closet but it pretty much finishes my career off in traditional evangelical circles….

So, there is a universal law that if children want to tell their parents something heavy they choose to do so when said parents are a. in bed, or b. driving in bumper to bumper traffic.

I was just snuggling in to drift off when Caity appeared in the doorway.

"Mom, I’ve got something to tell you and Isaac says if I don’t tell you he’s going to."

Half asleep, I roused.

She rolled back and forth leaning from side to side, edge to edge of the doorway.

All summer long she had been ecstatic every time a certain young friend who was a girl would call up and ask if they could go driving. My mind went to a place I’d wondered about since she was little and looked at me after asking what a lesbian was and then said, "Nobody would know that unless you told them you were right?"

You know how kids say random stuff and it just catches your ear?

So there she is in my doorway having a panic attack just about and I begin to go to a fantasyland while she garners the courage to say her truth out loud. I start to decorate for a gay wedding out in the backyard. I put out white fancy lawn chairs with bows down the aisle. An arbor with white flowers appears in my mind’s eye. I ponder briefly if she will wear a dress or a tux. Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s Caity. She’ll wear a dress—huge princess ball gown of a dress, or possibly slinky little number.

Caity is now sounding like she’s going to say it out loud. She takes a deep breath and states…. I’ve been smoking. Then buries her shamed filled soul in her hands.

It took me a minute. I had to send home the imaginary, carefully chosen guests I’d invited, take down the arbor, and put away the chairs. Then back to reality, it hits me. In my big girl voice I say, "You’ve been SMOKING!!!!" "Caity," I begin in a more controlled appropriate tone. "Do you know how many people have donated their precious dollars for you to develop that voice!?" The volume rises at the end of the sentence as I lose my ability to be that carefully controlled ‘so be it’ parent that I love to be.

OK…I’ll tell you the end of that story at the end of this column. But now let me tell you why on earth I would immediately go to a place where I think my daughter is going to come out to me.

The answer lies in the story of my son Joe. In early 1989 the best social worker in the world, Debbie Spurling by name, who had placed my beloved first adopted daughter with us came to me and asked if I could do respite care for a weekend for Joey. I’d known Joey since he was three and placed with another family in our group for adoption. The adoption had disrupted. A delightful, fast-moving towhead with a wonderful joy about him, I said ‘yes’.

"I wouldn’t mind if you fell in love with this one, " she went on. "I’ve got nowhere else to place him." He was an end of the line kid. In the adoption business that means he’s headed for residential care if they can’t find a placement. Residential care has, in America, traditionally been a breeding ground for the lost to get loster and learn new bad tricks of the trade in acting out behavior.

"Why did it disrupt with ____?" I asked of his placement with the previous family.

"Issues" she stated.

Well the ‘issues’ were this. At the age of three Joey had been diagnosed with ‘gender confusion’. That’s what they called it in those days. And a very bad therapist who for some reason believed that a child who was perhaps going to identify as gay when he became of age to know to do so needed to have a basket of women’s clothes. They had trained him in preschool day treatment to wear women’s clothes.

I did fall in love with him. Bought him a dinosaur blanket to let him know how much, and after a long series of events that ended up in a court date with destiny to fight to keep him out of a path that would cause him to end up staying in the system long past his pull date, I adopted him. Only one condition to that adoption, I had to agree to support and raise him as gay if he so identified.

Now here’s the interesting part. I was under care for ordination at a time when the only question anyone wanted to seem to ask was ‘how do you feel about the homosexual issue’. My standard response was, ‘it’s a personal issue not a political or theological issue to me. Could you ask me another question?" I couldn’t tell them, I’m the mom of a gay son. I have two gay cousins and regularly talk with my aunt about how to support and love my son. My biggest problem is that I’m more comfortable with my son being gay than he is"

I was a theatre major at an all women’s college. You were either comfortable with gay, or you transferred and chose a different major. It wasn’t a big deal to me. My friend Betty and I used to have these random conversations when yet another woman would come out that went something like, "Do you think there’s something wrong with us because we’re so hetero?"

My son has battled his way to acceptance and I couldn’t be more proud of him. I want to tell more of his story but space limits this. Obviously I would love for him to find his life partner someday. What I want for him in that partner is the same as I want for my other children: someone who loves them for who they are and wants to support them as the become who they might be, someone who will care for them, stand by them, never betray them and never ever ever clip their wings.

Here’s the rub. I couldn’t find a place in the church where I could walk my walk openly. Not only do I have a gay son but also I love Jesus a whole lot and walk daily with the Spirit. In the church if you love gay people, chances are Jesus is just a great teacher to you. If you walk in the Holy Spirit, you most likely start quoting scripture.

What I want from the church about gay marriage is this. I want them to stop making it an issue. I want them to just accept it. Not because it’s politically correct and trendy, but because it’s about love. And I want the people who love Jesus and walk in the Spirit to be more concerned about the 39% of clergy who admit to inappropriate sexual relations with a member of their flock, the people who spank their children and call it discipline instead of domestic violence, and throw more effort into reducing the divorce rate amongst married people.

I hope someday those imaginary chairs I dragged onto the lawn and those guests I invited will be real for Joe and the man of his dreams. The ‘why’ of Joe’s gay identity doesn’t matter, the ‘how’ he lives it out does.

You are voting for people who love each other to have the opportunity to be recognized by the church or in front of a judge all dressed up and happy as can be. They will not have any more or less happiness than us heteros, and they will have to fight for their marriage everyday and not quit if they wanted to be married a long time, just like heteros.

Ok…the end of Caity’s smoking is roughly this. She went to a university where you can lose your scholarship if you smoke. She had to go to her chorale conductor and get permission to enroll in the weeks long recovery program, put herself in therapy and quit…smoking. I’m forever grateful the right child went into a program to correct her identity.

And well….like I said, that’s kind of the end of my speaking career at certain denominations. So be it.

Love,
Deborah