My daughters best friend told her she was gay
“You want to shove those words back in and put the lid on. But you can’t. Your child is gay. This goes against everything you’ve been taught. It was not what you had in mind, and you instantly wonder where you went wrong.”
When you turn into a parent, you recognize to expect the unexpected. But for many Christian parents, nothing can ready them to hear that their beloved child is gay. This is the child you have cradled, spoon fed mashed bananas, and dreamed a pretty future for. How could this be? What will the church say? What will your friends say? What does the future hold? You can’t even get your head around this.
If you are a Christian parent, family member or friend to whom your loved one has come out as homosexual or lesbian, then this is for you.
I ask you to sit down, relax, maybe get a cup of tea, and soak in what I’m about to tell you. My hope is to guide you as we walk for a bit through this maze of confusion, to help you find your way to wholeness. In many Christian circles, this is not good news, and you may begin to spiral into reflection and self-searching. We’ll get to that. But at the bottom of it all, this is not about you. Most parents’ first mistake is to mak
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“My 11-year-old was just dumped by his best companion because he’s gay.
My son C.J. lay in my arms all night. He cried until a restless sleep found him, then he whimpered rhythmically. If I moved away, he moved toward me so that our cheeks were touching.
He hadn’t slept in bed with me since he was six months old. He turned 11 on February 1st. A week later, Allie, his ‘school best friend,’ broke his heart.
‘My family doesn’t hang out with queer people, so I’m not going to hang out with you anymore,’ she told him as they walked together after institution. C.J. didn’t say anything. He was in shock and confused. The feeling of his heart breaking for the first second rendered him speechless.
We’ve established Allie’s family casually for nine years, in the way you know a family when you increase children together in the suburbs. C.J. has gone to school with Allie for half his animation. She’s always known that he’s a gender-creative teen who likes ‘girl thing
Two single friends, one radical plan: why I’m having a child with my gay best mate
I held my breath as the sonographer pressed the probe into my belly. I could spot something promising on the screen but needed to listento the expert express it before I could believe it. “There’s the heartbeat,” she said, and relief flooded through me. Next to me Tom, the baby’s father, squeezed my hand as tears rolled down my cheek.
We probably looked like any other happy couple the sonographer saw that day, about to embark on parenthood for the first time. But Tom isn’t my partner; he’s my top friend. We’re both single, he’s queer and soon we’re going to be platonically co-parenting that little bean on the screen together after years of separately experiencing the pain and longing of childlessness.
I first began to panic about having a baby when I turned 31. I woke on my birthday in a tiny box room in the tiny flat where I lodged, suddenly very aware that I had not strike any of the classic milestones. I was in the preceding stages of a new career, having recently retrained as a journalist, and was earning very little. I was also single. The scary age of 35, drummed into every woman’s head as the age f
I’m so glad you reached out. It’s good to question questions and to be informed so that you can best support your child.
To start with, sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate things. Gender identity is how a person feels on the inside with regard to their gender. There is a whole spectrum of gender that exists, and a person may identify as the gender they were given at birth or a different gender at any point in their life. Sexual orientation has to do with who a person may be attracted to or not attracted to. This could be a physical, romantic, emotional, spiritual, etc. attraction to another person of a particular gender, more than one gender or all genders across the spectrum. For some people, their gender and sexual orientation stay the similar throughout their being. For others, sexual orientation and/or gender identity may transform at some show in a person’s life and remain that way for the rest of their life. Others may experience their gender identity and/or sexual orientation as being fluid, so that it may change throughout their life. It’s so personal and distinct to every individual.
Your child is sharing something very personal with you. First and foremost, you
Special to the National Catholic Reporter
Marge Mayer of North Hollywood, Calif., found out nearly seven years ago in a letter from her son Tim.
"I need us to be closer and I want to be more open about my personal life," he wrote. "I am also sick of hiding who I am -- it's not fair to me or anyone else. If you haven't already guessed it, I am now ready to tell you that I am gay. I always contain been. I am also gay! (happy)"
That letter, ironically, was dated Oct. 10, National Coming Out Day.
Mary Ellen Lapota of Rochester, N.Y., remembers how her son Jim told her. He said, "I'm lonely for a man." That was 13 years ago and Jim was a college sophomore, home for Thanksgiving vacation.
These and other Catholic parents have been changed by such announcements. They have listened and learned from their gay children's coming-out stories and have started sharing their experiences with others.
Nationwide, more and more parents keep joining their ranks, from families both conservative and liberal, from California to North Carolina, from Indiana to New York, from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts. As parents groups grow, in some areas so has churc