Reply #9: I am so very glad you shared this. . .especially on this day. [View All]

Your story is a depiction of what happens much too often in households that have been overly influenced by the evil which permeates our culture. And to me, this is exactly the kind of goal people and organizations like the AFA and Focus on the "Family" work feverishly for - to restore the embarassment and humiliation that can target gay Americans as unworthy of being full members of their own families.

It is funny how parents sometimes learn to rewrite the history of their own child's upbringing years after they have instilled such fear and insecurity in their own flesh and blood. Often I think this is because of a sense of guilt they discover as they change over time - yet usually the damage is already done and the relationships can't often be changed. I've been through that with my own parents - they try to be supportive now in their elderly years, and yet just beneath the surface I can still sense how rapidly they can disapprove of my own existence.

I had a partner for 16 years - and, being traditional about "marriage," despite lots of transgressions and little affairs he had along the way, I used my own self-tortured upbringing as a martyr to keep that relationship going. When it finally concluded (of course, with me giving up most of everything) I had realized that for the first time in my adult life, I was actually on my own completely.

He was one of those partners who always had to fly home for the holidays - and yet I wasn't welcome to accompany him. . .not because his family didn't like me, but because Christmas was for "family" and I wasn't "officially recognized." So we would always decorate our home and he would go home for a few days while I worked overtime or watched movies or found ways to keep myself occupied.

There is a reason why gay bars are open and usually busy on these holidays - when I would used to drop by there on a Christmas Eve night, I was surprised at how many poeple filled the club. Most were solitary - sitting at the bar or dancing with one friend - and many were ostracized from their own families because of the same "family" values the Right pushes so hard today. It was a welcome diversion - and if people were bitter, they knew how to hide it well. Patrons would say "Merry Christmas" to each other and bars would roll out a buffet to make the holiday seem more like family in the only gathering place for gays to meet. In that way, it seemed that the estranged memories from families could fade to the back of our minds and we could celebrate in the only way society seemed to allow us - from the fringes.

It is ironic that we always hear stories about the "true" meaning of Christmas this time of year - about helping the poor and unfortunate, of giving to others. . .and yet we were the group who could stand there and know the hypocrisy of those who would utter such devotions while depriving their own children and their partners. Christmas became used as a whipping post for those who were alone and unwanted - a way to underscore how they couldn't and didn't fit in and were somehow less valued because they had not duplicated the ideal fundie image of family life.

I'm glad that I'm old enough now to be over that image - and have learned how to value the peace of these holidays and the small gifts that come my way or are extended to others on a daily basis. I think if I oculd say anything to you, Kyle. . .it is that you extend those gifts in every day that you continue living your life for yourself - and that you should not worry about love, because it will travel your way when the time is right. You see, if there is a God, Love is what He/She created, and that isn't regulated by those who vilified you or tried so desperately to make you a target in order to divert attention from their own evils. Love is the way that you continued to nurture yourself even when all was lost and how you knew what you could give your life to from a very early young age. It was your parents who never grew up spiritually enough to realize that all of their actions couldn't destroy your dreams or desires. . .they were implicitly what was created inside you and that's why they remain to this day.

I guess what seems most telling to me is how the real "sinners" are the very ones perpetrating this level of denial and hatred to members of their own families masked under the guise of "morality" and "God." They've used that as a scapegoat so many times that it hardly bears any effect on me any longer - that need to inflict guilt and humiliation through namecalling and labeling and bullying that only points out how much anger and disgust they hold within themselves.

So don't despair too much about the past, Kyle. . .there is a future ahead that comes from what you have always known and protected inside, and no one can really take that away from you. And for all of us who are gay Americans from widely different experiences and backgrounds, our lives and our futures depend on our willingness to stay connected and to look after each other in the way so many families have failed to do for their own. We shall overcome.