How One Mother’s Love for Her Gay Son Started a Revolutn | The New Yorker

Contents:

• DEAR PARENT OF A GAY CHILD
• HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN
• A LETTER TO HER GAY SON: SPREADG LR MAYENO'S PROFOUND MSAGE
• JT BEE HE BREATH: LEARNG TO TLY LOVE OUR GAY SON
• GAY MEN AND THEIR MOTHERS: IS THERE A SPECIAL CLOSENS?

DEAR PARENT OF A GAY CHILD

After Lil Nas X me out publicly as gay and fully embraced his sexualy his Montero (Call Me By Your Name) mic vio, his father, gospel mician Robert Stafford, wrote on Instagram, “Very creative vio. Tori Spellg & Dean McDermott are no strangers to parentg an LGBTQ+ child — McDermott’s olst son, Jack, is gay. Durg a film screeng of his movie My Fake Boyiend  June, McDermott posted an Instagram Story which said, part, “The thg I love about this movie is I got to share wh my 15-year-old, who intifi as trans, and my gay son.

In December 2021, By Philipps announced on her podst, By Philipps is Dog Her Bt, that her child Birdie is gay and prefers they/them pronouns. “As a parent, I wanted EJ to know that we loved him and would always love him, ” Magic Johnson told the New York Tim of his reactn when his son, makp artist EJ Johnson, me out to him as gay when he was a teenager. “As long as I am upright, I will fight [so] that Sam and everyone’s children and grandchildren and sisters and brothers will be protected every state of the Uned Stat, ” Sally Field said of her son, Sam Greisman, who is gay — and why she’s a part of the Human Rights Campaign’s work towards the Equaly Act.

I jt want to make sure he gets to have a fay when he wants one, ” Marcia Gay Harn said of son Hudson at the Fay Equaly Council’s Impact Awards. You may have grown up thkg that gay people f to a certa five mold, and your child acted “straight” through the years, only to seemgly sudnly reveal their same-sex attractn. Others entst only their parents wh their secret until the timg is right to tell may feel happy, relieved, sad, sred, angry, nfed, or all of the above when you fd out your child is gay.

HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN

I reached out to my lol PFLAG — a natnwi group that holds regular meetgs for parents of gay children (no matter the age).

It's also where I learned about Tvada, a daily pill aimed at batg HIV wh high-risk groups (gay men, for example). It was a wonrful experience to meet all the other fay members and hear their stori and learn om a parent n be very sry, pecially today’s tumultuo a parent to a gay child n often add an extra layer of worry and fear.

Whether you are gay, straight, bi, pan, asexual, or everythg parents, ntu to be our job to love and protect and support our children. She was rryg a piece of orange poster board wh a msage hand-lettered black marker: “PARENTS of GAYS: UNITE SUPPORT fOR oUR CHILDREN. They asked if they uld kiss her; they asked if she would talk to their parents; they told her that they uldn’t image their own mothers and fathers supportg them so publicly, or supportg them at woman’s name was Jeanne Manford, and she was marchg alongsi her twenty-one-year-old gay son, Morty.

A LETTER TO HER GAY SON: SPREADG LR MAYENO'S PROFOUND MSAGE

The anizatn they dreamed up that day, which started as a sgle support group Manhattan, was ially lled Parents of Gays; later, was renamed Parents FLAG, for Parents and Friends of Lbians and Gays; nowadays, is known only as PFLAG. The same year Avril was born, Morty’s psychiatrist summoned Jeanne and Jul to his office and rmed them that their beloved goln boy and sole survivg son was the bt of her knowledge, Jeanne Manford had never known anyone who was gay.

JT BEE HE BREATH: LEARNG TO TLY LOVE OUR GAY SON

”There was no mystery about what that kd of tradnal, law-abidg woman was supposed to thk about gay people 1968. At the time, homosexual acts were crimal forty-ne stat, wh punishments rangg om f to prison time, cludg life sentenc. Polil anizg was virtually impossible—one early gay-rights group that attempted to officially rporate New York was told that s mere existence would vlate state sodomy laws—and posive cultural reprentatn was all but nonexistent; there were no openly gay or lbian policians, punds, relig lears, actors, athlet, or micians the mastream.

Newspapers ed the words “homosexual” and “pervert” terchangeably, and the handful of gay people who appeared on televisn to discs their “life style” almost always had their fac hidn shadows or otherwise obscured. In 1974, when “The Pat Colls Show” aired a segment on parents of gay children, the host troduced by sayg, “Even if he mted murr, I gus you’d say, ‘Well, he’s still my child, no matter what.

”You uld f most of the solar system to the chasm between how the average Amerin of the era would have reacted that hypothetil suatn and how Jeanne Manford rpond upon learng that Morty was gay. Not for a moment did she wonr, as the otherwise supportive Jul ially did, if his gayns reflected some failg of theirs as parents.

GAY MEN AND THEIR MOTHERS: IS THERE A SPECIAL CLOSENS?

Later, after he went to llege at Columbia and me to terms wh beg gay, the steady, unfsy love of his fay seemed tepid pared wh his own creasg radilism. The first time he attend a gay-rights prott, he wore sunglass and turned away om the news meras, but he soon beme, his sister Suzanne (now Suzanne Manford Swan) told me, “unaaid and unstoppable. ” An eighteen-year-old regular at the Stonewall Inn, Morty was there when a fight broke out between patrons and the police the summer of 1969, an event that talyzed the gay-rights movement.

The followg year, after jog the brand-new Gay Activists Alliance, he began anizg polil monstratns, then dropped out of llege to do so full time. Not long after, he was arrted for refg to move when police tried to shoo him off a stoop on Christopher Street, the heart of the Greenwich Village gay scene.

(One of them, om the Tim, featured him beg ejected om a benef for John Ldsay, the mayor of New York Cy, after shoutg, “Jtice for homosexuals!