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

Contents:

• HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN
• DEAR PARENT OF A GAY CHILD
• GAY MEN AND THEIR MOTHERS: IS THERE A SPECIAL CLOSENS?
• SUPER PROUD MOTHER OF AN AWOME GAY SON T-SHIRT
• WHEN HIS SON CAME OUT AS GAY, THIS PASTOR DELIVERED A SERMON OF SUPPORT
• MOTHERS’ SUPPORT GAVE GAY SON LOVE TO LAST A LIFETIME

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

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.

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. ”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.

DEAR PARENT OF A GAY CHILD

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. ’ But suppose your child me to you and said, ‘Mother, Dad, I am homosexual. ”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. 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.

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

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.

: Bella Abzug, the firebrand femist who would help troduce the first feral gay-rights bill. Verg the gas money, travelled to ci and towns throughout the South to raise awarens about gay liberatn.

SUPER PROUD MOTHER OF AN AWOME GAY SON T-SHIRT

(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! The next time Morty wound up jail, Jeanne was woken up by an early-morng phone ll—not om him but om the arrtg officer, who, apparently expectg to Morty’s life, ma a show of askg Jeanne if she knew that her son was “a homosexual.

WHEN HIS SON CAME OUT AS GAY, THIS PASTOR DELIVERED A SERMON OF SUPPORT

Why don’t you go after crimals and stop harassg the gays? The possibily that he would be attacked for beg gay “was always the back of my md, ” she said—until the day when was sudnly at the foreont. In the sprg of 1972, the New York Daily News ran an edorial, headled “Any Old Jobs for Homos?, ” that referred to “fairi, nanc, swish, fags, lezz” and mend the Supreme Court for cidg that a public universy uld rcd a job offer to a man who applied for a marriage license wh his male partner.

MOTHERS’ SUPPORT GAVE GAY SON LOVE TO LAST A LIFETIME

) That edorial cid wh the annual Inner Circle dner, a parody show hosted by New York Cy journalists, which that year was slated to clu a mockg sk about a gay-rights bill.

“You would meet Jeanne Manford and you would never a ln years gus what she had her, ” Eric Marc, the thor of the 1992 book “Makg Gay History” and now the host of a podst by the same name, told me. Then she went on to exprs a sentiment never before aired a mastream publitn: “I am proud of my son, Morty Manford, and the hard work he has been dog urgg homosexuals to accept their feelgs.

Only the New York Post— s last wang days as a liberal paper, before s purchase, a few years later, by Rupert Murdoch—agreed to publish letter ma Morty realize, fally, that his mother was not jt toleratg her gay son. There was no pot gog if no one knew why she was there; she wanted to rry a first meetg of Parents of Gays was held nearly a year later, on March 11, 1973. To reach parents directly, the Manfords placed an ad the Village Voice; to reach them directly, through their children, Morty and the lbian activist Barbara Love scend on New York Cy’s gay hangouts wh fifteen hundred signs and leaflets, handma and posssg somethg of the timate, supplint look of lost-pet posters.