Contents:
- HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN
- 'WE'RE NOT HIDG': GAY AND LBIAN RSIANS SAY A CULTURAL SHIFT IS UNRWAY
HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN
Wh gay story l regularly poppg up on primetime TV and high-profile celebri regularly g out, the act of g out self don't seem like such a revelatory event anymore:"The g-out story might be to the late twentieth century what the marriage plot was to Victorian tim: a story le ma relevant by social nventns, often reprsive on--and then, as those nventns erod, ma irrelevant aga.
'WE'RE NOT HIDG': GAY AND LBIAN RSIANS SAY A CULTURAL SHIFT IS UNRWAY
By the end of her sophomore year, the reverse of today’s joke about llege, she had lost fifteen pounds and was sufferg om malnutrn. 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.