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

Contents:

• I TRIED TO STOP MY SON FROM BEG GAY. I WISH I HADN'T
• HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN
• GAY MEN AND THEIR MOTHERS: IS THERE A SPECIAL CLOSENS?
• WALL STREET CEOS OPEN UP ABOUT THEIR GAY SONS
• MOMMI DEART: MOTHERS AND GAY SONS ON FILM
• PARENTS OF GAY CHILDREN AND THE ISSU THEY FACE
• 10 TIPS FOR PARENTS OF GAY KIDS
• LBIANS, GAY MEN, AND THEIR PARENTS: FAY THERAPY FOR THE G-OUT CRISIS
• FOR A MOM, LEARNG TO ACCEPT A GAY SON WAS 'NONNEGOTIABLE'
• MOM WHO INIALLY STGGLED TO ACCEPT HER GAY SON NOW STANDS IN AT SAME-SEX WEDDGS
• DEAR PARENT OF A GAY CHILD
• ‘TRMATIZED’ DGHTER OF LGBT PARENTS: ‘MY GAY MOMS OPPRSED ME’

I TRIED TO STOP MY SON FROM BEG GAY. I WISH I HADN'T

Ryan: i know i amRyan: i don’t like hannahRyan: ’s jt a ver-upMom: but that don’t make you gay…Ryan: i knowRyan: but u don’t unrstandRyan: i am gayMom: tell me moreRyan: ’s jt the way i am and ’s somethg i knowRyan: u r not a lbian and u know that. Ryan: i am jt gayRyan: i am thatMom: I love you no matter whatRyan: i am whe not blackRyan: i knowRyan: i am a boy not a girlRyan: i am attracted to boys not girlsRyan: u know that about yourself and i know thisMom: what about what God thks about actg on the sir? He read all the Christian books that explaed where his gay feelgs me om and dove to unselg to further disver the orig of his unwanted attractn to other guys.

But not at all the way we had, when I thk back on the fear that erned all my reactns durg those first six years after Ryan told he was gay, I crge as I realize how foolish I was. 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.

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

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. 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.

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

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. 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.

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. ) 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.

WALL STREET CEOS OPEN UP ABOUT THEIR GAY SONS

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.

At the vatn of the Reverend Edward Egan, who was later forced to retirement bee he was gay, the meetg was held at the Metropolan-Duane Uned Methodist Church, the Wt Village. In addn to Jeanne and Jul, Morty and Love were prent to answer qutns that the parents attendance might not be fortable askg their own dghters and the time, most parents of gay or lbian children were a supremely difficult posn. They were full of qutns, many of them ignorant but all of them scere: about whether their gay son would get more effemate every year; about how their “betiful blon dghter, jt neteen” uld possibly be a lbian.

MOMMI DEART: MOTHERS AND GAY SONS ON FILM

“As parents of gay persons, ” some of the anizatn’s earlit rmatnal material read, “we have learned to regnize our children’s exprsn of love as hont and moral. People sent letters addrsed to “the misguid Parents of Gays” and quoted Scripture to prove that the “gradg, repulsive feelgs are wrong and agast nature. When the prcipal of the elementary school where she worked told her that people were startg to talk and asked her to be more discreet, Jeanne rmed the woman that her profsnal life was one thg and her private life was another and that she would do as she, though, the people who reached out to the Manfords and to Parents of Gays were lookg for help or muny or a balm for heartbreakg pa.

PARENTS OF GAY CHILDREN AND THE ISSU THEY FACE

” And yet, as word spread about Parents of Gays and the Manfords started to get vatns to appear on televisn and rad, she almost always said y.

10 TIPS FOR PARENTS OF GAY KIDS

That was not bee she craved the attentn—“There was nothg pretent about her, nothg fortune-seekg, no love of the spotlight, ” her granddghter Avril told me—but bee she was one of the few people willg to speak out public on behalf of their gay this time, Jul was one of those people, too. All around the untry, kids were gettg thrown out of their ho when they me out; meanwhile, Jeanne and Jul were welg Morty and his iends, and the Manford hoehold had bee somethg of a home for wayward gays.

LBIANS, GAY MEN, AND THEIR PARENTS: FAY THERAPY FOR THE G-OUT CRISIS

His sixteen-year-old son had jt e out, and his wife, Elae, uld hardly image anythg worse, so Bob told her about Parents of Gays and suggted that they attend a meetg. ”) Another early member, Sarah Montgomery, was a generatn olr than Jeanne—she had been born the neteenth century—but had likewise never faltered her love for her gay son. ”In California, a uple named Ale and Larry Starr me home one day to a note om their son Philip that said, “I’ve left home bee I am a homosexual.

FOR A MOM, LEARNG TO ACCEPT A GAY SON WAS 'NONNEGOTIABLE'

From the begng, one of the goals of Parents of Gays was to persua more and more of those people not jt to make peace wh their queer fay members but to make mon e wh worked.

Many early members beme evangelists for the anizatn, spirg siar groups around the untry, and 1979, durg the first Natnal March on Washgton for Lbian and Gay Rights, reprentativ om twenty-five of those groups met to talk about formg a natnal body. They were planng to ll Parents of Lbians and Gays until one participant raised an objectn: if she attend a group by that name, she would effectively out her closeted dghter. And then, once aga, tragedy found the Manford the sprg and summer of 1981, gay men started showg up tensive-re uns New York and San Francis wh a strange form of pnmonia and a rare type of ncer known as Kaposi’s sara.

MOM WHO INIALLY STGGLED TO ACCEPT HER GAY SON NOW STANDS IN AT SAME-SEX WEDDGS

On the strength of a handful of hard-won legal and cultural victori, the gay muny had jt barely begun to believe that the future would be better; stead, got sudnly, existentially worse. Before the velopment of effective antiretrovirals, AIDS was almost always fatal, and urban areas wh high ncentratns of gay men the sle of ath was overwhelmg.

DEAR PARENT OF A GAY CHILD

It was the era of Phyllis Schlafly, the era of Jerry Falwell; there was no shortage of people willg to characterize AIDS as God’s retributn for the s of beg gay. “I’ve been to AIDS funerals where they got up and nmned the body that was the ff, ” Perry many parents, though, AIDS tght them a ccial lson the harst possible way: the time to love your gay children, like all your children, is immediately and always. This was found to be te for many of the mothers and sons I terviewed for the study scribed the book: Comg Out, Comg Home: Helpg Fai Adjt to a Gay or Lbian Child ().

‘TRMATIZED’ DGHTER OF LGBT PARENTS: ‘MY GAY MOMS OPPRSED ME’

Neverthels, this closens uld have a downsi, at least temporarily, as many mothers ially blame themselv and the close relatnships for their sons' homosexualy. So, perhaps is not pletely surprisg that once they learned their sons were gay, some of the mothers I terviewed felt that they had done somethg to damage them. Even though rearch sce the 1950's has bunked , this theory persists people's mds and rears s ugly head for mothers when they ially learn their sons are gay.