Parents of Gay Children and the Issu They Face | HealthyPlace

Contents:

• MOM WHO INIALLY STGGLED TO ACCEPT HER GAY SON NOW STANDS IN AT SAME-SEX WEDDGS
• HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN
• GAY MEN AND THEIR MOTHERS: IS THERE A SPECIAL CLOSENS?
• SALLY FIELD ON BEG A MOM WHO SUPPORTS HER GAY SON SPOILER ALERT
• A MOTHER'S LETTER TO HER GAY SON BCE DAVID CIELLO
• 'RETURN THE KEY': THE PARENTS WHO REJECT THEIR GAY CHILDREN
• PARENTS OF GAY CHILDREN AND THE ISSU THEY FACE

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

Fally, when he turned 21, Parker told his mother a tth he had only hted at before: he is gay. "I jt remember that I had to face realy that moment, that hour, that I have a gay child, " said Sara.

"I’ve heard said that when a gay child out of their closet, the parents often go to theirs and that’s te, " she one of those days, Parker me to her room to ask if she was OK. But she’s here now and wants to help others the gay muny who are stgglg wh rejectn om their now volunteers to go to other same-sex weddgs if the blogil parents refe to attend. 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.

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

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.

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

At the time, homosexual acts were crimal forty-ne stat, wh punishments rangg om f to prison time, cludg life sentenc.

SALLY FIELD ON BEG A MOM WHO SUPPORTS HER GAY SON SPOILER ALERT

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.

A MOTHER'S LETTER TO HER GAY SON BCE DAVID CIELLO

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.

'RETURN THE KEY': THE PARENTS WHO REJECT THEIR GAY CHILDREN

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

PARENTS OF GAY CHILDREN AND THE ISSU THEY FACE

”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.