Contents:
MOM DAD I’M GAY
" Several archdc have recently imposed polici rtrictg teachers Catholic schools om exprsg support for marriage equaly and several have fired gay and lbian faculty members who have married. That's when their olst son, Jim, me home om llege wh the news that he was gay. "It was his way of articulatg how he felt as a young gay man, " says his mother.
She uldn't even say the words "gay" or "homosexual" when she fally got up the urage to ll a lol Catholic prit whom Jim already had nfid. They had no klg Jim was gay and no ia how to al wh homosexualy wh the ntext of their fah. It was three years before the Lopatas told anybody else that Jim was gay, even their clost iends.
She and her hband first found their way to a secular group lled Parents, Fai, and Friends of Lbians and Gays (PFLAG) where they received support om other parents of homosexuals, along wh ndolenc om those who nsired the Catholic Church to be tolerant and homophobic. Last year Mary Ellen Lopata wrote a book about her experienc as a Catholic parent of a gay child. In Fortunate Fai: Catholic Fai Wh Lbian Dghters and Gay Sons (Trafford), she scrib the lack of accurate rmatn and sound pastoral rourc for parents and fai of gay and lbian Catholics 20 years ago.