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Parents of Gay Catholics
By Olga Bonfiglio [Olga Bonfiglio]
Wednesday, 21-Jul-2010, 19:39
September 7, 2009
NewCatholicTimes.ca
Meg decided at age seven she didn’t want to become an adult because she perceived life to be too hard. School had already made her miserable when kids treated her as “different.”
When the talented girl who liked to write plays and stories and participate in forensics competitions went to college, she became withdrawn, lost her wit and drastically changed her appearance, said Mary Black, her mother.
“Meg could not tell me what was wrong. Then at age 25 after she moved to Los Angeles, she fell into a deep depression and avoided coming home or inviting her parents for visits.”
Finally, Meg wrote her mother a letter revealing that she was a lesbian.
“My hopes and dreams vanished,” said Black who then wondered what she had done wrong in Meg’s upbringing.
Such parental guilt is typical and often results in a withdrawal from family and friends.
Then, God changed things, said Black after she joined Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), an organization that “embraces everyone, including those of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.” She also learned about the causes of Meg’s distress.
Gay youth like Meg experience depression four and five times more severely than their non-gay peers. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 45 percent of gays and 20 percent of lesbians experience verbal and/or physical violence while 28 percent of high school gays drop out of school as a result. The Journal of Homosexuality calculated that 80 percent of gays, lesbians and bisexual youth suffer severe isolation problems while over half of high school students reported hearing homophobic comments from school staff.
“Now I’m happy and proud to be the mother of a lesbian,” said Black, whose daughter and her partner now live near her in Detroit.
But happiness isn’t always the outcome for Catholic families once parents find out the truth. And the Church doesn’t always handle the homosexuality issue well.
In fact, many gays and their families are leaving the Church because they do not feel welcome or comfortable with its treatment of gays or its teachings on the subject of homosexuality, said Casey Lopata, co-founder and board member of the Rochester, NY-based Fortunate Families, a nation-wide volunteer network for Catholic parents of gay children, one of a handful of support groups filling the void for the Church.
“You can’t minister to people who are invisible, so you must open up the conversation,” said Linda Nelson, mother of a gay son and a board member of Fortunate Families; she works with its Detroit chapter.
We don’t debate the issue of homosexuality, she said. Instead, parents of gay children “simply tell stories” about their struggles and spiritual journeys in order to deal with the truth about their children.
Tom Nelson, Linda’s second husband, had a typical Catholic upbringing, with 16 years of Catholic school, a devoted wife, six children and a good job as an engineer.
“I had all the answers, I knew all the rules and all the reasons for the rules,” he said.
However, when his son, Mark, nearly committed suicide because he could no longer confront “his demons,” Nelson was totally unprepared.
He never suspected that Mark was gay because he loved athletic and outdoor activities.
“He couldn’t tell who he was because he had heard me say that homosexuality was an abomination,” said Nelson who still can’t get over the hurt he unknowingly inflicted on Mark when he was a youngster.
As Mark lay on his bed waiting for death after swallowing a bottle of painkillers, he heard a voice say: “I made you just the way you are and you are good.” Mark believed it was God and he ran to the bathroom and vomited the pills.
After his attempted suicide, Nelson approached Mark about the truth.
“At that moment my whole structured life I had so much certitude about collapsed. And yet my love for my son didn’t change.”
But that’s not the way it is for some parents who can’t accept their gay children either because of their own beliefs and/or because of what the Church has taught, said Nelson who related the story of one young man who after telling his mother he was gay was told never come home again. She later shot herself.
Children fear what their parents will say once they reveal they are gay and some of them are forced to leave home because their sexual identities cause unresolved conflict with their families. Some even suffer physical violence after they reveal their secret.
So it is no wonder that gays are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than other youths or that 30 percent of all completed youth suicides are related to sexual identity issues, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report.
When Nelson first learned of his son’s homosexuality he resorted to Sigmund Freud’s explanation that the condition is caused by a domineering mother and a weak father. So he believed it was his wife’s fault that Mark was gay, a typical first response.
Eventually, Nelson said he realized that his real problem in handling Mark’s revelation was that he lacked the Christian qualities of love and empathy in his relationships with others, including his family.
“In order to love others, “you must first know them,” said Nelson.
Over the years Nelson has met other gay people through Mark and discovered their warmth, charity and love of others despite the abuse they receive from the Church, government and society.
“I learned how to love, too,” said Nelson. “That’s what we’re all here for.”
The National Council of Catholic Bishops addressed parents of gay children in their 1997 pastoral letter, “Always Our Children” in an attempt to reach out to parents during a difficult time. In the letter the bishops not only clarified Church teachings but they dismissed some of the erroneous information that had been circulated about gays. It is a document that Fortunate Families frequently cites in its advocacy work, said Nelson.
Sexual orientation, be it heterosexual or homosexual, is “a fundamental dimension of one’s personality…” says the letter. While the Church acknowledges that there is “no single cause of a homosexual orientation,” it maintains that such an orientation is not a sin because “morality presumes the freedom to choose.”
Nevertheless, the bishops made it clear that they do not endorse what some people call “a homosexual lifestyle” and that “homogenital behavior is objectively immoral” because intercourse may only occur between a man and a women and every act of intercourse “must be open to the possible creation of new human life.” This doctrine is rooted in the Genesis 2-3 when God created man and woman to be in union with one another.
This statement is perhaps the harshest in the otherwise compassionate letter that assures readers that God’s love for every person “as a unique individual” is primary.
However, the bishops are careful to add that although sexuality is integral to one’s identity, sexual orientation—be it heterosexual or homosexual—does not necessarily imply that identity is all about sexual activity. Even so, chastity remains a most important virtue for all people, which is defined as “integrating one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, in the areas of human sexuality, in a way that values and respects one’s own dignity and that of others” (Pontifical Council for the Family, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, 1996, n. 16).
Consequently, the bishops advise parents to encourage their gay children to “cooperate with God’s grace in order to live a chaste life.” They also urge parents to avoid concentrating on homosexuality itself or to believe that therapy may change their children’s sexual orientation for there is no data to support such therapy works.
Throughout the document the bishops implore the local Church community to avoid shunning gays and instead to welcome and encourage them to participate in the life and leadership of the Church.
The bishops categorically proclaim that HIV/AIDS is not just a homosexual disease or “a direct punishment from God.” They also dispel that notion that either the Bible or Catholic teachings may be used to justify violence or prejudice against gays in any way.
The most commonly-used biblical passages against homosexuality are Genesis 19, the story of Sodom; Leviticus 18:22; 20:13, which discusses the “Holiness Code”; and Romans 1:18-32, where Paul encourages the early Christians to be right with God.
Finally, the bishops “call on all Christians and citizens of good will to confront their own fears about homosexuality and to curb the humor and discrimination that offend homosexual persons.”
In practice, the Church’s discomfort over homosexuality is rather omnipresent and the 2001 priest pedophilia scandals didn’t help, especially when many people assumed the offending priests were gay. The recent release of the film, “Milk,” which is about gay activist Harvey Milk of San Francisco, and various states’ initiatives to legalize gay marriage has again stirred up the controversy.
As support groups for gays have emerged, individual dioceses and parishes remain officially mum about their existence, so these groups largely operate below the radar.
“The whole Church lives in an aura of fear and that doesn’t exclude the hierarchy,” said Nelson. He has tried to no avail to convince Detroit bishops to change their teachings on homosexuality but it appears that going out of the box of official Church teaching remains a problem.
Emblematic of the Church’s own fear of homosexuality is Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls’ inference in 2002 that gays are unfit for the priesthood. He specifically referenced the U.S. priest pedophilia cases.
“People with [homosexual] inclinations just cannot be ordained,” which suggested that “ordinations of gay men should perhaps be invalidated,” he said.
John Corvino, philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and gay rights advocate, believes that “the real culprit here is not homosexuality, but rather the Church’s refusal to address the issue of sexuality directly and realistically.”
Mary Black remains skeptical of the Church, too.
“I would never send anybody to a priest [to deal with a homosexual child],” she said. “Find a friend you trust instead.”
While the Church wrestles with its institutional policies and teachings on homosexuality, families like the Nelsons are leaving the Catholic community because of this issue. Out of six children in their family, only one daughter is a regular Church-goer.
Support Groups for Parents of Gay Children
Dignity USA – www.dignityusa.org
Fortunate Families – www.fortunatefamilies.com
New Ways Ministry – www.newwaysministry.org
PFLAG – www.pflag.org
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