A mother's tale

First I'd like to apologize that I have not gotten back to most e-mails and I've not been able to respond to any comments here. I am still in NYC without a laptop and the only internet I have is either a fee by the minute, or when Glamour lets me in their offices to get on a computer for a minute.

I got this comment today on the Glamour comments section, and I wanted to share it. It actually made me cry (well, that and all the e-mails I've been getting).

Seething Mom writes:

Unlike so many others reading your story and finding comfort, I am not gay, but I am equally comforted by the story of your journey and its final outcome: self-acceptance and peace. I am a straight woman, married 25 years with 3 great kids, one of them gay.

Your story really highlights how far we have come, but how far we still have to go. Until no child has to worry about coming out and being who they are, until no child has to weigh and measure whether coming out is worth possibly losing their family and friends, and until Christianity is not used as a convenient cover for homophobia and exclusion, we cannot consider ourselves there yet.

But your story gives us all hope Christine. And though my journey is very different from yours, I still hope one day I can arrive at some kind of peace with my faith also. Unfortunately my path so far has taken me in a different direction. I have yet to reconcile what my church, the Catholic Church, says about homosexuality with the unconditional love I have for my son. I have felt forced to leave the church because I cannot walk through the doors of an institution that proclaims my son's love for another human being "objectively disordered" and "intrinsically evil". Abandoning my son or forcing him to be someone he isn't so that he fits the Church's narrow view of normal were just not options, but abandoning a church whose attitudes are so unChrist-like was. I chose to walk away from the church, not my son.

She also has an essay her son wrote in high school, and it is posted at this link. It is very moving, and I can't tell you how beautiful it is to me that she demonstrates such love and acceptance for her son.

I also have written several comments on the Glamour comments section, so if you'd like to read more of my thoughts (many of which would answer questions on my blog comments), please feel free to stop by there and check 'em out.

I need to run, but thanks all for the comments, suggestions, and support.

P.S. It came to my attention tonight (4/24 11pm) that in my hurried posting frenzy, I'd linked to an essay by Jarred, who is not SeethingMom's son. However it's wonderful and moved me again when I looked at it. So hope you'll take a look at Jarred's essay that he wrote. I've corrected the link above so that it takes you to SeethingMom's actual son, although I'm sure she's adopted Jarred as well. :) Thanks for pointing my error out to me...and now it just gives us more great things to read!