The Overlooked Homeless

This week I attended a talk by two friends who have been active in helping parents, like them, who have gay children.

Much of their story was familiar since I know the book by Enid Jackowitz, The Rest of the Way, recounting the struggle she and her husband, Syd, had more than twenty years ago to overcome shame, fear, and grief over the revelation that their older son was gay.  As they said, when he came out of the closet, they went in, telling no one for seven years.

When she saw that her fear was keeping her from loving and supporting her son, Enid began to read and explore, eventually asking her husband if he would like to attend a local PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).  He responded, "I wouldn't be caught dead at such a meeting."

A few years later, he became the president of the local chapter and, with Enid, a speaker and columnist on the problems faced by gays and lesbians in their families. What a turnaround!

What I learned this week was that, after all the progress that has been made in recent years on greater acceptance of this minority, 25 per cent of young people who come out to their parents are still thrown out of the house. They become the overlooked homeless. Who cares for them?

In central Florida, a place called The Zebra Coalition helps kids on the streets get food, clothing, and counseling. But the number of parents who still believe, as Syd and Enid once did, that being homosexual is a choice--and a great evil--remains high. They react in terror and their love turns to hate.

Among young people 14 and above who have "come out" to their friends, fifty percent still have not come out to their parents. So they live in the kind of denial that can cause great anguish, but at least they have a home.

I was startled at these statistics just as I was impressed by the courage of my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Jackowitz. They took seven years to make the journey from deep fear to advocacy.  Their talks and book have helped many parents around the world cope with the shock that comes when they learn that one of their children is gay.

Enid's book is also helpful for the young people themselves who are unsure how their sexual orientation will affect their relationship with their parents. I recommend The Rest of the Way to those interested in the hope that, as the years go by, love will more and more replace fear among parents of gay kids.

Love, as Flannery O'Connor said, is the effort to understand.

Living with Same-Sex Marriage

This weekend our pastor, a much-loved Irish priest in his late sixties, a bit nervously addressed the congregation of our church on a topic that I am sure made him feel uncomfortable: What to do in the light of the recent Supreme Court's decisions on gay marriage.

I wrote to thank him for his honesty and courage, knowing that he was doing his best to follow the bishops' stance that only a marriage between a man and a woman can provide a stable home for the rearing of children.

I began by saying that I, too, have wrestled in recent years with the use of the term 'marriage' to refer to two persons of the same sex. I have come to realize that the only legal way to make equal opportunity happen for the minority who wish to commit themselves for life is through marriage.

Since I had noticed that our priest, always a very human and non-judgmental man, had openly worried about two things: where would this lead the country? and what was he to do with invitation he had received to the gay wedding of a young man he knew.

On the latter issue, I said that those who sent this priest the invitation were brave and would hope for the kind of loving response that Jesus would give: wishing these two young men happiness and success in being faithful to each other, even though the church's blessing cannot be extended.  What I didn't say is the obvious fact that at issue is civil marriage, not marriage as a sacrament in the Catholic Church, so in a sense the hierarchy's concerns seem overblown. 

Heterosexual marriage in this country, I went on, is in deep trouble, which has nothing to do with gays being married to each other.

I went on to say what has been said by many before me: that both sexes are capable of love and nurturing in families and there is every reason to be more optimistic about the future than our priest is.  Legalizing same-sex unions "will expand the possibility of more adoptions and allow same-sex people to being nurturing and love to any children they choose to adopt and to each other, in a more stable form."

So I see a future marked by an increase in love, a decrease in promiscuity among gay men, and an expansion of the idea of marriage.  "I can understand why the church's blessing cannot be given to these unions, yet I remain glad and hopeful that in the secular sphere, the gay people I know can become a bit more accepted in this land of opportunity."

Facing radical change of this kind, especially to those of us of a certain age is tough to do.  It is easy to see some of these same-sex unions as trendy and to worry that they will not last.  But when I think of all the single moms and some dads running households and raising kids, I am not worried that two men together or two women, with the security of marriage, will, overall, do an equally good job.  Society will be better off.