Unconditional. Telaina Eriksen

      I have talked to some very confused parents, both in real life and online, about why their child is gay. Though we are living a decade+ into the 21st century, myths and stereotypes about LGBTQ people abound. And these myths have been around for a while; for instance, my grandmother told my mother the reason my sister was gay was because she had been breastfed for too long.

      These anxiety-ridden parents, who I really do believe love their children and want what’s best for them, are trying to understand why this has “happened” to them and to their child. In extreme cases, parents may resort to harmful conversion/reparative therapies. These therapies and camps boast that they can “turn” people straight through prayer and/or psychological “treatment” of some type. These therapies are never the answer and have been condemned by medical and mental health authorities for decades. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to these therapies, and children who have been subjected to conversion therapies are at increased risk of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, homelessness (they would rather run away than be subjected to more conversion therapy), and suicide.12

      Some of the parents who email me are supportive of their child, but their spouse may not be. Many times, these parents come from a deep religious tradition and they are honestly worried about their child’s soul and whether their child will end up in heaven in the afterlife. Some of these emails I don’t respond to—I don’t see the point. If someone’s belief system is so entrenched that they take every single word of the Bible as literal and holy, I don’t think my lapsed Catholic’s vision of the afterlife is going to be useful to them. But one email I received a couple of years ago said, “You and your daughter are going to hell.” I hit reply and responded that if my daughter was going to hell just for being who she is, then I wanted to be there, too. The man responded with something like, “eternal suffering and damnation, away from the light of God for you both.” I again responded that if God wanted no part of my daughter, I wanted no part of Him. (And isn’t it interesting how we use such gendered words to describe a being that is supposed to be beyond time and space?)

      I was a devout churchgoer, going once a week at minimum, and many times twice a week. I miss my Catholic faith. I miss knowing exactly what liturgical time of year it is. I miss singing in the choir. I miss the Eucharist. I miss the incense on Holy Days. I miss the community of people at my former church. But I also could not sit through one more homily from a certain priest about how if a person acted on their homosexual urges they weren’t welcome in the Catholic Church. I couldn’t read what Pope Benedict said about LGBTQ people without feeling over and over again like I had been stabbed in the stomach, knowing so many good, kind, and loving LGBTQ people—including my own sister and daughter. (The former Pope Benedict opposed same-gender marriage, wanted to ban even celibate gay priests, and repeatedly said things along the lines that gays were distorted and not natural creation.) And I was really angry at the hypocrisy of a Church that could cover up the rape of innocents for years but felt free to condemn my daughter for the very basic human need of wanting to meet a nice person and have a relationship with them.

      This is a parenting book—not a theological one. So if your concern truly is for your child’s eternal soul, I would start doing some research. I would talk to leaders of all different faiths. I would read books and articles and talk to other parents of LGBTQ children. I’ve included resources at the back of this chapter to help explore this question of faith and queerness. But the bottom line, the tough love version of this is, you have to leave your child’s relationship with God to them. They’ve lived in your house. They’ve absorbed your teachings, values, and morals for years. It is not your place to judge them. Leave the judging to God and continue to do what is expected of you—loving and supporting your child. If you are a Christian who believes the Bible, Jesus does not once mention or condemn homosexuality. But the word “love” occurs over 200 times in the New Testament.

      Sometimes a parent says the reason for not accepting their child’s queerness is fear for their child’s eternal soul. But what they really fear is that their child’s queerness will humiliate them in front of their church family. They believe their LGBTQ child will reflect badly on their parenting. These parents either believe they have done something wrong to cause their child to “become” LGBTQ, or they fear their peers will believe they have done something wrong, and they will lose their friends and their standing in their church and/or community.

      This visceral feeling of connection to our children—our pride when they do well and are well thought of, and our shame when they fail and we place the blame on ourselves and what we have done and haven’t done—is completely normal. I believe every parent has felt some version of this in some circumstance. But it is important to recognize the feeling, feel it, and then realize (this is an ongoing realization in my case) that it isn’t about me—it’s about them. Our kids have quite enough of their own stuff to deal with without us forcing them to take on our issues as well. (Or as my sister Tonya used to say, “I don’t have issues; I have whole subscriptions.”)

      I do feel for these parents. The United States is a very strange place. Women can show cleavage in low-cut dresses, and their full breasts in R-rated movies, but a woman who is breastfeeding in public should “cover herself.” We are supposedly a “god-fearing” people, but our church and temple pews are pretty empty. We are supposedly a nation of forgiving Christians, but gun violence was on the rise in 2015. It can get pretty confusing living in our society, and the urge to protect our children from these extremes and raise them with the right values to contribute to the world is to be commended.

      Unfortunately, we seem to have come to the point in the United States where we can’t even agree on facts. I’m not sure how that happened, but we’re in an age where someone will present a fact, well-documented and well-supported, and some other person will respond, “I don’t believe that. It’s not true.” And that is it. The fact is discarded and is refused entry into someone’s belief system, even for consideration. Maybe it’s because we have more information at our literal fingertips than ever before. Maybe it is information overload. But here are some history and facts about how and why people are LGBTQ. If you find yourself resisting some of this history or science, ask yourself why.