"Actually..." and National Coming Out Day
On Sunday, August 8th, I was sent a message from somebody close to me, advising me that my parents had made a public statement on Facebook, a self proclaimed rebuttal to conversations and comments I have openly had about my childhood and experiences with them. When I first read the message I had a knot in my stomach. I heard my mother's voice. She speaks of her suffering, and while I may not be on speaking terms with my mother, and as much as it may surprise her, It does hurt me to hear her suffer. Based on her personalization of what she has read that I have said before, she will likely disagree with my statement that I have never wanted my parents to have misfortune or to suffer. Here is what she wrote:
"We have prayed about this for a long time. Would the day come to ever go public?
If you had asked us yesterday we would have said probably not. However today it was revealed to us that a member of our family, our son.. has been on a personal smear campaign against us for years. Most of it very public. It was also revealed that there are members of our joint family and friends that are sympathetic to his cause. If that is you, do us a favor and remove yourself right now from our page. You do not know us.
Our son is a very talented artist. He also is living a gay life style and has openly done so since he moved out while we were not at home at the age of 18. Since then we have loaned him money, helped him move many times, helped him clean his apt so he could get his deposit back, ran him all over the state, picked him up for family holidays and tried to show nothing but love to him.
On his page he has many followers. We have been the brunt of cruel jokes and jabs for years and literally at one point a pole was taken about us on a public arts page. We have taken the stance of silence and just praying for him. Our love for this child is unbreakable. We will always love him. Always believe the best for him. We are not “ homophobic”.
Sometimes you have to speak out. Sometimes the tears you have cried and the heart ache requires you to no longer be silent. Sometimes it gets to the point where enough is enough. Being a Christian does not mean being a door mat. Sometimes individuals and organizations have to put out a statement or truth. A rebuttal. It goes out into the spiritual realm as well as the physical.
This is about is drawing a line. Unflattering pictures, false stories, false quotes, and accusations have been apparently posted openly about us for years. Years! With many family members joining in making fun of every thing from home hair cuts to our attire, holidays, political views, homeschooling, ministry, and of course our beliefs. We have lost friends. Lost family. Most of the information out there has been skewed and slanted into a horrific lie.
Mind you that these are people that claim “ love and light”. I see neither in these twisted, mean, and ridiculously cruel posts.
In raising our kids.. we were not perfect parents. We did our best to love, provide, nurture, and raise them in a way that we felt was right.
I believe that is most parents goal. Our parents were not perfect. However they also did their best.
I realize now that there is a lot of lies floating around out there about us. If you believe them, have spewed them, or if you are even joining in the “fun” in anyway let me show you the door. Three dots to the right of our name and click unfriend.
Enough. Some of our family and family friends have used this an an opportunity to drive a wedge deeper between us and our son. Some of them are already blocked with very good reason such as being a pedophile.
Yep I said the word. Pedophile.
The line between light and darkness are growing more and more evident.
I know we are not alone in this as it is the times in which we live.
We forgive and we pray and we hold onto our promises but we protect our heart and our minds.
Please pray for us and our family. Please pray for our son. Please pray for our county and for revelation of truth.
Pray for revival in all of our children.
And just to kick the devil in the teeth if you need prayer or for us to agree with you in prayer for your family or children please message us. You can just message the word “pray” and we will do it.It’s a new day."
They also made the follow up comment:
"Amazing the hurt you can find on FB if you look. Sometimes a good blocking is in order. They now say that “evangelicals” spew hate and I know that some do.. it’s in every camp these days. However spewing vile about people ( especially your parents ) because they believe differently than you is hate too. “Love and light” .. I hear that a lot these days. If you are spewing hate and venom about anyone no matter the topic.. that is not love. That’s not light. That is real hate. Here we see calling evil good and good evil.
We are living out 2Timothy 3:2 here folks. These are those days. It’s a counterfeit love."
At first I didn't know how to respond. I didn't think that I should respond, and that any sort of response would only validate the exact things they said about me... but there is so much gaslighting, I cannot leave this unaddressed. Let's break this down, shall we?
"We have prayed about this for a long time. Would the day come to ever go public?
If you had asked us yesterday we would have said probably not. However today it was revealed to us that a member of our family, our son.. "
Let me stop you right there, before you even finish that sentence. How can you have prayed about something for a long time and debated for years whether or not to go public over something that you just found out about the day of writing your rebuttal? ... Please, continue.
"However today it was revealed to us that a member of our family, our son.. has been on a personal smear campaign against us for years. Most of it very public."
All I've been doing is talking about my experiences and lessons learned from parents that I am now estranged from. I'm 31 years old. I lived with them for about two thirds of my life, and during some of my most formative years, so doesn't it make sense I would have learned much of what I know from them, even if it's as a bad example? And yes, I speak publicly. Being in the light means you have nothing to hide.
"It was also revealed that there are members of our joint family and friends that are sympathetic to his cause. If that is you, do us a favor and remove yourself right now from our page."
It has never been my intention to create a separation between other people and my parents, or even to change people's opinions about them. However, a joint member of our family was told by my parents to not speak with me when I first came out as gay because they didn't want me to have somebody I could turn to without first repenting. Furthermore, I don't know what "cause" they're talking about, but I assume it's similar to "the Gay Agenda." You know the one, where we secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where we are allowed to love who we want to, have the same legal rights as everyone else, follow the careers we want, have the freedom of speech to speak our truths, and have the freedom of religion to pray how we want to.
"You do not know us."
They may not think that other people know them, but I lived with them for 19 years. I sat in the back seat of the car when they talked to each other about issues they had with friends and family, which it seemed like they fought with other members of the family quite often. I heard all sorts of anti-gay remarks. I heard them lie to people. I know them, from the intimate perspective of a child who grew up in their home.
"Our son is a very talented artist."
Oh my gosh, did you hear that? My parents think I'm a talented artist. Sassiness aside, when my hurt subsided from when I first read the rest of message, I did feel a sense of pride that my parents think I'm a talented artist. I have done a lot of work on my art since they last saw me, so it's almost like I got to show them my art for the first time in years, only it was a little nugget hiding inside a big ole lump of coal.
"He also is living a gay life style and has openly done so since he moved out while we were not at home at the age of 18."
Actually, I moved out when I was 19. It was in January, right after my birthday and right before my mother's. I was still in the closet, but I had talked to a few of my friends about thinking that I was bisexual. It upset me at the time that these people laughed or rolled their eyes at me when I said I was bisexual, but the truth is I thought it would lessen the blow and make it easier for people to accept me if I was at least a little heterosexual. Anyway, one of these friends offered to let me live with her and her family. Her and her parents understood that what I talked to her about was eating me alive, and that I didn't feel like talking to my parents was an option. We decided that what we would do is buy some flowers for my mother, my friend's idea. My friend would wait for me in her car outside of our house while I told my parents that I wanted to start learning how to take care of myself, which was true, but my parents were not satisfied with that answer. They told me they knew there was something else, and rather than accepting that I wanted to move out, they pressured me into talking about the real reason why I wanted to leave. I had to force out the words "I'm bisexual." Things escalated, not in a physical way, but certainly in a memorable way. My friend eventually left and went back to her house after much time had lapsed. I could see her out the window when she finally pulled away. My dad sat down with me in his office and read from Romans 1:18-32, a series of scripture written by the Apostle Paul, who some believe is the wolf in sheep's clothing that Jesus warned about in the book of Matthew. This is the same man in the New Testament that says women should be silent in church, only asking their husbands questions at home, despite the fact that after Jesus' resurrection he appeared to a group of women before he appeared to any men, even his own disciples. The verses that my dad read to me detail Paul's idea of how man turns away from God, seeks false knowledge, and eventually ends up practicing homosexuality. My take away from this scripture was that my father thought that homosexuality was the pinnacle of human corruption. Paul finishes this scripture by saying of homosexuals "who, knowing the righteous judgement of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them." While that was happening, my mother was upstairs with my brother, Matthew, calling the girl who offered for me to live with her family. My mom was bawling into the phone and they were both attacking my friend, saying that she was responsible for me being gay. I've never understood how people get away with blaming women for "turning" a man gay. It's not only ignorant, it's also simultaneously homophobic and misogynistic. It's about as disrespectful to me as saying that a woman deserves to be raped just because of what she wears, and is from the same house of brainwashing that says that a person of color killed by a police officer shouldn't have been speeding. My parents convinced me to stay the night and talk to a man from the church about his previously unspoken history with homosexuality (which was not extensive). They wanted me to think about my options before leaving, but encouraged me to stay with them and go through counseling... at least a mild version of conversion therapy. They told me the important thing was to listen to the peace of the Holy Spirit. I woke up the next morning, got out of bed, and looked into my closet to decide what I was going to wear. Getting dressed is usually a meditative moment for me, and that day I had a remarkably overwhelming sense of peace about me. I knew I was moving out that day and that it was the right thing for me to do. I told my friend and when I was done with my college courses for the day, she took me back to my home and packed up as much as I could. My parents later gave me the rest of my belongings, but they weren't there when I moved out, exactly as I wanted it, because I didn't want them to stop me again. I was intimidated by them and easily influenced by their pressure. They were prone to lectures, allowed no disagreement, and demanded respect. Later that night they sent me a message that they were heartbroken to come home and discover that I had moved out. It hurt to read, but I knew it was the right thing to do. So to answer their accusations of openly living the gay life style ever since I moved out while they were not at home... Of course I've been living out and proud ever since I moved out! Being gay was the catalyst for me moving out, and of course I moved out while they were gone! I already tried to move out with their cooperation, but they decided to turn it into a fiasco. If they wouldn't cooperate I had to do it myself.
"Since then we have loaned him money,"
My parents did loan me money... once. I had just moved from Seaside to Astoria. I had my first official roommate and I had the responsibility of rent where for the first time it was required by a property management company. While I was living with the girl who helped me move, her family did not require me to pay rent, but I insisted because I wanted to make it on my own, though I kept track for many years of exactly how much I thought I owed them.
I had been living in the new apartment in Astoria for a couple of months, when my roommate experienced some hardship and she was $300 short on her half of rent. She didn't have anybody she could turn to for money, so I did the only thing I could, which was to turn to my parents. I didn't think they would loan me money if I told them that my roommate needed money, so I lied to them and told them I was short on my half of rent. As it was, I didn't think they would even loan me the money if I said that I needed it for myself. To my surprise, we agreed that I would pay them back what I was able to over the next month and work off the rest with them for their lawn maintenance business.
At the time it seemed like a significant amount owed back to them, but only took a couple days of work to pay off the balance. I hadn't seen them much at this time since this was only my second home since moving out, and I found myself enjoying my time with them while also feeling guilty about having lied to them. I thought I might be able to trust them after all so I admitted that the $300 was for my roommate's portion of rent and not for myself. My initial instincts are the ones that turned out to be true. They were offended that I had lied to them, even though I opened up to them and confessed without prompting, and even though I had worked off the balance that I didn't pay back. They told me they would never loan me money again, so I have never bothered to ask.
"helped him move many times, helped him clean his apt so he could get his deposit back,"
My memory is fuzzy about exactly how many times they helped me move, but I only lived in three places at the coast, so they could have only helped me two times at most (two and a half if you count them bringing me the rest of my belongings when I first moved out.) When I left the coast, it was my uncle that helped me move, and that was the last time I lived close enough to any of my family for it to be practical for them to help.
"ran him all over the state, picked him up for family holidays and tried to show nothing but love to him."
All over the state is an exaggeration. The furthest they have travelled to take me to any family holidays is from Gearhart to Salem (Monmouth, to be exact). They did drive me to Southern Oregon when my grandfather was passing away and later for his memorial service, but I also was never taught how to drive while living at home and was in no position to own a car.
Don't get me wrong, I've been grateful for everything that they did for me. Even after all the turmoil growing up, for a time I felt like I might be able to be gay and still have my family, we just had to avoid talking about certain subjects. For me, that meant it would be impossible to amicably talk about my romantic life. I guess I didn't realize that accepting their help meant I was indebted to them, regardless of what would transpire between us in the years to follow.
"On his page he has many followers."
My personal page where I openly speak about my life only has 174 followers, and because I don't use my page often I have about 20 people that respond regularly. Dallas and I do share an art page with several thousand followers that we have kept focused on our art with occasional conversations about politics. All the same, it doesn't matter how many people my voice reaches as long as I am speaking the truth and have a message within my conversations. It appears my messages have been overshadowed by my parents' personalization of my experiences.
"We have been the brunt of cruel jokes and jabs for years"
Robin Williams was one of highest regarded comedians of this past century, yet despite his ability to make other people smile he still took his own life. Humor is often used to either mask or cope with pain. Making fun of a situation or person minimizes the pain and helps to keep it from consuming you. Laughter has been an important way for me to not experience heart break every time I think of my estranged parents.
Furthermore, I've heard my mother make jokes and jabs about other people. Once as a teenager I recorded a video of my middle brother sliding down an icy hill as I bellowed out "Behold, the mighty walrus!" She laughed at that 8 second video clip for years. She also got a kick when we all went to Disney Land and two of us boys wore a shirt that said "I'm with Goofy" while that same middle brother I mentioned before did not. She says she didn't plan it, and I could believe it, but that doesn't change how much she was humored at her middle child's expense. I guess jokes and jabs are just fine as long as it's not about her, unless if she's entirely lost her sense of humor since I last saw her.
"and literally at one point a pole was taken about us on a public arts page."
The poll in reference was actually on my partner Dallas' personal page. He had a separate poll on a private art group of his, however my parents were not a part of that art group and that poll did not mention my parents by name, so if that is what is being referred to then somebody else shared it with them. Talk about gossiping. When he took that poll it was in response to something my mother was doing that Dallas did not agree with, and he put the poll out to get input from other people as to whether or not the behavior was normal for a mother. The consensus was that it was not normal behavior. So, was the poll itself most offensive, or was it the results of the poll?
While we are discussing Dallas and his actions, it is well known that Dallas is vocal about injustices in the world. He is a humanitarian and an activist. He also has a personal love for Jesus and has helped me to mend religious wounds that I've had since before we met. He has been very open about his disdain for how my parents raised and treated me, and I have allowed him to be. I am his partner, not his master, and even though we are not yet married we are devoted to each other and share everything with each other, including each other's families. We discuss everything and he reads me what he writes about my parents before he posts it.
The day Dallas first met my parents was at my cousin's wedding. Before the wedding, after telling my parents I was in a closed triadic relationship, my parents had called me while I was a guest at somebody's house to tell me that the relationship I was in put me at high risk for STD's, without having met Dallas or knowing the details of our relationship. Dallas was hesitant to attend the wedding because he was concerned that my evangelical parents may take personal issue with him once they met him in person. I had to beg him to go and told him at the time, 8 years ago, that I wanted him to be a part of my family and that if anybody in my family did not like him then that was their loss. I admit that I had hoped for better relations between Dallas and my parents, but my mother was the one who introduced herself saying she gets in trouble for telling other people what to do.
"We have taken the stance of silence and just praying for him."
I was not aware that silence involved gossiping about me and my partner to anybody that will listen. I also didn't realize that you could pray for somebody and simultaneously wish you could tie them up to a chair in a basement and make them watch heterosexual porn until they conform. Yeah, my mother said that about me. So Christ like.
"Our love for this child is unbreakable. We will always love him. Always believe the best for him."
The problem here is that I am no longer a child, and certainly not the child they tried to mold me into. I believe the love is real, but I don't believe that their love comes with understanding, trust, or compassion, and it's certainly not unconditional. At least I understood them enough to realize they were too deeply rooted in their belief system to trust me when I say that my sexuality is not a choice, but rather a piece of what I was made to be by a master craftsman, and therefore cannot logically be a sin but instead must be a feature. I've always understood that even when they have open arms for me, there would always be a reservation of judgement towards me. It is part of why it has been so easy for me to be estranged. I could live my life in peace without their judgements and they could say whatever they want from the pulpit without me having to watch them foster oppression towards LGBTQ people. The best that they wish for me is not the true best for me, but rather the best for the version of me they wish I was.
"We are not ' homophobic'."
As made evident by their previous clause about me living a gay "lifestyle" and just now using the quotations around "homophobic", as though they don't really think the word exists? This paragraph my parents wrote, from start to finish, reeks of homophobia, but then again so did the way they dealt with the discovery of my sexuality. Other prime examples include the time when I was about 4 years old and my mother told me that gay people are just "confused people playing house", the time my dad pointed and chuckled at an openly gay young man that walked by us in a Target when I was about 16, that time when they celebrated the dissolution of the Gay Straight Alliance in my high school the year before I was going to be a Freshmen, and the times I have heard from them and their churches that various natural disasters were God's judgement on America for not criminalizing homosexuality. Let's also not forget when I was 4 years old, my brothers and I were playing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and I decided I wanted to play Snow White, the emotional character that took care of the other people around her and enjoyed her work. My mother punished my by putting me in a dress and making me sit in the living room while we had company over. For a long time I thought that I had made it up, until somebody else approached me and started a conversation about it saying that they felt bad for me watching that happen. This self doubt that I have struggled with for many years is a direct result of their gaslighting.
"Sometimes you have to speak out. Sometimes the tears you have cried and the heart ache requires you to no longer be silent. Sometimes it gets to the point where enough is enough."
Interestingly enough, this whole time of me writing and posting about my parents has been about me getting my voice and speaking out through my heart ache. It has taken a lot of work to process the abuse I endured, and even still I feel like there is more to explore. What is labeled as a smear campaign is actually somebody using their writing to work through their emotions and then putting that emotional work back into the world with hopes of being understood or to help somebody else avoid the same type of pain. It is a long standing practice of artists to work through their own emotional pain through their art, and writing is a form of art. My work is what would be found with non-fiction and memoirs.
As a side note, I have tried to work through some of these issues with my parents directly, however they refuse to sit down on a level field and listen to what I have to say, even as an adult. They have prompted situations where they would isolate me with themselves and certain family members to intimidate me via an intervention. The last time I have tried to sit down with nobody but them and my partner Dallas, they refused and said they didn't want to "rehash" things, even though I have never had the platform to be heard by them and hash it out the first time. I guess they listen best when my grievances are expressed to other people, though they have still been missing the point. At this point, I have decided that I get to draw the line of who I speak with and if a person's abuse it too great then it is my responsibility to my own happiness to give myself the distance needed, and that goes for more than just my parents.
"Being a Christian does not mean being a door mat."
They are right that being a Christian does not mean being a door mat, and neither does being gay. Being a Christian also does not mean that you are anointed to cast judgement upon others as divinity already implied that none of us are holy enough to cast the first stone. That said, having a relationship with my parents means bearing the burden of understanding how they really feel about me and knowing what they would have to say about me behind closed doors. Let's not forget, I spent 19 years with direct insight into what they say behind closed doors. Additionally, there is the sense of dread that mentioning my romantic life could lead to them quoting anti-gay scripture at me like the night I came out to them. Furthermore, Dallas has shown me that the word "homosexuality" was only added to the Bible in 1946, so the version of the Bible read by my parents isn't even the original version.
"Sometimes individuals and organizations have to put out a statement or truth. A rebuttal."
The issue I have with this is that the full truth has not been expressed by what my parents have said. They haven't even given their account of the real issues I have expressed in my publicly available writings. Instead they have chosen to give themselves vague defenses against what they perceive to be a smear campaign, that in reality has been a conversation about what I have gone through in my life and what I have learned. Their message is less a rebuttal than an emotional response and a warning against anybody that will not bend to their will.
"It goes out into the spiritual realm as well as the physical."
One of my favorite proverbs is a Japanese one I learned in high school. It goes "the tongue is only three inches long, yet it can kill a man six feet high." Also, in the book of Genesis it is written that God spoke the world into existence. He said "let there be...", and then there it was, whether it was light, water, or the beasts of the earth. It was a literal breath of life. What the Japanese proverb and the story of Genesis have in common is that whether for destruction or creation, whether they are words forged with much consideration or words that slip out of the mouth like blindly fired bullets tearing through the air, any words that go into the physical realm will also go into the spiritual realm. Who I am today has been spiritually influenced by the careless words that my parents uttered for years. Every time they have spoken ill of LGBTQ people for their "lifestyle", they have spoken ill of me.
"This is about is drawing a line."
I was under the impression that we had a line drawn for the past few years, one where separation prevented feuding and allowed each of us to live our lives as well as we possibly can without the direct influence of each other. I have known that they have gossiped about me and I have done nothing to stop them because it has been none of my business. A public statement calling me a liar and slanderer is an issue that has to addressed and yet another line that has to be drawn because it is an attempt to silence me. As I learned from the LGBTQ rights movement of the late 80's, "Silence equals death."
"Unflattering pictures,"
I just have to say, I think it's funny that evangelical radicals mock gay Pride events, fuming that pride is a sin, yet here we see evangelical radicals openly lamenting about a sister sin of their own, "vanity." I've only posted one photo that I could consider unflattering of either of my parents, however I had a reason for posting it that wasn't focused on my parents. Moreover, the photo was unflattering for everyone involved, including myself.
"false stories, false quotes, and accusations have been apparently posted openly about us for years."
When I write something, I put serious thought into what I'm posting and pour over the details in my head to make sure I am being completely honest. I make a conscious effort to adjust what I say to pull back any bias I might have so as to avoid exaggeration. In my pursuit of truth and honesty, there have been details of my life that I had not told anybody because for a long time I thought it was too outrageous to have actually happened, but then I have been approached by witnesses that have told me about these events they remembered that I thought I had fabricated. This is a result of gaslighting, and this commentary by my parents is an example of continued gaslighting.
Additionally, when it comes to anything quoted that was digital content from my parents... let's just say Dallas knows that karma keeps receipts.
"Years!"
I spent 19 years living at home and silently enduring their homophobia. I have been out of my parents house for 12 years now, so the way I look at it they have at least a solid 7 years to go. Honestly though, I'm going to keep using my voice for as long as it takes to overcome the grooming my parents did with their gaslighting, and even then I'll continue to use my voice for as long as I think it might reach somebody else that is struggling with abuse and in need of solidarity, even if it's just something they read online.
"With many family members joining in making fun of every thing from home hair cuts"
This is what I posted:
"to our attire,"
This is what I posted, in the comments thread of the previously mentioned post about home hair cuts and in response to somebody who said their family wore matching clothes:
These are the shirts I was talking about earlier where my middle brother became the joke of the moment. It was fine and dandy to laugh about this privately in our home or when my mother wanted to get a friend of hers to laugh, but I guess me posting it publicly was crossing a line.
"holidays,"
I've talked before about my mother's love of Christmas, going as far to start her holiday shopping in June, but that's more of a quirk. They could also have been talking about the lack of celebrating Halloween and insisting we all wear matching costumes that skirted around the spookiness of the holiday. We did "Harvest Parties", even though a couple of years we did go trick or treating. Generally I felt like I missed out on Halloween, which is part of why I still love to dress up as an adult, and now I can pick my own costumes and it can be any time of year. When my parents did celebrate a holiday, my mother put everything she had into it, sometimes to her own detriment when things didn't turn out just the way she wanted. I can't think of anything else that I would have said about their holidays that they would be offended enough to reference in a "rebuttal", however there is apparently years worth of commentary that they just learned about so it could be any number of things.
In conversation with Dallas, he thinks my mother may be responding to one of her pro-tips about putting a gag-order on guests during the holidays to avoid controversial conversations, to which he responded that if she can't handle a difficult conversation then she simply shouldn't have guests. I'm adding my commentary now, which is that such gag-orders are only fitting for families that want to put on a show and pretend to have a perfect life like a 1950's advertisement illustration. If your perspectives are so polarizing that you can't find common ground on certain topics of passion or at least find respect within your differences, then perhaps you should keep your distance so that said passions can be better restrained, much like I chose to do.
"political views,"
As a kid, it seemed like every election was a political war with spiritually apocalyptic consequences. Every Democratic candidate was compared to the Anti-Christ and every Republican was anointed by God. I hate to burst your Phyllis Schlafly bubble, but Jesus was a socialist immigrant who offered healthcare to anyone who was sick and protected a sex worker from the patriarchy that would have ceremonially killed her. He stood up to corruption and became a target of those in power who were threatened by him. The most recent of the Republican's anointed Presidents? A man who has fostered xenophobia towards China using a globally devastating pandemic with such weight and travesty that defies the bounds of any borders, a virus of a species, not a country, as well as using promises of a wall to shut out our neighbors to our south as a key platform in his campaign. A man who would rather mock a disabled person than perform a healing miracle, and who downplayed the existence and severity of a lethal virus just for the profit margins. A man who has been on the cover of Playboy magazine despite evangelical attacks against the periodical for its sexual content. A man who had an audio recording leaked shortly before being elected in which he vulgarly promoted sexual assault, while himself being a married man no less, not that he seems to care about being a married man since he had an affair with a sex worker while his wife was pregnant. Please excuse me for noticing that those made in China "Make America Great Again" hats would not be an accessory worn by the man you pay tribute to who was killed on that crucifix you wear. It looks really tacky. Dallas likes to remind people that the Mark of the Beast, a sign of fealty to the anti-Christ, was worn on the forehead.
"homeschooling,"
I can't remember the last time I would have written anything negative online about our homeschooling. In some ways I feel like as a little kid it allowed me to focus more on my curriculum which gave me an advantage. I later used it in Middle School and High School to escape from bullying and social situations I was not equipped to handle, such as picking up smoking behind my parents back. Yeah, homeschooling has the disadvantage of making social experience harder to attain, but that was difficult enough in public school when my parents did not want me to spend time outside of school with any friends whose parents they had not met, yet didn't take any effort to meet the parents of any friends I had made. I didn't push it because I had friends that I thought my parents might judge, like a Mormon girl. Probably the biggest problem was that in my later home schooling, my parents were never home and rarely checked my work. The truth is that I didn't have the ambition or desire to do any of my homework. I didn't apply myself to get a 3.8 GPA on my GED. I did it because I'm smart and do really well at tests because I can logically work through the answers. Speaking of education, my parents do like to blame Dallas for me not continuing college, however it should be made clear that I had already stopped going to college years before meeting Dallas because I could not afford it living on my own. I have heard these accusations repeated back from multiple sources. Who did they say was spreading false information?
"ministry,"
One of the last big issues I had with my parents before cutting them off was in the Summer of 2015 when my mother reached out to tell me she was deactivating their Facebook account because they were looking to get promoted within the church and they wanted to keep their personal life to themselves as much as possible. I questioned my mother why she would cut out a method of communication in her life just to impress other people and why she would feel the need to hide that part of herself from the church. I had suspicions that I was what she was hiding from the church, but my words came from a place of wanting to build her up, which is something I like to do for people when I feel I can. She became irate, so I dropped the conversation.
A few months later, I noticed that she was back online and commenting on a post of a mutual family member. A quick visit to her page revealed that she had been back online for a month and a half and that she had both of my brothers on her friends list, but I was not on her list. A couple of quick questions to a couple of different people revealed that when she had reactivated her account, nobody else had to refriend her and their account relationship had continued as normal. When I approached my mother about this she became defensive and said she forgot, an excuse I used as a kid living at home when I was caught. I had almost died earlier that year, both of my other brothers were on her page, and her and I almost got into a fight about deactivating the account just months before. I found it hard to believe that she forgot to add me and was left with the understanding that hiding her Facebook meant hiding me from her church.
I have also seen my parents try to deceive a church before. When I was a little kid and my parents had us moving from Southern Oregon to the coast, they decided to tell us on our way to church that it would be our last day at that church, but they didn't want us to tell anybody that we were leaving. I didn't understand the reason why my parents wanted to sneak out of that church, but as a kid I struggled with the idea of having to say goodbye to my Sunday School without saying it was my last goodbye. I can't remember which one of us kids cracked, but eventually the truth got out to the church that it was our last Sunday and we got in trouble with our parents. All of this has made it easier to believe when I started hearing that she was letting people from the church believe that I had died. A house built on sand will never last, and neither will a ministry built on lies.
"and of course our beliefs."
Pardon me for not embracing an ideology that condemns people like me to Hell and says that we are deserving of death, as quoted earlier from Paul. Also, when I was a little kid, my father told me that dinosaur fossils were the remains of a race that preceded the creation story that started the entire Bible in the book of Genesis, and that when that ancient world had died then their spirits became what we know today as demons. All of this was told to me because he had a hard time fitting dinosaurs into their young Earth theory of creation and he wanted to dispute the theory of evolution with his child. He also told me that they had put microphones in caves deep underground and the microphones could pick up the sounds of people screaming from Hell.
"We have lost friends. Lost family."
As previously mentioned, I had a family member that was told to not contact me when I first came out. I've been afraid to speak to most of my family for fear of having similar relationships as to what I've had with my parents, and I have been pleasantly surprised to the contrary. I lost friends in the church when I came out, even having some friends of my parents on Facebook being bold enough to comment on my posts and tell me that they do not support me because they believe that homosexuality is wrong.
The same year that I came out, my middle brother got married and asked me to be one of his groomsmen. I naturally accepted, but found myself on the day of the wedding taking the photo below:
"Most of the information out there has been skewed and slanted into a horrific lie."
As previously stated, I take a great deal of pride in truth and honesty. I have been in positions where I have hurt other people and I know that it can be hard to recognize and take accountability for where you have hurt others. I once did a google search "can I be a bitch and not know it?" That introspection was a big step in managing my own anger issues. I guess that me breaking my silence on what has hurt me has been so jarring for my parents that they simply cannot see the truth. I watched my mom fight to accept a truth about how I was hurt when I first confessed that I was sexually assaulted, so I'm familiar with how denial can look.
"Mind you that these are people that claim “ love and light”. I see neither in these twisted, mean, and ridiculously cruel posts."
I still claim love and light. Both Dallas and I do, with Dallas being one of the people that my parents refer to but refuse to acknowledge by name, despite him being far more active on social media and more aggressive than I am. It's not like they have treated him with respect, even when he was taking care of me in the hospital, and he has done a lot of work to help me patch up where they have left wounds.
My parents love to talk about "loving the sinner and hating the sin." What they are blind to is that the same applies to them. I can fish around pretty easily for some good memories to talk about with all the good times I've had with my parents, but it all seems overshadowed by the painful memories, and since I understand that we will likely never see eye to eye, I have to address the sins of my parents without resolution from them.
As for light... When light is introduced to the darkness it exposes things that have been hidden in the dark. If you've been hiding in the dark for a long time then the light can be blinding to you, even harsh and painful. The light represents truth, and sometimes the truth hurts.
"In raising our kids.. we were not perfect parents. We did our best to love, provide, nurture, and raise them in a way that we felt was right.
I believe that is most parents goal. Our parents were not perfect. However they also did their best. "
If not for having been gay and facing their homophobia, I may have never accepted that my parents were abusive. I used to think they were just trying to protect us and doing their best to raise us in a Godly way. I have had a hard time accepting that my parents were abusive, and it took multiple people with different perspectives and experiences with my parents using the word before I started using it myself. I do believe that they did what they thought was best to raise us, but as I stated earlier, it can be difficult to recognize or accept when you have been abusive to another person, especially somebody that you love.
I will also state the irony of my parents talking about their parents not being perfect when they are not on speaking terms with one of my living grandparents. Their issues are not my business to divulge, but if they are so concerned about how I treat them as my parents, perhaps they should have tried harder to set a good example by first establishing a healthy relationship with their own parents.
"I realize now that there is a lot of lies floating around out there about us. If you believe them, have spewed them, or if you are even joining in the “fun” in anyway let me show you the door. Three dots to the right of our name and click unfriend."
I have never told people they have to choose between having a relationship with me or my parents. Anybody that I have chosen to not have a relationship with is based on their own merits, not how close they are to my parents or what they believe has transpired between myself and my parents. I understand the situation between my parents and I can be polarizing, but I have never wanted to be responsible for ruining my parents' relationship with anybody else. I've always assumed that my parents have had more history with other people and that I should give respect to that history so I wouldn't be responsible for hurting anybody, I just didn't realize that so much of that history involved quite so much conflict.
"Enough. Some of our family and family friends have used this an an opportunity to drive a wedge deeper between us and our son."
If it isn't already apparent, there hasn't been any going back on our relationship in a long time. You can't really drive a wedge in a piece of wood that has already been split in two. Anytime somebody talks to me about my parents, it helps me to accept that the pain I've experienced is genuine, but not insurmountable. It humanizes my parents so I can better see them as people, not just as authoritative figures.
"Some of them are already blocked with very good reason such as being a pedophile.
Yep I said the word. Pedophile."
Somebody call the word police, my parents said the word "pedophile."
This part of my parents' letter is the most controversial, and to me the biggest cry for attention. This is a perfect example of what we call "moral panic", in which people use hot words, headlines, and steamy gossip about an unrelated topic in an effort to prove a point, when most of the time they actually just prove how absurd they really are.
When this letter first surfaced, the number one question that I have been asked is "who do you think they are referring to when they talk about a pedophile?" The answer may surprise you... but I have no fucking idea who or what they are talking about. Like I said, it's a moral panic to distract from the real issues.
The truth is, I don't have any kids and do not expect to be responsible for kids, so it isn't really my business to know what somebody else may not want me to know. As mentioned, I have been sexually assaulted before, and I have kept the details about this shrouded in as much mystery as possible except to warn new parents so as to protect their children.
Speaking of my sexual assault, it's ironic that my parents are making such a bid deal about an alleged mystery pedophile when I have seen them do very little to protect children from the person who sexually assaulted me when I was a teenager. In fact, the last time the conversation came up about me being sexually assaulted, my parents denied that it happened and called me a liar. More gaslighting.
Dallas did have a theory about the alleged pedophile, and I have eight years of him making accurate predictions about a person's actions and intentions so I think it is worth sharing his thoughts. He thinks my parents are referring to him. You see, Dallas and I have 16 years age difference. We started dating after we met online when I was 23. After about a month being together, after having told stories from our past, Dallas asked me if I had ever kicked somebody out of my work for flirting with me. I confirmed that I had, and confessed that I had been staring at that person for longer and with more interest than any employee should have in a customer. It was revealed that I was 16 years old at the time, but Dallas had no way of knowing that, and his flirtation was not to seduce me, but to call me out for ogling him. Being so young and obviously in the closet while ogling another man can be dangerous, something Dallas knows about having grown up in a town now best known for a gay teenager's suicide.
"The line between light and darkness are growing more and more evident.
I know we are not alone in this as it is the times in which we live."
Well now we're getting into some kind of crazy talk. In my honest opinion, not much has changed with humans over the last few hundred years, at least. In the 1930's there was a cartoon created about anti-vaxxers (then called anti-vaccinationists) and how their prejudice and misinformation helped spread smallpox. See below:
"We forgive and we pray and we hold onto our promises but we protect our heart and our minds.
Please pray for us and our family. Please pray for our son."
When I was a teenager, my parents taught me something interesting about prayer. They told me that sometimes somebody will pray for you, but that person may not actually have your best intentions at heart. Sometimes somebody praying for you can be harmful to you. They taught me that the good news is that you can simply reject their unwanted prayers and you will be unaffected. I have been doing this since the day I moved out, not only for them but for anybody that is joining hands with my parents, physically or spiritually. They can pray till they are blue in the face, I am perfectly happy with the path I am on.
"Please pray for our county and for revelation of truth.
Pray for revival in all of our children."
I'm glad we agree that these are things our country and future generations can benefit from. After all of the division and misinformation spread by Donald Trump, our country can benefit from having the truth about his corruption put on the spotlight so we can see why our country is really suffering, and I pray that the children watching this will be inspired to shift our country in a more progressive direction where we recognize our greatest resource; one another, regardless of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, body size, hair color, freckle count, or any other difference that people use to degrade and divide.
I think it's amusing that my parents pray for revelation of truth, but then have a meltdown when I start telling it.
"And just to kick the devil in the teeth if you need prayer or for us to agree with you in prayer for your family or children please message us. You can just message the word “pray” and we will do it.It’s a new day."
I can't help but feel like this is where the 1-800 number pops on the screen asking you to call today. "Ask Miss Cleo to pray for you, and she will pray for whatever you need! You don't even need to tell her what to pray for! Call me now!"
I'm sure some people can honestly benefit from some prayers and healing energy from my parents, but in context of this message, I am sure some of the prayers being offered are of the same controlling and manipulative nature as the prayers being made for me. I have heard a church I grew up in gossip about how one of the women in the church was possessed by a demon because she suffered from depression, a perfectly normal condition we all go through that is intensified by being made to feel abnormal, such as... I don't know... being told you are possessed?
I've heard my parents talk about gay demons before, and I'm sure they think that I'm possessed. I'm sure they'll think such things when they read this and say that I'm lost under Satan's influence, or some other nonsense. They've taken part in exorcisms before. They can pray all they want. If I don't want to be silenced then I can't expect for them to be silenced, but I can hope that maybe some of the people receiving unwanted prayers don't have to feel like they must accept the prayers just because they are said in Jesus' name, even if the name is used in vain.
Dallas loves to say that prayer for another person is like telling God he isn't doing his job right and how he can fix it.
"Amazing the hurt you can find on FB if you look. Sometimes a good blocking is in order. They now say that “evangelicals” spew hate and I know that some do.. it’s in every camp these days. However spewing vile about people ( especially your parents ) because they believe differently than you is hate too. “Love and light” .. I hear that a lot these days. If you are spewing hate and venom about anyone no matter the topic.. that is not love. That’s not light. That is real hate. Here we see calling evil good and good evil.
We are living out 2Timothy 3:2 here folks. These are those days. It’s a counterfeit love."
Again, we are quoting Paul. Again, we are mistaking hurt for hate. Again, we see gaslighting, saying that somebody talking about their pain from abusive, estranged parents is spewing hate, venom, and vile. I have never gone online and said that my parents are liars. I've talked about my hurt, but I've always understood that they are doing what they believe to be right. Humans are too complex to be categorized as simply good and evil.
When I moved out, I used the ABBA song "Knowing Me Knowing You" to help work through my heartbreak. I didn't move out because I wanted to fight or rebel, I moved out because I knew my parents were so strong in their convictions that they were unmovable on the topic of homosexuality and I was so compelled as a homosexual that denying myself took me down dark, suicidal paths. This isn't a matter of good and evil, it's a matter of two strongly opposed perspectives and people doing the best they can with what they know and believe.
I debated heavily back and forth on whether or not to write this. On the one hand, I felt that writing a response would only further foster conflict and that addressing these accusations and half truths would be twisted to prove my parents right in their theories about some sinister smear campaign. Despite this, I have a responsibility to the child and the truth within me. When I was a little kid, one of my favorite words was "actually." I even used it once when my mom told one of her friends a version of events that did not play out as I had experienced it. This letter should serve as my "actually" to their "rebuttal." To quote the iconic RuPaul, "My goal is to always come from a place of love... but sometimes you just have to break it down for a motherfucker."
Sometime after attending the wedding that my dad told me I couldn't bring a date to, I attended a meeting in Astoria and started to participate in the efforts of the Clatsop County Marriage Equality Project. On that first night, they asked to interview anybody interested about what marriage equality meant to them. You used to be able to find it on YouTube, but there was a video of nervous 19 year old me, telling the camera that my dad had officiated the wedding ceremonies for both of my brothers, and I wanted the opportunity to ask my dad to do the same for me. I didn't tell the camera, but I had assumed my father would deny my request, I just wanted to pay the respect of at least asking him, and I did specifically state that I wanted the opportunity to ask him, not that I expected him to follow through with my request.
I shared the video on my Facebook and soon received a message from him expressing his anger that I posted the video and affirming my assumptions that he would refuse my request before I could even ask him. Now here we are, 12 years later. I am marrying Dallas in just a couple of days, and not only did I not ask my father to officiate our wedding, I have simply not invited them. Even without a pandemic, I still wouldn't have invited them. Not on a train, not in a tree, not in a car. I've received the message loud and clear that they want no part in the future I am making for myself, and I'm not going to become silent and disappear just because it would be comfortable for them. It is my life and I have every right to talk about what I have been through, especially with people whose common thread to me is through my notably absent parents. I will continue to use my voice and discuss my past to participate in cultural conversations about the issues affecting our society. I'm here, and I'm queer, get used to it.
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