A gay student was asking me whether most of the families of gays I know eventually come around. I would say that most do, but not entirely- I’ve only known one person who was ever completely excommunicated by his family, but I’ve also only known one whose family accepted his boyfriend the same way they’d accept a son’s girlfriend. Most, including mine, had the initial “Hit the Roof” explosion period, then after the dust cleared they settled into a grudging acceptance- “I know you’re gay but I don’t want to talk about it or meet your friends” compromise region.
So for gay Dopers, is your family totally jiggy with it, completely unaccepting, or somewhere in between?
I have a very large extended family (tons of cousins and their kids). Most of them “knew all along,” so it was no big shock when I came out. I sing in the local gay men’s chorus, and some of my cousins come to every concert. My mother also came to every concert, before she passed away.
On the other hand, some of the relatives on my father’s side might be a problem if they knew. But I see them very rarely, so it’s a moot point.
Can I answer? I am family. (Er, no I don’t mean I’m “family”, I mean I’m a family member of a gay sibling.) I our house, it was pretty much a non-issue. My parents were VERY liberal, and my sister was such a tomboy growing up that I’m pretty sure my mom would have been more shocked had she grown up to be straight.
I didn’t care one way or the other. Our dad didn’t seem quite able to wrap his head around it. I think he has problems separating" sexual orientation" with “gender preference”. He seemed to think that in some way my sister “emotionally wanted to be a man”. It was explained over and over, and he said he understood, but you sould sort of tell that he still couldn’t wrap his brain around the concept no matter how hard he tried.
Either way, he had no negativity about it. He never for a moment considered it a “problem”, he just couldn’t totally understand it conceptually.
The only time my mom looked weirded out was one summer, when we were in our early twenties, when our family had rented a cottage. My sister and I arrived in the afternoon, each accompanied by our then girlfriends. We sort of have similar tastes in women and by coincidence, our girlfriends, who had never met previously, kind of looked like clones of one another. It was like we were dating the same girl.
Mom came out onto the porch, looked at the carload of college kids, got a “WTF?..” look on her face and went back inside.
After the original freakout of my mom, my parents accepted me and the bf as if he were a girl. My dad was always fine with it. He has a lesbian mom and sister.
ETA: So they had plenty of practice when my brother also came out to them.
My mother hasn’t spoken to me in over 10 years. (Even though she lies to other family members and invents stories about me, as if we’re still in contact.)
My father died about 6 years ago (I think) - and hadn’t spoken to me for years before that, but my mother made sure my picture was up at his funeral, and invented some story about why I wasn’t there - the real reason was I wasn’t told he had died, and wasn’t told about the funeral. (The whole picture thing is pretty creepy if you ask me…)
I have one brother, who became born again many years ago, and tried to “save” me. He gave me bibles for years, and then suddenly stopped talking with me about 20 years ago. (I guess he realized the bibles weren’t about to make me turn straight)
On the plus side - I have one aunt (my father’s sister) who I am very close with - she was the black sheep of the family - and after alot of searching I tracked her down - my father stopped talking to her in the 50’s - she says she never figured out why - but it seems to fit how the rest of my family behaves…
Still talk with some cousins though… they seem fine with me being Gay, and can’t believe how horrible my immediate family has been.
My husband’s family is more accepting - even though they’re born again, they came to our wedding in Canada, and talk with us regularly. (Like a real family) They haven’t figured out how to reconcile their religion with having a Gay son (and son-in-law), but they at least seem to be trying…
I’m answering in the not gay myownself, but Family accepting gay members sense. Particularly because there is a nice generational acceptance here. My Hon’s father’s family has several gay women, including an older aunt, who is quite respectable in her community. The family worked their way up, smart people, and Scandinavian work ethic; tends towards professors and ministers, accepting positions of responsibility and nurturing community. As was dear Aunt B. After the Matriarch Mom died, “Spinster” Aunt was freed up abit, and became more open with her long-time companion. Two apartments became one, and, the family accepted it, albeit with Swedish reserve of not making a big deal of it, not openly discussed.
Yet, I remember a Holiday dinner at Aunt B’s, where she was hosting the dinner, her brothers there, yet she was now the Matriarch, and her companion M was sitting beside at the head of the table. It was accepted, and I suppose, because of the decent grace of this family. At 60 plus, she was finally allowed to live as she choosed. But, still, it is not spoken out too loudly. As she, as an older school reserved person about that sort of issue, would have it.
That sort of graceful coming out was a new way for me to observe, having plenty of younger friends with the usual travails. I’m glad Aunt B got the support of family late in life to be who she is, and to have her partner accepted by family. She’s 80 now, and she, and M, are dearly loved by all.
Can I participate as the sibling of a gay person? I wasn’t living at home when this happened. My brother tells me that when he came out to our mother, there was weeping and accusations and all kinds of ugliness. She sent him to a psychiatrist, because there was something wrong with his mind. Not too long afterward, he moved 4000 miles away and stayed there. I guess she came to some sort of understanding of it in later years, but it was never spoken of. Ever.
Another sibiling of a gay checking in. Unfortuantely, my Mormon mother has never really liked that my sister is gay. My father died before she came out, but I think he would have had even more of an issue. My mother is unhappy that my sister took her partner’s last name, for example.
Only a few of my relatives went to their commitment ceremony. The cousins seem OK with it, but I think I’m the one who is probably the most accepting.
[ apologies in advance for rambling hijack] What I have trouble accepting is people who define gender by who you want to have sex with as opposed to what plumbing (physical or emotional) you have. I suppose those things being inseparable could be a generational thing, like if you live your whole life experiencing water as something that comes out of a tap for free, and then one day you look around and people are paying $3 a bottle for it, I can see that being a bit of a WTF? moment. But the whole idea of equating gender with sexual desire, or even gayness with sexual desire and even ‘enlightened liberals’ being unable to separate the two just drives me around the bend. Because it’s not just who you want to sleep with but who you want to be with, on many levels, that makes one gay or straight. The whole “you like girls? Then you must want to be a man” point of view just aggravates me to the point of incoherence (obviously) - and I’m straight!
Sorry for the hijack, I just had to share my hair-pulling moment. Back OT, sort of, both of my grandmother’s older sisters never married, and spent a lot of time with lady friends, but never lived with anyone or had long-term companions that we knew of. They have all passed on so I’m sure we’ll never know if they were gay or straight or asexual or what, but they certainly never whined about how they never found a good man and never bugged me about finding one myself (which may be why I stayed single so long - it’s genetic!)
My sister openly dating a girl in college is about as close as we’ve gotten in the family, and that didn’t invoke any different response from the parents or myself than the boyfriends she has had since. Except for my mom occasionally looking confused and asking me if my sister liked guys or girls or what. And if I had my coffee that morning, I would respond “I think she likes [insert current boy/girlfriend’s name]”, cheeky bitch that I am…
Oh, the rest of the family totally understand your frustration. It used to drive us absolutely bonkers! He was a very intelligent, well-educated man, who in almost every way was a very progressive thinker… and then he had this incredibly dumb notion. And he knew it was a dumb notion.
It was sort of like when you’re really young, and you think “A-ha! I understand how that works!” and you’re totally wrong, but because you think you’ve kown this “turth” amd believed it since you were a wee lad, part of you still believes the falsehood.
Like, if when you were six year old, your parents tell you that your dog moved away because he was startiing a new job. Then when you’re 26 you think back and say “Hey, waitaminute, realize that’s impossible!” and you realize that the dog had died and your parents just didn’t want to upset you… but emotionally you still kind of feel that the dog moved away to start a new job. You know that’s wrong, but a part of you still hangs on to it as truth.
My dad studied and at one point even taught Foucault. It’s not like he was new to theories of human sexuality. But Jeebus, when it came to real life, he still had this goofy little boy’s notion at heart.
Wow, I better post or your student is going to think there aren’t any gays out here!
My mom was pretty weird at first. My sister had already come out to her, as had my best friend (he figured out that my mom was a good practice for his mom…) and she was accepting and fine. ME? Nope. She might have been addled by some of the drugs she was on at the time, and she claimed later she never said some of the stuff she did, but it wasn’t pretty.
My sister, it turns out, had a “when is little sis going to come out” pool going with her friends, so she was fine.
My brothers ranged from “just be happy” to “let me process this for a bit”
My mother and sister declared that if I told my father, they would disown me.
Looking back on it, had I said anything directly to my father, he would have had to come into conflict with church teachings. As it was, I knew darn well he knew. He accepted my partner and my sister’s partner as two of his favorite daughters. We just couldn’t be open about it.
Nowadays (20 years after coming out to everybody, and 5 years after my father’s death) everybody is great. Two siblings made it to my wedding. My nephlets and neicelets treat my partner as a somewhat remote aunt. My mom has come to stay with us, even though she doesn’t travel well.
For many years we either just didn’t talk about it or my mom would remind me that I’m going straight to hell when I die. (perhaps that would be going gay to hell…)
It’s getting better, I’ve been out to my family for over 15 years and for the first time my mom is coming out to visit and stay with us for a week. I have my doubts that she’ll ever fully accept it, but she is at least reaching a place of tolerance.
Gay man checking in.
After the intial three-day shock and anger by my mother (dad was surprisingly ok with it), it turned into a non-issue.
The entire family accepted my SO and even the staunch Catholic (who teaches in a private Catholic school) has no problem and visits us twice a year.
I can honestly say that not one single family member, on his side or my side, has ever had a problem with the fact that we are a Gay couple.
Speaking as a family member of a gay person, I can tell your student that my family never had any particular objection to a member being gay (although we were pretty irked that the then-freshly-out family member was making out with her partner at the family reunion - but we’d have been just as irked if one of the straight folks were doing the same. In public in a mixed-age group is not the time for sloppy make-outs - there were small children and old people (as in her parents and aunts and uncles) there who so did not need to see that).
My mother told me once when I asked her about the subject that she wouldn’t change her feelings or viewpoint on either of her children if we came out to her, but she would prefer if we were straight. She said that it was her experience that gay people had a harder row to hoe than straight people socially and romantically and she’d prefer to her children to have the minimum amount of chaos in their lives possible. Also, she really, truly, deeply desired grandchildren, and felt that she was less likely to get grandchildren from a gay child.*
But then, my family is remarkably accepting and liberal in general.
*Note: She doesn’t care if the grandchildren are adopted or biological - she felt that gay people were statistically less likely to want/be able to have children of their own.
I had a friend who is a super-cool person and a professional therapist. She was ultra supportive when I came out. A few years later her “Helen Keller would know this girl is a lesbian” daughter came out, and the same friend went ballistic, kicked her out of the house, etc… She came around after a few days, and was later deeply ashamed of her actions, but it’s interesting how emotional v. rational a topic it is.
I’d be irked too. Gay or straight, that’s just tacky.
Mrs Geek had a cousin who was a lesbian. Her family had this very strange don’t ask don’t tell kind of thing going on. Everyone knew she was a lesbian, and she went to all family functions with her partner, and yet her entire family seemed to be in denial about the whole thing. Mrs Geek’s mother seriously told me one time that they just slept in the same bed because they were really good friends. No one ever said anything bad about her or her partner, and they were always invited to all family functions. I always thought she was the one cool person at parties full of stuffy boring people. If anyone ever said anything bad to her or her partner while she was alive, I never heard about it.
Sadly, she committed suicide a few years ago. Worse, after her death, her family went on the warpath against her partner, going so far as to accuse her of murder and forcing the police to investigate. The police investigation confirmed that it was a suicide, but the family still is not on speaking terms with her partner.
My mom’s still in denial about me being bisexual. She insist that’s it’s just a phase, and sooner or later, I’ll admit that I’m really homosexual. :dubious: Other than that, she’s been completely supportive of me. The first thing she said when I came out to her (On Thanksgiving. I’m a traditionalist, sometimes.) were, “Does this mean you’re finally going to start dating?” My dad was a little uncomfortable about it, but he did his best not to let it show, and after the first few months of me dating a guy, he was totally cool with it.
It’s a little weird - my dad’s side of the family doesn’t speak to my mom’s side, and dad’s side has no idea that I’m even in contact with mom’s side. Dad’s side is completely unaccepting and I’m not out to them. I lived off and on with my paternal grandmother throughout my teenage years, and out of all the adults in my family, she’s the one that I am closest to and have the best ‘parental’ type of relationship with. She freely admits to all of her other grandchildren that I’m her favorite. I love and respect the woman like crazy, but her religion is absolutely intolerant of homosexuality. If I told her I was a lesbian, it would shatter her heart, and she’d most likely never speak to me again (her religion advocates shunning of homosexuals). She’s had a lot of health issues in the last few years - I ended up moving back home temporarily to take care of her and the rest of the fam after she had a pulmonary embolism a few years ago - and emotional crises do take a noticeable toll on her health. She’s in her mid-seventies, and I am absolutely unwilling to do anything to either jeopardize our relationship or risk her health. I think that the rest of that side of the family at least subconsciously knows I’m gay - ghod knows they tease me about it often enough - but it’s all firmly on a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ footing. Sometimes I wish it were all out in the open, but it’s not a big enough issue for me, especially when it seems like so much is at stake. I admire the people who are willing to risk familial ostracism in order to be honest about their sexuality, but right now I feel like if I came out to that side of the family, I’d lose more than I’d gain.
I am out to my mother’s side of the family. I had absolutely no idea how they’d react when I told them, but I did it anyway, and it worked out surprisingly well. They all said the same thing - “Well, we kind of figured…” and they’ve all been supportive and accepting. But I only just came out to them over the summer, so I’m not sure yet just how deep that sincerity and acceptance runs. Although my brother is making plans to take me out to a strip club when I go visit him at Christmas…not quite sure how I feel about that :dubious:
ETA: My siblings are all firmly on ‘mom’s side.’ I’m the only kid in the family who has contact with our father at the present time.
That’s odd. With my mother and with other gay men and women I’ve known it was the “just a phase and sooner or later they’ll admit they’re heterosexual” attitude.
