I was raised by church-going people. Christians who have always followed the ‘do unto others as you would have done to you’ and ‘whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.’ Now, I’m not the believing in a deity type anymore, but I can understand that those things are applicable across the board. Treat people nicely. Treat them fairly. Love your family and friends, and don’t kick them out of your family for coming out of the closet.
I won’t bad-mouth your parents here. I don’t know them or their reasons, but I certainly think they’re out of line.
I love my children. I might be surprised if one of them came out of the closet, but I would not treat them any differently than I had before they told me. They’ve been taught that who you love doesn’t make any difference to us, and that it shouldn’t make any difference to the world. Our younger boy’s godparents are a gay couple, and the older boy loves them like family. We pulled the older boy out of Boy Scouts for their ban on gays as leaders, and explained to him exactly why we did it.
I’m sorry that this is so lame. I’m in shock over the reaction that our Fionn has got from her family. Nobody deserves to be treated so poorly, and the fact that it’s her own family must make it even worse.
It’s quite honestly the sort of behaviour I’d expect from witch-burning peasants in medeival Germany, rather than citizens of a civilized country. I find it stunning every time I hear about this - but I’ve heard these stories so many times now, I guess I’m not genuinely surprised anymore.
And that’s really, really sad. I’m always surprised when I hear such things. I guess being someone who’s from a country that allows gay marriage also skews my perceptions somewhat.
Don’t perch too high on that high horse. I’m guessing you’re from Canada. Y’all have been fighting the same fight we in America have. You might be a bit further along, but you still had a battle to fight.
It’s not so much the religion as it is the people who claim to live by it. A lot of the time, the people will be narrow-minded bastards, no matter what ethical path they claim to follow.
What Fionn is going through sucks beyond belief, and makes me wonder if folk who discriminate like that even know what “tolerance” means.
Bloody hell, this world has some ugly-minded humans.
Yep, and it’s still being fought. However, gay wasn’t a BAD thing when I was growing up, like I observe it to be to my neighbours here. We live (for another week) in a pretty blue-collar neighbourhood, confederate flags and ‘fag’ as a derogatory term.
The more I hear about crap like this, the more I thank my mother and father for either a) being an example of tolerance and friendship, or at least b) staying out of the fucking way.
I haven’t read all of Fionn’s thread, but I will say as infuriating as it can be, the fact that it just happened might make a difference as well. I know several gays (male and female) who have really good and accepting families BUT they weren’t so much when the kid first came out.
When I came out my friend Susan was the most supportive and wonderful person ever and the only person we both knew who actually went to my mother and said ‘Deal with this… he’s gay, it’s not your fault or his fault, he’s still the son who gave up years of his life for you, bladha blah’. Several years later Susan’s own daughter came out and she could scarcely have handled it worse- disowned, denied, suggested therapy, etc… Later she lived with her daughter and daughter-in-law and was closer to the latter than the former, and very regretful over her original attitude. (Even Cher, who you’d think would be the most gay friendly mom on the planet, by her own admission went into orbit when Chastity came out while Republican senator Sonny was accepting and loving- there’s just never the slightest way of knowing how parents are going to take the news.)
In a way I agree that it’s vaguely similar to dealing with the death of a child. It’s not the child you thought you had, exactly, and if they’re hiding this what else are they not telling you and yadda blah. My mother- I will be mild and say did not welcome the news when I came out, kicked me out of the house until she realized I saw it as a gift then immediately revoked it “COME BACK HERE!”, and we didn’t speak for a while and there was a lot of venom on both sides. She’s still not comfortable with it, we don’t discuss it even when we discuss it (example: the other day when two flamingly gay middle aged men almost walked in front of the car as I was driving her somewhere she made the comment that ‘run over those old faggots if they don’t have better sense than that’, and while frankly I was thinking pretty much the same thing I said ‘Don’t use that word’. Her: ‘It’s what they are…’ Me: ‘Then I guess they’d be faggots run over by a fa…’ Her: Whatever! The point is anybody who’d walk in front of an SUV can’t be pitied if they get hit. {plea bargain accepted}).
OTOH, it’s NOT the death of a child or anything like. I won’t say they’ll come around, but I will say that- this is late May- how they feel about it around Christmas will be a lot more important. Perhaps they’ll come around, perhaps not, but either way I wouldn’t judge them too much at the moment. They’re in the bargaining (or blackmailing) phase right now.
Seriously? And I’m not trying to be a jerk here. Seriously? In Canada, being gay wasn’t or isn’t in any way bad?
I know you’ve got some great laws and all, but Canadians really and truly don’t secretly hate fags? A kid in grade school doesn’t get called gay, fag, or queer?
Meant to add about my mother: She’s never been comfortable with it in the “let’s talk about what you find sexy in a man” way, but she accepts me, and she doesn’t make comments about my one day marrying and having kids like she used to and even semi-jokes around it once and a while. After her immediate “Get the fuck out of my life” moment, she basically came charging after me on a fastest stallion and begging me to come back into her life (and may have sung ‘won’t you please bring back the dream of Dulcinea’ very off key, I forget), and while she’s never gonna be a PFLAG mom we do have a close relationship. (In fact if I weren’t about to return to her hospital room at the moment I’d be all over this and the other thread.)
Not in my childhood household, and when I was a young adult in high school and on, it really wasn’t a big deal. My mom had friends who I always thought were room-mates, until I was old enough to understand the term ‘lesbian’ and it was explained to me as just a matter of course. Eileen and Sheila were in love, just like Mom and Dad were in love.
I’m not going to say people aren’t discriminated against, and that all people in Canada are gay-friendly because that isn’t the case. For instance, not all provinces allow gay marriage, and my home province is one of them. I left there and went to Northwest Territories, which is very gay-friendly.
Go there. My mom told me I was going to hell. She ended up in a hospital bed not long thereafter. She loved me, no matter what came out of her mouth. Go there. I value every damn minute I had there, and wish I had more.
I know it is not all religious folk, but I have never met or heard of an Atheist, Agnostic or Unitarian that has pulled shit like this on their own kids especially.
It appears to overwhelmingly be bible thumpers that act like this. I work with a woman that worked on a grass roots effort to get people out to vote for Bush last time to prevent Gay Marriage and she has said, she could not accept one of her sons being gay. Every anecdotal story I hear of parents throwing their kids out of the family, it is always a “Good Church going Family” :rolleyes: .
The whole thing sucks, but it does seem to be a brand of ignorance mostly confined to the strongly and **blindly ** religious.
If there is a hell, I would like to think **Fionn’s ** parents are in for a rude awakening for their intolerance if they don’t change their minds and accept her for who she is.
Depends. Varies a fair bit by region and such. Certainly there are some who vocally disapprove of gays, and “gay” is a ubiquitous derogatory term amongst many youth (though used in a way that’s rather divorced from its relation to sexual orientation, not that the usage isn’t insidious despite that). Pick the 8 most progressive states in the union on this matter, and another 2 about a third of the way down, and make a country out of them and you’d have pretty much a mirror image of Canadian attitudes.
I didn’t want to badmouth Fionn’s parents in the thread she started, since I don’t know them and don’t know how she feels about them.
But I’ll do it here. I don’t like them. They’re not good people. I don’t actually wish them harm, but I think they’ve just forfeited their right to vote. And to be around children. And that jeep, but here I hold out for some karma. I can just imagine the mom driving it to the store and all of a sudden realizing the steering wheel is full of LESBIAN COOTIES!!! Then she drives it through the side of a Dairy Queen. No one is hurt, but the car is totalled and Mom is liable for damages. They lose the house, dad takes to drink, and ironically Mom ends up working at the counter of the (newly refurbished) DQ. Every time a little girl comes in for a summer ice-cream cone, her hand trembles as she pours the soft-serve and she thinks, “what if she’s a little LESBIAN?” Every cone, every innocent child, is like a dagger through her hard and pointy heart.
Not true. Even Alberta relented after C-38 was passed. They considered legal action, but even that was just for show. Harper is apparently going to re-open the debate in a couple months, but it’s expected that any attempt to repeal C-38 will lose by a couple dozen votes.
Depends on the people, but despite Canada’s generally progressive laws and attitudes about homosexuality, there are still plenty of homophobes around.
I lived in Vancouver for a couple of years in the early 1990s, in the West End, which is, as anyone who knows the city will tell you, pretty much the gay heart of town. I lived a couple of blocks off Davie Street, which is considered about the most gay friendly part of Vancouver.
And even there gay guys and women walking the stret would be harrassed, or even beaten. A local gay rights organization used to try and draw attention to such incidents by painting a “Queer Bashed Here” stencil on the sidewalk whenever someone was beaten for being gay, and the regularity with which such signs appeared was rather depressing. A guy i know was set upon and bashed by a bunch of guys outside a gay club in Toronto.
Having lived in the US for a while now, i definitely think that overall attitudes are still considerably better in Canada, but there are neanderthals wherever you go, unfortunately.