A MOTHER'S RESPONSE

This editorial is from Sunday's Concord Monitor.
Sunday, April 30, 2000
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT/Hanover, NH)

As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel
and misguided people can be. Many letters have been sent
to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in
Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough
from you good people. I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric
about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that
accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating
sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have
been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since
my children were tiny.


My first born son started suffering at the hands of the
moral little thugs from your moral, upright families
from the time he was in the first grade. He never
professed to be gay or had any association with
anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk
or have gestures like the other boys. He was called
"fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.


In high school, while your children were doing
what kids that age should be doing, mine
labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting
it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them.
My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as
he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue
living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay
and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.
You have the audacity to talk about protecting
families and children from the homosexual menace,
while you yourselves tear apart families and drive
children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay,
but I do know that God didn't put him,
and millions like him, on this Earth to give you
someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you
could think, and it's about time you started doing that.


At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief
that this could never happen to you, that there is
some kind of subculture out there that people have
chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to
my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't
get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether
something occurs during a critical time of fetal
development, I don't know. I can only tell you
with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.


If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best
come up with something more substantive than your
heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was
given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested
in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality
was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever
on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that
nothing could ever change it. For those of you who
reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice,
a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be
changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled.
Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is
nothing more than something you have chosen,
that you could change it at will? If that's not the case,
then why would you suggest that someone else can?


A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has
been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family
have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart
and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying
that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."
You invoke the memory of the brave people who have
fought on the battlefield for this great country, s
aying that they didn't give their lives so that the
"homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles
they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought
in some of the most horrific battles of World War II,
was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.


He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson
has had to live. He says he fought alongside
homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part
and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the
service was gay, and he never knew it until the end,
and when he did find out, it mattered not at all.
That wasn't the measure of the man.


You religious folk just can't bear the thought that
as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood
he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a
measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that
he should request the right to visit that companion in
the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or
to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance .
How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would
threaten thevery existence of your family,
would undermine the sanctity of marriage.


You use religion to abdicate your responsibility
to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers
of religious people who find yourattitudes repugnant.
God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows
my son has committed no sin. The deep-thinking author
of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures
about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us
who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious
upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving
. . . to be better human beings than we are?"
Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

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