A Beacon of Light: My Mom and My Sexuality
By: Dr. Thomas J. West Iii
Tags: LGBTQ, Coming Out, Mothers Day, Family, Moms

A Beacon of Light: My Mom and My Sexuality

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My mother and I have a…contentious, shall we say…relationship. A great deal of this stems from the fact that we are basically the same person, and so we tend to get on each other’s nerves if we spend too much time in the same space, because of course doing so reminds us of all of the things that we dislike in ourselves. Recently, though, we’ve reached a new stage in our relationship, one where we have a mutual respect and appreciation for one another and for what makes us who we are. There are, of course, still fault lines in our bond, ones that show up every now and again but, overall, we’re in a pretty healthy place.

My mother has also had a strained relationship with my queerness. When I first came out to my parents way back in 2002, they were pretty sanguine about the whole thing. As I recall, their exact words were something to the effect of: “what do you want us to do about it?” The implication was that this was just something that was part of who I was and that, to them, there really wasn’t much more to be said about the matter. After all, what were they going to be able to say that would change me? That wasn’t their way, and so matters seemed settled.

Subsequent conversations, however, would reveal that my mother, in particular, was far less okay with this whole situation than she had let on at first. It soon became clear that, far from accepting my sexuality, she actually felt tremendous guilt about it, blaming herself for the fact that her son had turned out gay. As annoying as that was, more frustrating (for me) was the fact that she asked me to promise not to tell any other members of the family, including and especially my grandmother. I strongly suspect that this injunction came from her desire not to be nagged to death by her mother (it goes without saying that she has a fraught relationship with my grandmother, for many of the same reasons that my mother and I have such a relationship).

At the time, I agreed with that condition. For one thing, I didn’t feel like contending with yet another coming out experience with my family, as I had no doubt that my ultra-conservative grandmother wouldn’t be nearly as sanguine about my sexuality as my parents had been, and I had similar doubts about the rest of my very Christian family. And, of course, I also wanted to spare my mom the agony of being blamed for my sexuality by my grandmother.

I have to admit, though, that I was more than a little irritated and frustrated by the fact that my mom saw my sexuality as something so bad that she had to take the blame upon herself. Even now, it still grates on me a little.

On the other hand, I don’t really blame my mother for her inability to think outside of the blame framework. She was, after all, raised in a rural Pennsylvania family in the 1950s and 1960s, when the rhetoric of domineering mothers turning their sons gay was all the rage (it’s not as if that pernicious myth has gone away, either). I won’t lie, though. It hurt me a little that she sees my sexuality as something to be ashamed of, even if she had largely made her peace with it.

Gradually, she’s come to mellow out a bit. Though I think a little voice in the back of her head will always insist to her that she is the one responsible for my queerness, she’d never been anything but welcoming to all of the partners that I’ve brought home to meet her (including that time when I briefly dated a lesbian in college, another aspect of my romantic life that she took in stride). In the distant past, she did make a few remarks that were a bit devastating, but I’ve since made peace with her about them, and she even apologized. My mom may be stubborn as a mule, but she’s willing to admit when she was wrong.

For my part, I wanted to avoid the sort of unaddressed bitterness that had so thoroughly soured my mom’s relationship with her own mother. It would have been easy to just hold on to those grievances on my part, to nurse them and let them grow, but I decided not to. It was better, I thought, to get it all out in the open.

I’m glad that I did, because I think it really strengthened my relationship with my mom.

Nowadays, my mom has adopted a rather enlightened perspective about my sexuality. As she never tires of reminding me, what I do with my life is between me and God. If, indeed, there is something essentially sinful about what I’m doing, I’m the one who will have to answer for it. To some, that will no doubt seem a rather conditional sort of acceptance, but for me it’s a significant milestone, and I’m grateful every day that I have a mother who loves me unconditionally.