“Dear Amy,” begins the correspondence of a woman who will never, ever be nominated for ‘Mom of the year’ to advice columnist Amy Dickinson.
“We are part of a church group,” Mom continues, “and I fear that if people in that group find out they will make fun of me for having a gay child.”
Poorly constructed syntax aside, there are already some major red flags here. But it gets worse.
“He won’t listen to reason, and he will not stop being gay. I feel as if he is doing this just to get back at me for forgetting his birthday for the past three years; I have a busy work schedule.”
How about we take this to the next level?
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Kids can be so vindictive! Imagine this poor, hardworking woman having to deal with a gay son just because she forgot a birthday, or two, or three. Birthday’s don’t mean much to teens anyways.
“Please help him make the right choice in life by not being gay,” she writes in conclusion. “He won’t listen to me, so maybe he will listen to you.”
And then the real kicker: she signs it “Feeling Betrayed.”
It’s hard to even know where to begin, but luckily Amy handles things pretty well.
She writes in response:
DEAR BETRAYED: You could teach your son an important lesson by changing your own sexuality to show him how easy it is. Try it for the next year or so: Stop being a heterosexual to demonstrate to your son that a person’s sexuality is a matter of choice, to be dictated by one’s parents, the parents’ church and social pressure.
I assume that my suggestion will evoke a reaction that your sexuality is at the core of who you are. The same is true for your son. He has a right to be accepted by his parents for being exactly who he is.
When you “forget” a child’s birthday, you are basically negating him as a person. It is as if you are saying that you have forgotten his presence in the world. How very sad for him.
Pressuring your son to change his sexuality is wrong. If you cannot learn to accept him as he is, it might be safest for him to live elsewhere.
A group that could help you and your family figure out how to navigate this is Pflag.org. This organization was founded for parents, families, friends and allies of LGBT people, and has helped countless families through this challenge. Please research and connect with a local chapter.
Ron King
Why is she exposing her child to a hate group….all around bad parenting
Guido Habets
drop the church
Victor Barry
Church rots the brain, quit going.
Rodney Church
Clueless mom, I’ll pray for her
Michael Clifford
Good. She should be embarrassed.
Ben Stimpson
I’d embarass her too! 😀
Billy Budd
Bitch.
Eddie Nieves
Sadly even mom’s live off what others will say or living a life about impressing others & or Congregations. Why dont you live to impress ur son with eternal love no exceptions!!!
tricky ricky
this letter is like one of the fake ones college kids used to send to dear abby and ann landers (it used to be the thing to do in the 70’s). the forgetting the birthdays part is the tip off. it’s been used before.
John Munoz
Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta?
1EqualityUSA
tricky ricky, I thought the same thing.
o.codone
Queerty is officially an anti-christian, anti-religion hate group site. Can you say “actionable”. Hmmm. You guys wanna just jump right to settlement discussions before you’re RICO’d?
Luis H. Lopez
Leave church and do something useful with your life.
iluzionist54
I hope it’s a bad joke. Otherwise I worry for the poor kid having an i***t mother who has enough time for her church, but not for her own child …
Peggy M.e. Postma
That is sad to hear, I would have been proud to have him as my son…..after all, I gave birth to him….!
Jonty Coppersmith
@o.codone:
What are you going on about? There’s nothing “actionable” in this article nor in any of the comments. Last I knew we have freedom of speech to criticize people, groups or things we don’t like. Do you really expect someone who has been called evil (and worse) to love the people who have harassed and oppressed him?
1EqualityUSA
o.codone, you structure your sentences and use the weird, colloquial “Hmmm.” the way Maggie Gallagher used to speak. ew. Maggie, is that you?
mfullmer
Why are you bringing back a 2013 story as a “Top Story”? That letter is stupid but please move-on. Isn’t there anything current that you find relevant?
Sean Hellier
Dear Mom with gay son, I can solve the problem of your son embarrassing you in church rather easily: Stop going to church. It’s a waste of time anyway, since it’s based on a ridiculous fantasy that’s no more true than Odin and Zeus were.
Throw religion on the ash heap it belongs on and spend the precious time left in this life with your boy and live that time with him and everyone else you love to the fullest.
LubbockGayMale
Note to moms like her: if you want to attend churches that won’t judge you for having a gay child, try MCC! And if your church would judge you for this, it’s not a christian church.
Todd Shuman
“Gay Teen Son Embarrassed by Homophobic Mother”
TrekBear
Even if the teen were straight, I’m sure he would embarrass his mom at church and elsewhere. Part of being a teen is becoming your own person – even at the risk of or purposefully embarrassing your parents!
dwes09
@mfullmer: I thought I had seen this exact article before. Rather disingenuous to rehash a story when there are more than enough contemporary issues to deal with. And as others have noted, this is quite obviously a fake letter. No doubt there are parents who feel this way, but the would certainly have the sense to couch their distaste entirely in religious terms so as to avoid being so obviously shallow. Even really stupid people would do this.
AxelDC
Utah has an atrociously high teen suicide rate, and it is estimated that half of the adolescents who prematurely end their own lives are gay Mormons who have been rejected by their own family. Utah also has a large teen runaway population, and half of them are gay. Many of them end up supporting themselves as prostitutes after they are kicked out by their families.
If I were the loving, kind Heavenly Father whom Mormons pretend to worship, I would reserve a special place in Hell (even though Mormons don’t exactly believe in Hell) for parents who reject and abuse their kids simply for being gay.
AxelDC
@o.codone: Or maybe we are just reacting to the sanctimonious homophobes who pretend to be Christians while casting the first stones at gays.
Chris
The letter reads like something written by a group of frat bros, during a Saturday night drunk. “Hey, I have an idea! Let’s write something outrageous and see if we can get it printed by Dear Amy.”
Chris
@Chris: And right now, they’re texting one another: “EPIC!!!”
tsginamarieva
This letter (and the response) mirrors other letters I’ve seen here and elsewhere over the past few years. I suspect it’s either an old entry, or it’s fake. Never the less, if I’m wrong, the sentiment of the mother is reprehensible.
mykelb
@o.codone: Obviously you are illiterate in the law.
dannysax
@ o.codone: I don’t know if you are on oxycodone or what, but I question why you are on this site if you feel the way you do about Queerty being a hate group. I have seen several articles here where reasonable religious people have spoken out and been featured. Whether or not this piece has been on here before, it is still very relevant to today’s society and the problems of Christian fundamentalist parents with gay children. I praise Amy’s answer and reference to PFLAG, since it has helped many families come back together.
LuvmYbzN1
@Eddie Nieves: Best response out of all.
kevininbuffalo
Slow news day Queerty? This letter was originally published in the Washington Post on November 18, 2013. It’s been around the internet a few times since then and probably on Queerty a couple of times too.
Stephen Meeks
My advice is for her to seriously examine herself for stupidity, brainwashing by her church, and bigotry.
blankman
@o.codone: This has been floating around for a while and has appeared in a number of advice columns – in fact it turned up in the advice column of one of the Canadian papers this morning with an explanation that the columnist was taking a break so would be rerunning some old letters.
blankman
@kevininbuffalo: It turned up in one of the Canadian papers this morning with a note that the columnist was taking a break so would rerun some old columns in the interim.
Captain Obvious
Hateful “mother” and hateful commenters. Hate hate hate.
Chuck Price
Accept him as is.
paul dorian lord fredine
he embarasses you? shit, imagine how he feels!! so sad he can’t just stop being gay because you tell him to. if you think it’s a choice why don’t you ‘decide’ to be gay for a week or two and then let us know how it goes. better yet, ‘choose’ to be christian for a change you just might find that to be a revelation.
billeetee
Somehow, I very seriously ‘doubt’ the contents of the letter AND that it was written by ANY mom (at least I would hope not but we ALL know that there are mothers and dads out there who do react this way). Somehow I feel that I’ve ‘seen this letter before’, but pertaining to other teen angst situations. So let us hope it’s not real and that we could find the ‘culprit’ and have him/her ‘bitch slapped’ all around Washinton Square, live on televition.
Berkleyguy
The fact that she is embarrassed is not her son’s problem – it id definitely his mother’s problem. And the response is equally ridiculous. He did not choose to be gay. No one in their right mind would choose to be the brunt of vitriolic hatred from the likes of Fred Phelps and Kim Davis, among others.
I am inclined to agree with billietee: Is the letter real, is this mother real. Was this written by some phantom or by the columnist herself so she could give her ridiculous answer.
NateOcean
If the young man is acting up in church, why not take him to the priest for a good talking too…a bit of one-on-on counseling.
Oh, right.
Nevermind.
OutInTheOC
Dear Amy……..great response. Could not have said it better myself….two thumbs up to you!
Dakotahgeo
100 AMENS and an equal number of thumbs up!
Dakotahgeo
@o.codone: It is so good to see you back and living down to the lowest common denominator and my low expectations of you! So successful you are!!
Fleuron
@John Munoz: Yes, and Blake Rayne, also, in “The Identical”:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2326574
Leonard Woodrow
Silly cow! How do these retrograde, ignorant people remain immune to modern education?
Amy’s response was excellent, but gullible people subjected to religious conditioning are difficult to cure.
jmani954
The most telling aspect of this entire story is that the mother is more concerned about what others think. Her true concern needs to be her child. Not how the world views her as the mother of a gay son. Rather how SHE views her son.
o.codone
@Dakotahgeo: You’re glad I’m back? I never went anywhere. I’ve been right here all along, keeping the Queerty comment section alive and well. I do miss my old adversaries, now that the comment section has been reinvented and toned down, and some of the more controversial posters exiled. I think I squeaked by because my posts are not that intellectual, so they don’t do much harm. You said that yourself, “living down to the lowest common denominator”. So, thank you for helping to keep me onboard. Truly, you are one of the best yourself.
Dakotahgeo
@o.codone: Not a problem! I always enjoy your stand-up comedic attempts!
JAWIWA
Pretty sure I remember this exact story from a few years ago. Either Amy is rerunning or you are, Queerty.
JAWIWA
@o.codone: It is a pity that there are no laws against publicly expressed stupidity.
o.codone
@JAWIWA: your name says it all. I mean …seriously. a variation of sasquatch?
Donald Dork
People who write to advice columnists don’t really want advice. They just want the advice columnist to agree with them