Dear Mothers of LGBT Youth,
I am not a mother. Many of you will think me unqualified to write on this topic. But here are my qualifications: I work in a high school with teenagers, I listen to them, I feel for them, I am still one at heart. Having said that, maybe I don't know anything. But I know this: when I hear that a close friend of one of my favorite students committed suicide because she told her mother she was lesbian and then her mother kicked her out of the house, I stop for a minute. And I wonder. I wonder why. Why, when a child comes home stoned or drunk, or pregnant, or having gotten someone pregnant, or expelled from school, or brought home by the police do we tear our hair out, lock them in their room and send them to therapy and rehab but when they come home and tell you something that they have been afraid to say out loud for so long because they know how it will sound, do we deprive them of food and shelter? That is quite possibly the most unChristlike behavior I can possibly think of. I don't care if you think homosexuality is a sin. So are drugs and sex outside of marriage. But we don't throw them out for those things. There is a line, obviously. Abuse within the home warrants removal from it, but within boundaries, always. But I'm not talking about those things. I'm talking about your child coming to you and saying those two words that have become synonymous with a descent directly and immediately to Hell, "I'm gay." That is not the time for the boot, it is the time for an increase of love. By all means, set boundaries. But remember, always, that your child is not only yours. They are God's, and they were His before they were yours. God never stops loving us. Don't ever make the mistake of making your child fend for themselves prematurely because they told you their deepest secret. After the movie Frozen came out, there were a lot of people who either liked or hated the song Let It Go because they said it was about homosexuality. But let's say it is. Like any secret, it will consume until it destroys. Would you rather your child suffer in silence, or confide in you to obtain support? Now, I don't know all the circumstances of this situation, but this isn't the first instance I've heard. Just don't throw them out for stupid reasons. That's all I'm saying.
