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IN FOCUS: ARTICLE |
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How My Best Friend Survived His Homophobic Family
by Shauna, 12.01.98
Tim and I met when we were 17. He was attractive, smart, and bitingly funny — we bonded in minutes.
A couple days later he told me he was gay. "Does it bother you?" he asked anxiously, scanning my face for signs of disapproval. It didn't. I'd never really known anyone who was gay, but my mother had had gay friends when I was younger and living in Southern California, so I was open-minded about such things.
But this wasn't Southern California, it was Memphis, Tennessee, and Tim's father was a Baptist minister who believed that homosexuality was a major sin. As if the pressure from a moralistic society of strangers weren't bad enough, Tim had to cope with a rigid and unaccepting family. No doubt, I've seen him struggle through more than his share of anxiety and trauma for simply being who he is.
As teenagers, Tim and I spent so much time together that his family assumed I was his girlfriend, and we never did anything to confirm or deny this. On some level, though, they had to know the truth. I mean, as we got older they had no problem with Tim spending nights at my place. Deep down maybe they were relieved — "It's alright if he's having pre-marital sex, as long as he's not gay."
As much as Tim tried to be his own person and not let the deception bother him, it was impossible. One night he came over, secretly swallowed a bottle of prescription tranquilizers and washed them down with vodka and Sunny Delight. He curled up next to me and went to sleep. I had no idea.
The next morning when I couldn't wake him, I called his father. Tim wound up at the hospital having his stomach pumped.
His family blamed me — we spent so much time together that he had to have done this under my influence. Never mind the fact that the pills he'd taken belonged to his mother, who had so much trouble dealing with her own life that she kept tranquilizers in easy reach.
It was during the chaos of this ordeal that Tim finally came out to his family. They didn't handle it well. Fed up and angry, I told them that this whole thing could have been avoided if they weren't so wrapped up in their own morality. They were sure I was "under the influence of Satan" and it was no wonder Tim was so screwed up after all those years around a devil-child like me.
Denial is an ugly, ugly thing.
That wasn't the only attempt Tim made on his life. There were more, all of them unsuccessful, luckily. Eventually Tim realized that his family might never accept his sexual orientation, and he moved to a large city where he could blend into the background. There, among relative strangers, he found the acceptance that he couldn't find among those who claimed to love him most.
Today Tim has been involved with the same man for five years. He says his partner is the only other person who has the same kind of unconditional love for him that I do.
His father has started to come around. He was the first in the family to reach out, to say that no matter what, Tim is his son and he loves him. But Tim still isn't welcome around his brother's children, and his mother is very concerned with what the congregation might say if they knew her son was gay.
As for me, I find it heartbreakingly sad. They've been so busy trying to figure out where they "went wrong" that they've overlooked what went so right. They raised an intelligent, funny, compassionate man who, when he loves, loves with all his heart.
If only they could see — they have so much to be proud of. |
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