A Family's Story

This article about a PFLAG-KC family was published in the Dispatch Tribune.

From dispatchtribune.com


Northland News
A family’s story
Mar 10, 2004, 14:31

By Kathleen Stander
kstander@printownsend.com

The Lee family, of Liberty (from left): Richard, Jamie, Andy, Katibeth, Uncle Dennis and John. John told his family he was gay on Dec. 23, 2002. “We just celebrated our one-year anniversary of asking him,” said his mother, Jamie. “John brought me flowers home — he’s always done sweet things — and halfway through the day I realized it was the anniversary.”

It was an “Aha” moment, that December day, when a Liberty mother received three words of advice from a longtime friend who was a high school guidance counselor. The mother and her husband needed to talk to their son about a personal issue but didn’t know how to approach the subject.

“Just ask him,” was the friend’s advice.

It seemed simple enough — simple, but scary. The three syllables would speak volumes if voiced.

The couple decided to take her advice. They were nervous, but when the son came home from college for Christmas break, when the time was right, they asked him.

“John, are you gay?”

When he said yes, tears came for everybody: tears of relief, tears of grief.

“The overwhelming grief that our precious son had struggled with this knowledge for years on his own,” said Jamie Lee. “I asked him why he hadn’t told us sooner, and I’ll never forget the look on his face when he said, ‘I was terrified.’”

Lee and her husband, Richard, do not want other gay children to be afraid. They have had to come out of the closet, too, to friends, and family. They’ve been there; they want to help others.

“It’s a crisis when a kid comes out,” she said. “For most kids, it’s the biggest thing they’ll ever tell anybody.”

Lee said it could also be the biggest thing that parents would ever hear.

“Parents go into the closet when their kids come out,” she said. “We spend our lifetimes as parents networking about everything: Who’s the best orthodontist, who’s the best Boy Scout leader, what church has the best youth group? You network, and you talk to all of your friends, but the minute your kid says he’s gay, you stop talking, and you don’t get help.”

Lee got help by turning to Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Her longtime friend, the high school guidance counselor, was a lesbian. It was she who suggested PFLAG to Lee, along with a multitude of valuable Internet sites to visit and book titles to check out. Lee said her husband immediately left for the library to pick up recommended titles. Then, they got on the Internet.

“(Richard) said that we had to ‘get out of the stupid zone overnight,’” she said. “Every book I read was right on target.”

Shortly after becoming a regular at PFLAG meetings, Jamie Lee became president of the Kansas City chapter of the support organization based in Prairie Village, Kan.

“The chapter president was moving to New York, and they could tell I was very passionate about it,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve ever been on a board — I’ve been a homemaker my whole married life.

“I consider this a real job,” she said. “I’m asked to speak once a month.”

(Lee’s most recent speaking engagement was as a panelist at a town hall meeting held in Liberty March 2. See story, page XXXXXX).

“There’s gay kids north of the river,” she said. “My son can’t be the only gay in Liberty. In this community, we have this perception that we are middle class, white, Christian community, and that means that there are no gays who live here. Well, there are gay couples that live here with children. There are gay kids by the hundreds, probably. If you look at the statistics, six to 10 percent of the population would be considered homosexual.”

Once upon a time, Lee said, she could have been the poster child for “semihomophobic” living. She and her husband considered themselves conservative Christians. They attended church together. She was involved with Moms in Touch, an organized prayer group that meets to pray for students’ safety in schools. Their family was untouched by controversy, she said. They were middle class; their children excelled academically and were involved in extracurriculars at Liberty High School. She was an active volunteer in the community.

Then they learned that their middle child was homosexual. Some church friends stopped being so friendly. The family no longer attends their hometown church because Lee wants to go to a church that will accept her son.

“My son has always had a very strong relationship with the Lord,” she said.

It’s possible to be a strong Christian and be gay, according to Lee, who said many gays had a difficulty recognizing that they could be both gay and Christian. The particular issue is so common that PFLAG has a pamphlet called “Faith in Our Families — Parents, Families and Friends Talk about Religion and Homosexuality.”

For the Lee family, using humor has helped. Jamie Lee said that John was thinking of designing a T-shirt: “You can’t pray my gay away.” She also jokes that soon she’ll receive her free toaster for “signing up” kids to be gay.

There’s still misinformation out there, she said, that someone can be “made gay.” Getting the information and getting involved is everything, she said. It makes a “huge impact” on gay kids and gay adults. The Lee’s youngest child, Katibeth, a sophomore at LHS, supports her brother and the work her family does for the gay community. She has heard the hurtful comments hurled at other students in the school hallways; she has responded by saying the comments were stupid. At school, she carries a binder that has a rainbow sticker on it. Once, Jamie Lee said, a student saw that sticker and then asked Katibeth who to talk to about coming out.

Just get involved, Lee advises.

“Go to a meeting, join an organization, march in a gay pride parade,” she said. “It makes a huge difference. Even if their parents are accepting, it just gives them another avenue to chat and talk with other parents who are regular everyday parents from their community.

It seems that all the stuff I hear from adult gay people is that their parents don’t ask them about their lives.”

Lee said children, several from Liberty High School, have begged her to invite their parents to a PFLAG meeting.

“‘Please, could you just talk to my dad or my mom and get them to go?’” she said. “They want them to be involved in their lives.”

From the moment John answered “yes,” his family has been involved. Lee said they distributed an “out letter” to family and friends. She spent an entire Sunday afternoon calling people to tell them that John was gay.

“Nobody was surprised,” she said. “Their biggest thing was, without fail, every one of them said, ‘He must be so relieved.’”

John had done all the “appropriate things” while growing up, his mother said. He dated girls, took a girl to prom. He had a circle of friends. He was involved in the theater department at LHS; he was cast in the lead of one musical as a sophomore. He seemed like a happy kid. He’d already told some of his friends and his older brother, Andy, he was gay.

That was before his parents asked him. Since answering yes to their question, John has relayed stories to his family about some of the harassment he’d received while a student at LHS — walking the halls, hearing the word “faggot” echoing after his steps. Now, he keeps his mother informed, usually by e-mail, about other LHS students who have come out since going away to college.

“News flash — guess who’s out now,” John has written, from his college home at Oklahoma City University, where he is a music theater major.

“How cliché!” his mother said, laughing. “He loves singing and dancing. … He’s a fabulous tapper. Luckily he’s in the performing arts. … He’s in a field where it’s more accepted.”

Lee said that after she and her husband marched with the PFLAG group in a parade, they called John to tell him. Of course, he was proud.

“Now he’s living the authentic life he was meant to live,” she said.

For more information about PFLAG, visit www.pflagkc.org, or call 765-9818.

© Copyright 2003 by Townsend Communications LLC