A heartland divided: Penny Henry

USA Today published this article on PFLAG-KC board member Penny Henry.

A heartland divided: Penny Henry
By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
While headlines on gay rights focus on legal wrangling, political posturing and the booming voices of activists right and left, people in the nation's heartland wrestle with the issue more quietly. USA TODAY's Cathy Lynn Grossman asked people in Johnson County, Kan., how their views toward homosexuality were formed and how those attitudes shape their actions day by day. (Related photo gallery: The debate over gay rights)

"This is my gay son, and this is my married son": Penny Henry of Overland Park is proud of Roger, left, and Doug, pictured with daughter McCalla.
By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY

Profile

Age: 63. Occupation: administrative assistant at a bank. Divorced with two adult sons — one of them married with children and the other one gay. Raised Christian but no longer attends church. An officer for the metropolitan Kansas City-area chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). Registered Republican "so I can mess with them in the primaries." Spent most of her life in a rural town of 3,000 before moving to Overland Park.

Influences

Henry was "devastated" when her son Roger, now 38, told her 12 years ago that he is gay — one of those people she just "knew" were "sick perverts going to hell."

"I don't even know the origins of the prejudices that I used to have. Where did I get it? From my parents? From church? From living in a small town in '50s Kansas?

"I knew Roger was different from the get-go, but I thought if I never mentioned 'gay,' it would never happen," she says. "Now I'm just sorry I missed a quarter-century of really knowing him. I don't understand parents who don't love and accept their sons."

Views

Henry tries to change the world, one consciousness raised at a time. "I don't think we can make change through legislation. We have to change minds and hearts. For a lot of people, the idea that 'gay' is normal is very frightening."

She recalls when public schools in nearby Olathe pulled a young-adult novel about lesbian teens from the library in 1993. It took a lawsuit by students and parents to get the book, Annie on My Mind, back in circulation.

"The more people know other gay people or realize there are gay people in their family, the more understanding there is going to be of how they are just like everyone else and should have the same rights," she says.

There are two portraits on her office desk. "I always show people, 'This is my gay son, and this is my married son.' Only one person ever gasped."

In letters and e-mail bluntly questioning her congressmen, all but one opposed to gay marriage and civil unions, Henry wrote: "You don't know me from Adam's off ox. I am not a political animal, but I vote regularly ... and once or twice have had a campaign poster in my yard. ... However, now that you have started messin' with one of my kids, hang on to your hat. ... Why is my many-times married first son entitled to hundreds and hundreds more rights and benefits under the law than my second?"