Your parents raise you, and if things go relatively well, you end up a reasonably well-rounded, loving person. The funny thing is, you don't really get to choose who you love, life does the picking for you. I'm meaning platonically, and this is going somewhere, I swear.
One of my best friends is gay. I am not. I love her, and I hope she'll be there for all the important things in my life - my wedding, the births of my children, a drink after a particularly bad Tuesday afternoon at work. I shudder, however, to ponder the behaviour of my family when this wonderful soul should show up at my life's events with her girlfriend. My dad is quietly homophobic, he makes cracks about gays, mostly in the privacy of his own home, and looks slightly nauseous when he sees two men holding hands. My mom is fence-sitting: being gay is tolerable, so long as no one can tell, but having children when you're gay is just wrong in her opinion, and she usually feels free to voice her opinion. Bearing in mind, my friend's mom is also gay, which is how I found out that my mom is completely against gay parenthood. I know my folks are products of their generation and environment, but damn I wish they'd shut the hell up. The way I see it, if your folks are being completely rigid, and probably will never accept people of a certain colour/creed/orientation/faith/whatever, they put you in the position of having to choose between the people who respect you and your opinions and, well, the people you've been charged with respecting, regardless of their behaviours, by a fluke of parentage. I'm rambling here.
Anecdote: The last time I saw my uncle we had a huge blow-up about the God vs. Gays issue (I'm in Toronto, and of course gay marriage has become legal here recently, so that spurred the debate). That was in October, and we haven't spoken since, which isn't entirely unusual, but I'm not sure he'll ever speak to me again. No great loss, because I don't need him to create tension with people I care about, when they would never persecute him for being himself.
I can see how cutting out the people who raised you must be tough. You have to do what feels right to you. If you quietly sat by and let your dad's opinion go unchallenged, you'd be doing a huge diservice to yourself, and probably to your gay friends, too. It's a shame it had to go so far, but if you feel okay about it and you're willing to just let the chips fall where they may, I congratulate you on your resolve. I only think you'd be dealing with this badly if you had immediately issued an illegitimate apology, just to keep the peace. |
