Two Years Later, I Read My Son's Essay

Imagine being so consumed by the fear of discovery that you spend every waking moment of your life carefully choreographing your every move, your every spoken word, and even how you speak each word. Imagine the need to be the badest “homo-hater” in a group of macho studs at school telling the rankest “fag” joke so that everyone absolutely knows that you could not possibly be one of them. Imagine you do this so well that you become more robot than human and the terror of accidentally giving your true self away is the only thing keeping you tirelessly on your toes, unable to ever relax for fear of possibly slipping up and revealing your deepest darkest secret. Imagine finally realizing that you have spent the better part of your life killing a very vital part of yourself just so that you could be accepted, perceived as “normal”, and liked.

Imagine my horror when I read my son’s essay a full two years after he wrote it and realized that this was what his life had been like throughout his high school years. I was devastated by how robbed he had been at a point in his life when he should have been having so much fun and so few worries. I grieved for the joy that had been sucked out of his life. And I was so disgusted with myself for being so utterly clueless. I was his mother for God’s sake and I had failed him miserably.

Imagine a rage so frightening that you can think of nothing but wanting to go out and slap people like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others of their ilk. Imagine being frightened by the intensity of that hatred and anger. But that was me then and even today just hearing their names makes me so angry.

So to James Dobson and all of you other self righteous, cowardly, little men spewing hate while hiding behind a loving, forgiving, and accepting Jesus, I say: enjoy hell, because that is what you all deserve for making so many people’s lives hell on earth. You have spread anguish, agony and heartache. You have spread the message that kids like my son are not worthy of society’s love and acceptance. You have made many of these kids feel like dirty, worthless freaks because they don’t fit your tiny little narrow minded vision of normal. You have created a world so hostile that these kids fear living in it and many decide not to. Just look at the suicide rates among gay teens. You may not have taken a gun and actually shot them yourselves, but you can certainly take credit for contributing to their deaths. These kids are not the ones who need to seek redemption or be saved, you are. For once in my life I hope that the cold, hard, unforgiving God you worship is the one you face when you die. You deserve no forgiveness and no mercy for the hatred and intolerance you have sown. You deserve only an eternity of the hell that you put so many people through here in this life on earth.