When my son was 8 years old, he told me he was gay. And then I changed his mind.
I was lying on my bed reading. My husband and I had recently separated and my two sons and I were navigating our new reality. Suddenly, I was aware of Spencer standing in the doorway.
“Mom?”
“Yes.”
He flew across the room landing facedown next to me. He buried his large, curly-topped head into the pillow. His body was rigid, his voice muffled.
“I think I’m gay.”
A wave of terror flooded through me. But why? I was an actor. Many of my friends were gay. In the 1980s at the height of the AIDS epidemic, I had helped care for one as he battled unsuccessfully with the disease.
“What makes you think that?” I wondered at the calm in my voice.
A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought it important to share my experience.
“Duncan told me.”
I exhaled. Duncan was his 12-year-old brother.
“Spencer, what color is that laundry basket?”
“Blue,” he sniffled.
“If Duncan called it red, would that make it red?”
“No.”
“So why would him calling you gay make you gay?”
I felt his body relax a bit. And as his body relaxed, so did mine.
To this day I cannot look back on that conversation without pain and deep shame. My beloved little boy had put his trust in me and I didn’t listen. Oh, I heard him all right. But I couldn’t handle it. We don’t have this in our family, I thought, as though “this” was an autoimmune disease. Plus, how would I tell my 80-year-old parents? So instead of staying with him, acknowledging that what he told me was true, I put my fears ahead of his and dismissed his 8-year-old courage. And with this dismissal, I signaled to him that what he told me was not acceptable. I betrayed his trust, leaving him to carry this burden of shame, my shame, for another eight years.
As I write this on Mother’s Day, it strikes me that a few years ago I wouldn’t have thought it important to share my experience. But the pendulum has swung. Today we face an alarming retreat from LGBTQ rights, with hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills sweeping through state legislatures. Along with it has come a growing animus toward the community that’s often ironically spearheaded by so-called parental rights groups, like Moms for Liberty.
Spencer and Eve.Courtesy Eve Crawford
And according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Family Psychology, up to 70% of gay and bisexual youth are met with parents’ disapproval or rejection. Is it any wonder that in 2022, 41% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide?
At 15, Spencer told me again.
We were visiting my parents’ ranch outside Calgary,