How not to react when your child tells you that he's gay

[Toothfairy]

Oh but she has gay friends

I bet if she was broke, needed a kidney, or food she would take that from a gay person.

[Toothfairy]

The comments of the video irks my nerves. Nobody can can themselves a true christian if they disown their child or are against gay marriage or gay people. The fact that homosexuality is so rarely mentioned in the Bible should be an indication to us of the lack of importance ascribed it by the authors of the Bible. Poor Daniel. I hope he gets the hell away fr his family and live his own life. I really wish God would come down here and tell her followers to stop with all the hate and discrimination against others.

[RosyDaisy]

Something about that bothered me. The conversation almost seemed like a script with a gay man and stereotypically fundie parents. And by an amazing coincidence, the whole thing happened to be recorded with pretty good audio. Also, there's apparently a link for people to donate money. Sorry to sound cold, but has anyone verified this story?

I agree. It seemed very scripted.

Anyway, anybody who disowns their child because he/she is LGBT, doesn't deserve to be a parent. By the way, I'm Christian. I don't believe being LGBT is a sin, and I fully support gay marriage. It bothers me that while I can legally marry the man I want to be my life partner in the state we call home, his sister cannot marry the woman she wants to be her life partner. Oh, and we're a bunch of rednecks from Alabama!

[wayward]

I agree. It seemed very scripted.

Thanks. It just reminded me a little of Razing Ruth.

[It'sFunToRun]

It's hard to hear such beautiful voices saying such ugly words.

[It'sFunToRun]

BTW, according to the Old Testament/Judaism, a man having sex with another man is the same level of sin (kareth, actually very serious) as a man having sex with his wife while she has her period or after her period but before she took a ritual bath (mikvah).

I don't know much about Christianity, so maybe Jesus came and said "now it's okay to have period sex, but gay sex is still out", or maybe this woman who presumably does not go to the mikvah ever is living in as much sin as her gay stepchild.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure that the mikvah only applies to Jews, but if this woman had a Jewish stepdaughter who announced that she didn't plan on using the mikvah, who really believes that she would have cared?

The gay sex prohibition might have been intended only for Jews too, I'm not sure. Any rabbis on FJ?

[doggie]

More info

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/2 ... 31462.html

[Mama Mia]

I agree. It seemed very scripted.

Anyway, anybody who disowns their child because he/she is LGBT, doesn't deserve to be a parent. By the way, I'm Christian. I don't believe being LGBT is a sin, and I fully support gay marriage. It bothers me that while I can legally marry the man I want to be my life partner in the state we call home, his sister cannot marry the woman she wants to be her life partner. Oh, and we're a bunch of rednecks from Alabama!

I agree it sounds very, very scripted. Especially the step- mother. Also I found it kind of odd that you don't really see any of these people's faces. And on his Facebook page ( which he says he's shutting down in order to make a fan page), the only people who appeared to know him in real life and were commenting on the video - seemed to be Facebook friends due to a common interest in dogs. So people who probably wouldn't know much, or anything, about his home life. It would seem, to me, that you would get various close friends and family members commenting and either supporting the family, or calling them out on their actions - but in a personal way and sounding like they knew the situation and probably using the stepmom and dad's names and so on. The whole thing seems a little off. But who knows. Sometimes truth looks fake.

What is really amazing is he has raised $50,000 in a day :shock: viral video, only booming sector of the economy.

[Mitz_]

Oh my god. I don't think this sounds scripted at all, no way this is scripted. Scripted is always obvious, this is real . And it would be really hard to make up that kind of hypocrisy. .

Families handle "coming out" in ways you just wouldn't believe. My stepsister divorced her husband and moved in with a woman a couple of years later. It took me a loooong time to figure out that she was gay because I was living in another country and hardly ever saw her and...nobody ever said anything, She never announced she was gay, nothing! My dad and stepmother just quietly accepted it and I found out when my stepsister started using her wife's last name and they got artificially inseminated and had a baby. We talk about gay rights and issues and stuff all the time now but not at first, no sir.

My dad, stepmother and stepsisters are those people that think if you don't talk about it there isn't a problem . It just blew my mind because had she been like my bio sister we would have talked that to death.

I guess it worked out because she is happy and the parents accepted it.

[ViolaSebastian]

On a happier note, and restoring my faith in humanity just a bit, this young fellow had evidently raised $50,000 on a GoFundMe page set up by his boyfriend. I hope he takes it and invests in his education to get him the heck out of Kennesaw, Georgia.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... p-him.html

[Mama Mia]

I think it depends in part on who gets to define "Christian." I attend church. I'd classify myself as Christian-- a universalist Trinitarian who enjoys reading feminist and queer theology.

Most of the self-identified Christians who are staunchly opposed to same sex marriage would insist I am not *really* Christian.

If it's a study with categories as broad as "Christian" and it uses any method other than self-identification to portray what all Christians believe.......it would have to be one of the most poorly designed surveys ever.

[Firiel]

I agree. It seemed very scripted.

Anyway, anybody who disowns their child because he/she is LGBT, doesn't deserve to be a parent. By the way, I'm Christian. I don't believe being LGBT is a sin, and I fully support gay marriage. It bothers me that while I can legally marry the man I want to be my life partner in the state we call home, his sister cannot marry the woman she wants to be her life partner. Oh, and we're a bunch of rednecks from Alabama!

Glad you guys said it and not me. I was also wondering if it was scripted.

At the very least, I think this guy recorded it because he knew what would happen-- and if the GoFundMe thing was a part of the plan from the beginning, I don't know how I feel about that.

EDIT: I feel like a horrible person for seeing scams and schemes everywhere I look. I really do feel bad about about questioning stuff like this which probably doesn't make me less of a bad person, but yeah.

[Coconut Flan]

Something is off - very off.

[Rachel333]

The video was originally posted on reddit on the /r/gaybros subreddit by the man's boyfriend. Someone replied there suggesting he post it to the much more widely viewed /r/videos subreddit, and it took off from there. Here is a link to the boyfriend's reddit account, if you're curious. He has had the account for a while and a few months ago posted some pictures of the two of them camping.

None of that means it definitely wasn't scripted, but there's some background information, I guess. I think I'm actually inclined to think it was real, personally.

I'll add that I think it sounds like the guy might have been antagonizing his parents a bit so that there was more too that reaction than simply him coming out (it sounds like he had been telling his father that he had been a bad parent?), but that's pretty normal for a 20-year-old and of course doesn't mean that reaction was justified.

[Firiel]

The video was originally posted on reddit on the /r/gaybros subreddit by the man's boyfriend. Someone replied there suggesting he post it to the much more widely viewed /r/videos subreddit, and it took off from there. Here is a link to the boyfriend's reddit account, if you're curious. He has had the account for a while and a few months ago posted some pictures of the two of them camping.

None of that means it definitely wasn't scripted, but there's some background information, I guess. I think I'm actually inclined to think it was real, personally.

I'll add that I think it sounds like the guy might have been antagonizing his parents a bit so that there was more too that reaction than simply him coming out (it sounds like he had been telling his father that he had been a bad parent?), but that's pretty normal for a 20-year-old and of course doesn't mean that reaction was justified.

Oh, absolutely. If the reaction is not scripted, nothing excuses it, even if he was trying to antagonize his parents a bit for more of a reaction (which I also suspect happened). My only issue would be if he were antagonizing his parents for a more extreme reaction with the explicit intent of using that reaction to get a video to go viral and make money off of it. That would seem problematic to me, though I'm not sure what my final conclusion on that particular scenario would end up being.

That's interesting about it being on reddit first-- thanks for that info. It makes it much more likely that this wasn't originally intended to go viral/make money (I think).

[sol]

i don't think it sounded scripted at all. the emotion in all of their voices was jarringly real to me. and i also agree that coming out to family can be an unpredictable and even treacherous experience. my feminist,civil rights activist, faghag mother had a terrible reaction when i came out to her. not on the level of what this poor kid went through, but upsetting and alienating nevertheless. i've never officially come out to my Southern fundie-lite relatives, and they are very happy to sweep my wife's and my relationship under the rug. we've been together six years, have had and lost a child, but she will forever be my "friend" when they speak of her. it hurts a lot, but i'll take it any day over the violence and vitriol this boy has been subjected to. his blood relatives have small minds and grinch hearts.... i hope he finds a way to surround himself with loving, accepting chosen family.

[PennySycamore]

My Bible quoting asshole of a cousin hasn't spoken to his lesbian daughter in seven years. His mother, btw, has had her granddaughter and her partner to her home. My aunt is in her 90s.

[Mitz_]

Obviously there had already been some discussion about " I am gay" and " you made a choice" and then it looks like the extended family got together for the purpose of discussing it. By then he had a good idea of what was going to go down and he decided to record it.

I think he handled it fairly well under the circumstances but he would have been better off by not telling his dad " you didn't raise me" and possibly telling him he is a racist...those are other issues . But he's young, he's being rejected from all sides and it's so easy to drag other issues into a family argument when you start feeling over whelmed, you have to really concentrate to fight fair. I don't think he was trying to antagonize them because if that's what he wanted to do he could have said some stuff that would have made their heads explode.

I wonder if he has any siblings that will stand up for him? My parents would have had a riot on their hands if they had acted that way to my stepsister and her wife.

[doggie]

My Bible quoting asshole of a cousin hasn't spoken to his lesbian daughter in seven years. His mother, btw, has had her granddaughter and her partner to her home. My aunt is in her 90s.

dont you love it how they can quote the bible but not follow it?

[Mama Mia]

Just wanted to say that it isn't the content if the video that reads as possibly fake to me. Unfortunately that's a reaction far too many people receive, still.

It's more the way people are speaking. In normal conversation people don't tend to sound so much like they are reading the written word, it's hard to describe, it just doesn't go with the normal flow of actual conversation, to my ear, anyway. Also there is remarkably little interrupting or everyone speaking at once, especially for people involved in a heated argument that turns violent. And it seems kid of strange that he'd decide to video it, but not have the camera positioned so you could see who is actually speaking. Just things that seem off to me.

I'm very cynical though, and the probability is that it's completely real. And, regardless, it certainly seems to be raising awareness, so that's always good.

[Mitz_]

Just wanted to say that it isn't the content if the video that reads as possibly fake to me. Unfortunately that's a reaction far too many people receive, still.

It's more the way people are speaking. In normal conversation people don't tend to sound so much like they are reading the written word, it's hard to describe, it just doesn't go with the normal flow of actual conversation, to my ear, anyway. Also there is remarkably little interrupting or everyone speaking at once, especially for people involved in a heated argument that turns violent. And it seems kid of strange that he'd decide to video it, but not have the camera positioned so you could see who is actually speaking. Just things that seem off to me.

I'm very cynical though, and the probability is that it's completely real. And, regardless, it certainly seems to be raising awareness, so that's always good.

On the boyfriends Reddit account he says that it was an intervention organized by his family, so family members had a chance to think carefully about what they were going to say and how they were going to say it. Unfortunately they didn't have a mediator or much of a plan and things quickly fell apart. If they had done the intervention " properly" each person would have been given a chance to speak one at a time.

I have videoed conversations with a certain family member before . I turned on the video on my ipad but didn't try to get the video part. I did this because this person can't be reasoned with and makes things up as we go along, changing my words around, denying lying etc. It served as a useful record of an important conversation and I'm sure I'm not the only person to have ever done that. The reason for the video is that even though I don't need pictures is that it gives the best sound recording and I know how to use it really well. I can totally relate to what he did and why he did it.

I think that the video loses credibility to some when people find out that over $50,000 has been collected on a gofundme account for him. it's great that people have helped him since he became homeless (and they took his car away) so suddenly. But to keep that gofundme me account open and continue to collect money after so much has been collected doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

[RosyDaisy]

Yeah, the shilling for money part is what gets me. This grown man has a job. I'm sorry he has a shitty, homophobic family, but he has a job and can go fund himself.

[Mama Mia]

I don't mind the various on- line fund raisers for any and everything. Donations are completely optional, and it's a hell of a lot more efficient and effective for the individual than government or charitable programs. And the governmental and charitable programs can always use less folks needing help. Of course it's even better on a community or interest basis if the funds go to a cause instead of an individual- but I can't blame folks for getting what they can on their own.

Really fascinating phenomenon all the way around.

Thanks for the info Mitz that it was a planned intervention-- the scripted feel makes much more sense in that case.

[Rachel333]

Update! He has given $10,000 of the donations he received to start an LGBT youth homeless shelter.

It's nice to see he seems genuine, and that some of the money (which he never requested himself) is going to another good cause.

[Firiel]

Yes, it's good that he's giving some of it away! It speaks to the genuine-ness of him and this story. I was worried it would end like that story spread by the lesbian waitress a few years ago. Glad to know this (likely) isn't a scam!

Thanks for doing the legwork and keeping us updated, Rachel333.