MY MOM WOULDN'T THINK OF herself as having gay pride. But she has it. It is simpler than the form of gay pride many of us believe in; Mom's gay pride hasn't developed the accretions that sophisticated activists' pride has.
Mom is not a citizen of any Queer Nation. In fact, she doesn't use the word "queer" to talk about gay people at all. In the small town in central Texas where she was raised, queer wasn't a nice word to describe homosexuals. She wouldn't understand the need to reclaim it.
Mom doesn't believe that silence always equals death. When you don't have something good to say, don't say anything. That's not death; it's maturity.
She's never seen a "post-gay."
Mom doesn't think of Hillary Clinton as a "First Lady we can fuck," as comedienne Lea DeLaria described Mrs. Clinton from the stage of the 1993 March on Washington. Mom's never been to a March on Washington. It's not that she's against marches. She just works a lot.
She thinks HIV causes AIDS, so you should avoid getting HIV. Simple-minded, huh?
She wouldn't understand why supporting equality for gay people means that she should oppose NAFTA or the Gulf War, as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force thinks. She doesn't make the connections.
Mom thinks of an "outing" as a trip to the beach or an amusement park, not as the practice of exposing someone's private life to the world in order to embarrass them for some political purpose.
If she thinks of sexual freedom at all, it is probably in the form of relief that the birth-control pill came along when she was growing up. Two children were enough, thank you. If someone tried to explain the concept of an open relationship to her, she'd probably think, what's the point? She's never read Foucault.
She wouldn't storm a church during mass to protest against the anti-gay statements of its leaders. She believes in God, but not too much.
To be honest, I don't think she gets this gay Republican thing either. To her, the Republican Party is just mean to gays. Why bother trying to recall a party to principles of limited government and individual freedom when it has honored those ideas more in the breach than the observance anyway? She probably wonders about my sanity in trying to fight within the GOP. Sometimes I do too.
Mom's gay pride is best exemplified by an exchange she had with a co-worker not long after I told her I am gay. Mom was telling the co-worker about how I had come out and how emotional it all was. The co-worker was very understanding and sympathetic. She put her hand on mom's shoulder and said, "I'll pray with you to change him."
"I don't want to change him," Mom replied, stunned at the suggestion. "He's my son. I love him the way he is."
In most of America in 1999, that is a revolutionary statement. The thing that got to me when she told me that story is that she really believed it. She hadn't learned it as a slogan at some meeting or in the pages of some book. She felt it.
Most parents, even loving parents, would change their children from gay to straight if they could. It would make life easier on everyone, after all. Less fear of getting that midnight call from the police telling you your kid got beaten into a sidewalk somewhere. Less worry about discrimination and ridicule. Less concern about the possibility of a lonely future without kids or a stable relationship. Less anxiety about AIDS.
I suspect a lot of gay people share these fears. I don't think we're really very proud of being gay most of the time -- even many of those who go shouting in the streets declaring their gay pride. I remember during the 1993 March on Washington one speaker asked the crowd whether anyone present would take a pill if it would make them straight. There was silence for a moment. I think it was the saddest silence I ever heard.
Then the crowd's political instincts took over and people shouted, "No!" It was a rehearsed, activist "no," expressed with the kind of exaggerated defiance people use when they don't really believe what they're saying.
I don't know what my life would be like if I were straight. I have no doubt it would be easier in many ways. But if I were straight, I wouldn't be me. I would be some other person. It is difficult to have any kind of pride when, deep down, you want to be someone else.
My mom doesn't want me to be someone else. She would do many things for me. But she would not give me that pill. She makes me proud to be gay.