You’ve noticed that your teenager barely speaks of how pretty the girl next door is. He has girlfriends, but they are more like pals. Someone comments that he isn’t hanging out with the guys like he used to.
Bam! It suddenly registers in your head. Not my son! You practically scream it. We come from a long line of red-blooded men who treat wives like chattels. How could “my” son be one of “them?”
You tell yourself that he will grow out of it. It is only a phase, and mom generally knows before dad does.
Women sense these things. However, it is what it is.
So how will you handle the situation? He is your son and you love him. Enough to accept who he is?. It is a fact and his future health and self-identity will depend on how you treat him. You can take the attitude that he will never spend another night under “your” roof or send him to a therapist or some religious camp where you are treated like a pariah until all your self-worth is chased out of your mind and body.
I knew one young man whose father was so adamant that he became a real man that he immediately shipped his “sick” son off to a military school to cure him. You can imagine how that went.
I recently spoke to a therapist and here’s what she said. “I’ve had so many cases where the parents give their child the mental ice-water treatment instead of nurturing their son into adulthood, shutting him out of any humane family life. When they show up in my office, it is the parents that need me most, not the teenager.
“I have noticed that there is one gay in the family and one addict; sometimes, they are one and the same. Sadly, drugs become their freedom.”
These youngsters receive more understanding from their grandparents as a rule. Not always, but often.” Teenage gays, male or female, are the only minority group (lousy use of the phrase) who have no one waving the flag for their cause.
I have a friend whose daughter is gay. She has been after me for months to write about teenage gays. They have each other, she says, and hope there will be someone in the family they can turn to.
The truth is, they turn to each other. The Governor of Florida declared, “No gay anything in the Florida school system. Isn’t he the same one who complained about race?
Maybe you didn’t know, but young gays have one of the highest rates of teenage suicide.
Folks, being gay is not a lifestyle; you are who you are like any other human being. Lifestyle is what you do with who you are. Get a life!
Raymond Strait – Hemet
Rusty Strait | Senior Reporter
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