Some of My Best Friends Are Gay...

As a late bloomer in life, who didn't go through puberty until age 15 and who, despite being extremely intellectual and well read, was pretty oblivious to sexual matters, I can't recall when I first knew that some people were straight and some were gay.

It was probably in high school. I mean, I'd heard the boys at my parochial school call other boys derogatory names, but I didn't really know what they meant. But, by high school, when some of the girls at our all girls' school called others forms of the L word, I was starting to catch on. A very studious girl in my senior class was labeled gay and was rumored to have a crush on our English teacher. I asked my mother about it a nd she said it was 'an unkind rumor'. Little did I know my own sister, who was a year younger than me, who shared a room with me all my life, and who had a poster of Tom Selleck on our bedroom wall, was gay. I went away to college blissfully ignorant of my sister's orientation.

Away at school one of my newest friends was a sweet young man with feathered hair. He and a militant African American male classmate and I became a bit of a trio. So, it wasn't exactly a surprise when my feathered hair friend, Paul, told me in our sophomore year that he was gay. I think I just knew all along. It was a little more surprising to me when I went home on holiday and saw my younger sister making goo goo eyes in our living room at her college friend. What the heck? When I 'found' a stash of love letters in the top drawer of the dresser we shared that were clearly from the friend she'd been making goo goo eyes at, I was still puzzled. But, it explained a lot of my younger sister's teenage angst, which at times bordered on being suicidal. I was all light hearted and out to have a good time, and she was brooding and intense and kept her own counsel. A year later when I mentioned to one of my old high school friends that my sister and this young woman, who my friend knew from swim team, were more than friends, my friend smirked and said, "Yeah, I've heard that fantasy too. It's just a rumor." Are you telling me I don't know my own sister? I wondered. I wasn't spreading a rumor, I was stating a fact, a fact I felt comfortable saying out loud finally. My younger sister is the same person she's been my whole life, and she is gay. I got a similar result when I asked my mother about it. "Oh, people say the same unkind things about your sister that they do about your friend Paul," my mother shook her head grimly. I looked at her, perplexed. It's not unkind to say what someone is. I don't think my sister thought it was unkind when I acknowledged all of who she is.

Still, for years it was never mentioned in my home. My sister just knew a lot of women who wore plaid flannel shirts. She just happened to live with someone who was probably a lesbian. Whatever. It was much the same when one of my college friends came out to me two years after I graduated when I was visiting her in LA while on a business trip. I was surprised, but I think I was only surprised because my friend Janet hadn't been part of the large gay community at our Catholic college. At least she wasn't part of the openly gay community. She hung with the heteros. I suppose I just assumed she was also heterosexual. It didn't change anything about what a wonderful friend she was when she told me she was gay. But, apparently it wasn't as smooth when she told some of our other friends. Who knows why people feel the way they do. I mean, I never had to tell anyone I am heterosexual and worry would they still include me in their circle. Would they come to my wedding. Would they be okay with me having and raising children. I never had to give it a second thought. I could register for bridal gifts, baby gifts, whatever. My husband and I used to go over to my friend Paul's house for dinner when we were dating and in our early married years. When they showed us pictures of their trips to Central America, the recent remodeling they'd done on their bathroom, I reacted the same way I did to my other friends' pictures of their vacations or recent remodel work. It never occured to me to ask if they felt threatened at all traveling as a couple in Central America, or if their contractors treated them any differently. But now I realize those would have been valid questions.

When my husband and I separated I remember spending some time with Janet and her partner Kate after taking my children to Disneyland. While at their house I looked out the window in the morning and watched Janet walking my older daughter through the backyard, picking up leaves and pointing to a bird, and I thought what a wonderful mother she would make some day. I would have thought that if there hadn't been a Kate and if I didn't know Janet was gay, so why would I think any differently given those circumstances. She is a warm, friendly, nurturing person with a love of life. She's no different than me and I know I am a pretty darn fine mother to my children.

Now I am in my mid 40s. My life is very suburban, very Catholic. I go to mass with my children every week. I put them in parochial school. I believe firmly in the tenets of my faith. I am one of the strictest parents in the world according to my two teenage daughters. I fervently pray the rosary while swimming laps at our athletic club and my children and I pray before every meal, regardless of where we are dining. Most of my friends are married people with children. But my dear friend Bob, OGB as I call him, is divorced, gay, also a devout Catholic. My younger sister cares for our mother, who is in the late stages of Alzheimer's dementia. Every weekend I spend time with them both. It still every once in a while startles me when my sister will mention that this or that actress is attractive, but it must be equally jarring for her when I say I will see any movie with Wesley Snipes or Clive Owen in it. We're the same but different. I also have a grown nephew who is gay. Like my sister, I have known him since the day he was born. Like my sister, I could tell you he is who he is and always has been, from the day he was born. When his mother, my older sister, tells me she worries about him, I wonder why in this day and age, but then I realize what an ignorant thought that is. Because today he still has to get up every morning being who he is. But, unlike me, or some of my other nephews or nieces, who he is, just who God made him, raises the spectre of danger in every day situations. If he falls in love, can he hold his beloved's hand without offending someone, without angering someone? Can he buy a house and live in a neighborhood without worrying someone may take it upon himself to rid the neighborhood of this child of God? If, when my mother is gone and the house becomes so silent my warm, loving younger sister decides she wants to adopt a child, will she be allowed to do so? And, what if, like me, either of them falls in love one day and decides to marry? Will they be able to?

I lvie every moment of every day knowing I was allowed to think and be and act naturally - and yet some people are restrained from being allowed to just think and be and act naturally, according to their natures and their instincts, and are not allowed to fearlessly follow that greatest of God's gifts to his children - love.
How is that right on God's earth? How can we ever love one another as God has loved us, if we resist loving all of His children? Some of my best friends are gay. Some of God's children are gay. He didn't tell us to love some, or to love according to our own comfort levels or societal norms or what we think is safe - nope, He said, "As I have loved you." And whatsoever we do unto any of God's children, that we do unto Him. I am grateful my heart is filled with God's love, and because some of my best friends, my family, are gay I will always wear that heart, that reflection of God's love, on my sleeve and will keep it open as I should to all of His children without questioning how He made them or why we are different because in all of the important ways we are the same..