Dear Parents,

I'm writing this open letter to all you parents who find themselves in a difficult situation that causes all parties involved a lot of discomfort: your son has told you he is or might be gay. Oh dear! Such information has probably come to you as a great shock! Reactions that must be raging through your mind can range from deep concern and disappointment to outright disapproval, anger and disgust. What you most certainly feel is the image you had of your son's future, and your own, is drastically altered all of a sudden. What is happening here?

Let us first emphasise the most important thing, he is your son and you want the best for him, you want him to lead a happy and productive, normal life. I think most parents should be able to agree to that. You most likely don't want your son to be gay, but you don't want to lose him either. You might have your ideas already on dealing with the situation, but the fact that you're reading this means that you don't have all the answers either yet. Which is logical since this is your first confrontation with homosexuality. It's hard to understand what is happening and why...

Now what is there to do? The first thing that pops into your head might be: "How do I turn him straight again?", you want to protect your son and make him 'normal'. Homosexuality is often frowned upon socially and may even be condemned by religious teachings you hold dear. But to be able to have a positive effect on your son, we need to gain an understanding of what your son is going through. Homosexuality is something you're probably not familiar with, you don't have gay friends and all you hear about it comes from the television or the occasional sermon in church. Until now, homosexuality has been a subject that wasn't relevant to your lives. But after your son has said to be gay, this has changed, it is an issue now. We need to understand what exactly your son is saying and why he is saying it. You might be hesitant to look into the subject of homosexuality, you perhaps just want to ignore it, pretend he didn't say it, or you might want to take drastic measures immediately, try to shield him from anything remotely related to homosexuality and try to talk him out of it. But understanding the situation is vital if you want to be able to deal with it. So I hope you will take the time to read this letter.

Let's try to change perspective and see what's going on inside your son's head. How does he get such ideas? Imagine you're him, you're a teen and at some point the hormones and all the changes of puberty gradually kick in. You naturally expect to develop an interest in girls, like your male peers. But what if in time, you notice that you're not getting interested in girls, but you're getting interested in your male classmates instead!? What if you notice that you get butterflies in your stomach when you're around certain boys and feel attracted to them? Imagine what a shock that must be to a young boy! Image the utter confusion! How would you feel in such a situation? It might be hard to try to imagine having homosexual feelings, but surely you can remember having heterosexual feelings from your own childhood, you know what the first butterflies, infatuation and arousal felt like. Now this feeling is exactly the same one your son's having, what is different however is that he's experiencing it when being around and thinking about certain boys instead of girls. Moreover, he is not the only one, five to ten percent of all men have these homosexual feelings your son has as well, instead of heterosexual feelings.

If your son is saying that he is or might be gay, then he has experienced such confusion and might even be still experiencing it. He has been confronted with feelings he hasn't expected, feelings nobody warned him about, and feelings that are often socially not accepted, and are therefore hard to talk about. People often quickly pass judgement upon people who talk about homosexual feelings and therefore your son has kept this problem to himself for quite some time. He went through this until he finally found the courage to share what he feels, in spite of the havock it would cause. It would help him a great deal if you would acknowledge the great difficulty he has gone through and the courage he has for bringing it up. Isn't it that parents want their children to be able to come to them whenever they have a problem? Well, this is it.

As you see, your son is saying to be gay not because he has made a decision to be gay, but because he has been experiencing homosexual feelings instead of heterosexual feelings. The reason why he is telling you is that he no longer wants to suffer under hiding his feelings, and that he wants help and support in dealing with them. The fact that he's telling it means he has walked a long path alone already. It is vital that you take him serious for that and don't let him walk all alone from this point on!

After the phase of discovering homosexual feelings, your son entered another phase, that of acceptance or non-acceptance. Initially, he has probably repressed the feelings as much as he could whilst trying to make sense out of them. He didn't want to be gay, he wanted to be 'normal', nobody chooses to be gay for the fun of it. In time, he has come to the realisation that repressing his true feelings was only making him more and more miserable, often even to a point of depression, and he then entered that path of acceptance. If your son says he IS gay, then he is on this path of acceptance now and has slowly started to feel better about himself again. If he says he MIGHT BE gay, then he might still be trying to make sense of it and repressing the feelings, and/or he might be trying to be tactful or ashamed, not wanting to disappoint or hurt you.

So your son has homosexual feelings. Does this really mean he is gay? And what exactly is being gay? The first question isn't easy to answer, homosexual feelings don't necessarily mean that someone is gay. But what they are saying is that your son is struggling with his sexuality. Some parents think it is just a phase and it will pass, and they could be right, it can be. But far more often it is more substantial, there has most likely been an actual sexual identity crisis and he might be homosexual (or bisexual if he also has heterosexual feelings)

The second question was "What exactly is being gay?". Does this mean he wants to be a girl? No, not at all, he is a guy and doesn't want to be anything else. What it means is only that he is attracted to and falls in love with guys instead of girls. It does not mean that he will start to comply to all gay stereotypes you see on television, those stereotypes are not representative and are NOT what "being gay" is about! Separate the stereotypes from your son and see him for who he is, not what he's expected to be according to you or any stereotype.

You are of course wondering how this happened. How did he get these feelings? What did he do wrong? What did you do wrong? These questions are hard because there are no reasons to point at. You certainly must not blame yourself or your son, he didn't choose nor cause this. His feelings didn't arise because of something you did in his upbringing or something he did himself. There are various probable scientific theories on what causes homosexuality, all lead to genetics and pre-natal hormonal conditions. It is not something that is acquired in later life, it's already inherent in the person. You could not have changed it either!

The implication is also that homosexuality is not something one can change, there are no effective therapies which can make a gay person straight. Amongst mental health professionals worldwide there is also the widespread consensus that homosexuality is not a disease, unlike some people think. Whilst your first thought might have been "Can I turn my son straight again?" there is neither an "again" (he has never been heterosexual), nor an ability to "turn": Just like you yourself can't be turned homosexual, a gay person can't be turned heterosexual.

Your sons' homosexuality might conflict with your religious teachings. Dogmatic Christians often believe that homosexuality is a sin and that eternal damnation awaits those who have homosexual feelings. But moderate Christians often hold the view that gay people too are created in God's image, and that God loves them, unconditionally or with the restriction that they don't put their homosexual feelings into practise by acting upon in a sexual relationship. This is indeed a difficult issue, and although it's commonly agreed that the Bible condemns homosexuality, it's also so that the Bible and Christian Faith promotes unconditional love. It will be hard on you to unite these two initially contradictory commands, but I think the well-being of your son is, and should be, one of the most important goals in your life.

Your son needs your support, he needs your understanding, whether or not you oppose him acting on his homosexual feelings. The feelings are there, and they really are there to stay. It is up to your family to make the best out of it and love and support your son even though you may disagree with him on some points concerning his sexuality. And don't forget that your son is far more than just his sexuality, it's just one aspect of him, which is rather prominent at the moment. But all his other properties are independent of his sexuality!

You might wonder why I am writing this long open letter to you. Well, the reason is that I've seen many friends, like your son, going through an extremely difficult time with their sexuality, because they found themselves in an environment that did not understand and only reacted with condemnation. Homosexuality often was a taboo or an outright condemned issue in their environment, like it probably is in your case. Some parents fail to understand what their son is going through, and even sometimes make critical errors like expelling their own son out of their home out of this! This adds so much more suffering to the agony that your son is already experiencing, and it leaves the parents behind feeling broken and bitter, it solves nothing and breaks everything. And without meaning to shock you, the absolute worst case scenario is that the gay son commits suicide out of being condemned by everybody, this is something that happens far too often and which I unfortunately experienced with a friend of me, who took his own life. Families get wrecked and parents lose their son because they sometimes can't come to terms with their sons homosexuality. It is this utter destruction of families and tremendous suffering that I want to prevent with this open letter. And even if just one parent can use this letter to resolve the conflict with his/her son in a constructive manner, then this writing has served its purpose.

It is really vital to understand the seriousness of the situation and the implications of your actions. You can handle this situation in a constructive way, with love, understanding and a lot of honest communication, or in a destructive way, with anger, hate, ignorance and rejection. The latter inevitably leads to you losing your son, he will alienate himself from you or in a worst case scenario he might even take his own life if he sees no hope and no way out. It is so important for everybody to be loved, especially by one's parents! Be there for him!

Growing to be a gay adolescent, your son still has a lot to benefit from your guidance, he's going to walk a different path and might not bring you grandchildren, but you can still teach him the same values you hold dear in relationships, such as monogamy, trust and honesty towards your partner, safe sex, etc! Being gay is not about being promiscuous and sleeping with every man, that is something that you do have influence over by choosing the constructive path! With your help, he has every chance of living a fulfilled live despite his sexuality!

So talk to your son, talk about his feelings, talk about his experiences and listen to him. And tell him how you feel without condemning him. Keep in mind also that if you can't do it alone and if you need help handling the situation, don't hesitate to see a family counsellor with your son and spouse.

One last concluding remark, I want you to note that the interest I have at heart here is the same as yours: the well-being of your son. I'm not advocating that you have to agree with his sexuality as such, you don't have to be pro-gay.. But you do have to be pro-son!

Sincerely,
proycon