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Haugen is right that the gay-marriage divide is largely generational, and in reading her candid statement I couldn’t help thinking this is how my parents felt when I told them I was gay, when I met my partner, and when we got married. Growing up in conservative households, they both had what seemed at the time as unshakeable convictions about homosexuality. At the tail end of the ’90s, gay meant AIDS, and even once I convinced them that I might get through life without contracting HIV, they still thought that the “gay lifestyle”—which in their imagination must have consisted of meth-fueled orgies and cross-dressing—led inexorably to unhappiness. Years passed without their nerdy, neurotic kid starring in a porno, and they begrudgingly came to accept that I’d quite simply grown into a nerdy, neurotic adult. But they called my boyfriend my “friend” until I’d had enough and made a stink about it, after which they reluctantly gave in, calling him—haltingly, under their breath—”your boyfriend.” By the time we got married a year ago, they just called him Michael, and drove all the way from Arizona to Washington, D.C. (my mom is deathly afraid of flying) for the wedding.
Having your core beliefs challenged is indeed uncomfortable, and it takes courage. I’m partially making fun of my parents here, and there’s a lot that’s funny—my mom once asked me, after I told her that I was helping coordinate Trans Awareness Week at Yale, “Are you transgender now?” But the point is that having a gay son challenged many of their expectations and forced them to change. This process wasn’t short—it took ten years—and to say it was “uncomfortable” for them is an understatement.
