Keeping Families Together

The Asian And Pacific Islander Family Pride Blog

December 17, 2010

Religion Splitting Families Apart

By BELINDA AND JOHN DRONKERS-LAURETA

The September issue of Harper’s contains an article by Jeff Sharlet called Straight Man’s Burden. It starts by mentioning Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill. If you would like to see homophobia taken to its fearsome extreme, read this bill. You’ll read hate like this: If you know a homosexual and don’t report him or her, that’s three years in jail. If you ‘”promote” homosexuality—Sharlet does not explain what that is, we think he means fighting for equal rights—that’ll be seven years. Get caught doing a single homosexual act and go to jail for life. And it is the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” for example, gay sex while HIV positive, gay sex with a disabled person, or being a “repeat offender.”

Though not yet law, the bill already has had dire consequences: ministers outing their LGBT members from pulpits, violent persecution of LGBTs, and lesbian “corrective” rapes. Sad though the violence, sadder is the bill’s connection to religion. Sharlet writes that one David Bhatia introduced the bill and that this Bhatia is a member of the Ugandan branch of an American evangelical movement called the Fellowship. Uganda’s homophobic bill has roots in America.

The Fellowship is an American religious and political organization begun in 1935 and perhaps best known for its annual National Prayer breakfast. It promotes Christian leadership and decision making informed by the bible. And it is implacably homophobic. Their homophobia is scary because they are politically well connected; their membership includes elected legislators, ranking government officials, and top business leaders, not only in America, but all over the world.

Here it is again, Christians against LGBTs and opposing equal rights initiatives with such vigor that the only conclusion we can draw is that they hate. How can this be? How is it that the loving and compassionate God our mothers read to us about when we were small from the mouth of others becomes hateful and vengeful? We have an unscientific hypothesis. God is about love and compassion, that’s it, that’s the sum total of His teachings. But then people got involved. There were meetings, conclaves, discussion groups: “This is what He said!” “No, that is what He said!” “Actually, this is what He meant!” Of course, rules were made. Gradually there came into being a church and the bright light of love and compassion dimmed because of the confusion and conditions heaped upon it. We sometimes think the light is extinguished.

We have stories in our archives of LGBTs expelled from individual churches, of families expelled because one of theirs is LGBT, and organized church’s checkered reputation on human rights is well known. This is a church valiantly trying to be come irrelevant. It wouldn’t be the first time: the practice of medicine was thought to interfere with God’s will; sacraments and a Christian burial were denied to those who charged interest on loans; slavery had a biblical justification; witches were burned, and Galileo was excommunicated for thinking thoughts against doctrine. It is a wonder that for so many the church is not only still relevant but necessary.

We would be remiss not reporting that some churches get it right. California has close to 700 churches that embrace the LGBT members of their congregation and even welcome more. This is the way it should be. There will come a time when all churches recognize that the rock that anchors any church is love.

 

Belinda and John Dronkers-Laureta are board members of Asian & Pacific Islander Family Pride apifamilypride.org

Keeping Families Together

The Asian And Pacific Islander Family Pride Blog

December 31, 2010

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

By BELINDA AND JOHN DRONKERS-LAURETA

There are an estimated 4,200 homeless people under 25 in Los Angeles County and a disproportionate number of them are LGBT. So writes Alexandra Zavis of the Los Angeles Times in a December 12, 2010, article posted on the web. (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gay-homeless-20101212,0,4425366.story). She and a photographer spent a few weeks with LGBT homeless youth and wrote about their experience. The electronically posted article contains few things we did not already know, but the comments, 511 last we looked, were instructive.

A consistent type of comment, one that also appeared during the wave of LGBT suicides back in August and September, runs something like this:

“There are many homeless people. Why does the Times make it look as if society’s rejection of LGBTs is the cause for homelessness? LGBTs are homeless because they make bad choices, have other issues, and are addicts. There are plenty of LGBTs who are not homeless.”

Our response to those who write such comments points to the term “disproportionate.” For us that term is always a flag to look deeper. There are numerous reasons for being homeless, but the group that is disproportionately represented, LGBTs here, has at least one additional and unique reason. This technique works everywhere. There are plenty of reasons to be sentenced to jail, but the group that is disproportionately represented, young black men, has at least one additional and unique reason. There are plenty of reasons for not getting that promotion, but the group that is disproportionate not selected, women and people of color, has at least one additional and unique reason. You can fill in your own examples.

While working for LGBT equal rights, we often hear the accusation that LGBTs are working an agenda. Of course we are and the agenda is equal rights, but that is not what the accusers mean. They usually mean that our agenda is undermining American or Christian values and lifestyles. A comment to the Times article, however, took the agenda accusation to its extreme. One of the young gay man related that at age nine two men raped him. The comment was that this is how homosexuals convert heterosexuals to become homosexuals. Makes you sit up, rub your eyes, and ask yourself: “Am I reading this right?”

Then there are the comments based on the belief that LGBT is a freely chosen lifestyle. It will forever remain a mystery to us why anybody would choose a lifestyle that brings constant and universal disapproval, so much rejection, so much misery. We should perhaps write a blog to conversion therapy, but then again, why? It is so ridiculous.

The comments germane to the article repeat common themes, ones we have seen often over the years. The question becomes: In the face of such persistent hate and ignorance, what can we do to prevent the rejection of LGBTs by their families so that families stay together? We don’t have the answer other than to keep doing what we’re doing, try new approaches, new methods and amplify those that have success. It helps that we are seemingly gaining in the big issues: marriage equality, don’t ask don’t tell, and tolerance education in schools. Looking at the big issues is for us who work at the family level a good indicator of progress. And there is no mistaking this: we are making progress.

 

Belinda and John Dronkers-Laureta are board members of Asian & Pacific Islander Family Pride apifamilypride.org

 

Keeping Families Together

The Asian And Pacific Islander Family Pride Blog

December 10, 2010

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

By BELINDA AND JOHN DRONKERS-LAURETA

Dear Senator McCain:

What happened to you?

We knew you as a man much admired. We read of your courage and integrity when the North Vietnamese held you captive for six years. We heard of your reputation when you were a newly elected legislator. You were a maverick then, bucking the wishes of your party, proud of that even.

So what happened during last week’s DADT hearings? Are you really worried that allowing openly gay and lesbian soldiers and sailors to serve their country endangers the readiness of combat units? Do you really believe that allowing patriotic LGBTs to be honest sinks morale and makes straight people leave the force? And were you stalling for time when you said the study concluding that 70% of respondents urged the repeal of DADT was flawed? Senator, experts wrote that that study meets the criteria of good social research, that its 28% response rate is in line with previous military surveys and its 1% error is better than most surveys. Ah, but you are concerned that combat units voiced a greater resistance to repeal than non-combat units. Did you know that countries culturally closest to us, Great Britain and Canada, implemented programs allowing out LGBTs to serve despite opposition greater than the 58% opposition of our own combat units and those programs are implementing smoothly.

Of course, there will be opposition. You of all people should know that. Your father, a four-star admiral, was present during the racial integration of our armed forces. Many a famous war commander was against it, even Eisenhower. They were wrong. You yourself witnessed the role of women grow so that now women serve in 92% of all military occupational specialties. Of course, those monumental changes were opposed; of course, they caused perturbations. There is a lot of stereotyping out there, but today the U. S. Armed Forces are the most integrated fighting force in the world and the best.

Did you look behind you and see that your fellow Republicans shamefully opposed repeal? Is your own objection just to curry favor with them? Why don’t you look in front of you and see that the House of Representatives already voted to repeal DADT, that the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Air Force Chief of Staff, and the Counsel for the Pentagon all urged repeal? Look a little farther: the courts will repeal it, they already have.

Senator, you have nothing to lose but your reputation. Do the right thing; be a statesman. American LGBTs are Americans. They have an American’s right to go where they want to go, to do what they want to do and not have to lie about themselves. To make the silly arguments you are making puts LGBTs into a separate group, one less equal than the other group, the one doesn’t have to lie about itself.

In closing, we offer you belated congratulations on your son’s graduation from the Naval Academy. You must be proud, a fourth generation following in the footsteps. We saw young McCain’s tweet: “To be honest there is no better feeling than serving your country. The navy is my family and I’m proud to be here. Fly, fight, win.” He seems totally happy. Wouldn’t it be nice if every soldier and sailor could be as happy?

 

Sincerely,

 

Belinda and John

 

Belinda and John Dronkers-Laureta are board members of Asian & Pacific Islander Family Pride apifamilypride.org

 

Keeping Families Together

The Asian And Pacific Islander Family Pride Blog

December 3, 2010

The Start of Our Journey

By BELINDA AND JOHN DRONKERS-LAURETA

Hello everyone. Welcome to our blog. We are Belinda and John Dronkers-Laureta, parents of three children, one of whom is gay. We are allies writing under the API Family Pride banner. In this, our first blog, we would like to share with you how we came to find out that one of our two sons is gay.

It is April 1993. Lance is at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Belinda has been trying to get him on the phone for the last few days so he can help fill out financial aid paperwork for the next school year. Each time she calls, someone picks up the phone, says Lance is not there, promises to give him the message and have him call back. No, they don’t know where he is, or so they say. After three days of this, Belinda becomes apprehensive, why is he not returning calls? Is everything all right? Finally, on a Monday, Lance calls back.

Belinda: “Lance! I’ve been calling. You’re not answering! Where have you been?”

Lance: “I have been to Washington DC.”

Belinda: “What’s in DC?”

Lance: “I walked in the Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation March.”

Belinda: “Does that mean you’re gay?”

Lance: “Yes!”

Belinda says that after that fateful “Yes,” she went into shock. The conversation lasted for about another fifteen minutes, but she can’t remember any of it, she was in a fog. She remembers that she did not know what “gay” really meant, she had no context for that word other than the one she remembers from childhood: to be gay is bad. Lance remembers the conversation differently. After he answered “Yes” to Belinda’s question, their conversation continued and for awhile Lance thought how cool it was that his being gay didn’t upset Mom. But then, about ten minutes later, Belinda repeated:

“Lance, are you gay?” To which Lance replied:

“Yes. I already said that ten minutes ago,” but now he knew something was wrong, Mom was not tracking their conversation.

Belinda called John at work and without preamble said:

“Lance is a homosexual.” John remembers his immediate reaction: annoyance. Lance is probably getting bad grades and he is setting this an excuse; he can’t concentrate on schoolwork, he is dealing with this personal issue. It’s a phase; he’ll get over it. When John came home that Monday though, Belinda was crying and over the next two years Belinda spontaneously broke into tears for no apparent reason. Having dinner at a restaurant, tears; dancing at New Year’s, tears; working in the garden, tears. But when finally the tears stopped, the action began. Belinda co-founded: PFLAG East Bay/Fremont, Committee To Assure Respect in Schools, and the Asian and Pacific Islander Family Pride, she is the director of the latter. She lectures, goes on radio, talks in front of television cameras, leads workshops and puts up exhibits in high schools and colleges. John was slower in understanding what it means to have a son who is gay, but when he retired, he went to work for Belinda.

That is how it began. Seventeen years hence and our journey isn’t over by any means. There is much to learn and much to do. And in future blogs we will share with you our milestones. We have learned that for many APIs it is difficult to come out to parents, but we know how difficult it is for parents to first accept and then respect their child’s sexuality when different from theirs. Belinda has coined the phrase: “When children come out of the closet, the parents go in.”

Belinda and John Dronkers-Laureta are board members of Asian & Pacific Islander Family Pride apifamilypride.org