The Accidental Activist
by Karen Izzo, Spring 2006
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance—Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ five stages of grief. They say that parents often experience these stages upon learning their child is gay. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I found little truth to this theory. First and foremost, where exactly is “grief” itself in those stages? In the initial days after learning my son is gay, my world was a surreal one in which uncontrolled sobbing hit frequently and without warning when I was alone. I had gay friends, had lovingly counseled gay students, but could neither articulate nor understand the deep pain I felt when confronted with the knowledge that my son loved men and not women.
The abiding grief was joined by overwhelming fear, and looking back, was probably the catalyst for much of my anguish. Most of us raise our children with the expectation that, while life might not always be fair, the world is not out to get them. That social contract evaporates when a child is gay. Suddenly we no longer worry merely about our teen’s grades or whether he’s behaving responsibly—those concerns are within our children’s control and fade quickly against the new specter of society’s hate. Our fear is now amorphous and outside of our control as we wonder every time our gay children walk out the door whether they will become a target of prejudice and ignorance.
And then we get angry. At least, that’s what I’ve done. I spent a month steeped in grief and fear, and then abandoned the anguish and forced the fear to a faint background noise that I can ignore most of the time. But the anger has stayed with me, and I’m not letting it go. It’s not anger that my son is gay; I thank God for showing me I shouldn’t change him even if I could. My son is a gifted writer, his younger brother’s confidante, and his little sister’s hero. He has that unique passion for life, quick wit, and highly evolved empathetic nature that so many gay kids develop because of what they suffer growing up. He is a good man and who am I to want him any other way?
If only everyone else agreed. But, of course, they don’t. People who’ve never met my son want to change him, cure him, exorcise the demons they say he has. Or worse, they want to hurt him. There is where my fury enters, stage left. It’s a primal rage that initially served little purpose and overwhelmed me so that I felt impotent to change anything. But then PFLAG came along and I gradually gained perspective. The knowledge that so many parents and their other-oriented children were suffering as much, and often more than, our family forced me to look outside of myself. It inspired me to stop wishing the world were different and start insisting that it be so.
When I learned through the Rhode Island LGBT email listserv that Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel was welcoming two performers whose lyrics call for the torture and murder of gays, disgust changed to action. When emails to Mr. Lupo proved fruitless, several people from the listserv expressed an interest in protesting Lupo’s decision. We met for the first time in a small café on the East Side of Providence and from that initial meeting, community action group Voices Against Hate was formed. We have since educated Rhode Islanders regarding the hate music of reggae performers Beenie Man and Buju Banton and have gained the support of existing civil rights groups, including the Institute for the Study and Practice of Non-Violence and Marriage Equality Rhode Island. While Mr. Lupo refused to cancel the concerts, we succeeded in convincing many potential customers to boycott his establishment. We educated the public through newspaper, radio, television and internet sources—our work was picked up by the Associated Press and the news spread to Jamaica, the homeland of Beenie Man and Banton.
I didn’t set out to be an activist. Indeed, my friends are shocked, as my independent and rather reclusive nature leads them to tease that I “don’t play well with others.” But my son’s coming out forced me to grow up. It pushed me from my arrogant belief that I could insulate myself and my family from the zealots in the outside world. Suddenly, my son was a potential victim of such inexplicable ignorance. Thus, my motives were initially selfish ones—I want my son to live his life with the dignity that is supposedly granted to every American citizen.
In the process of advocating for my child, however, I met countless good people who also deserve to have others fighting for them. We cannot let the LGBTQ community wage this war alone, and as PFLAG’s success evidences, the power of a parent’s voice is formidable. We didn’t know when we brought our children into the world that they would face prejudice and injustice. They didn’t ask for this. As my husband says, this is not their battle. It is ours. And with respect to the battle, I am counting on Margaret Mead being right: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
