It’s been a while since I’ve written something personal for the Family Equality Council Blog. As we’ve just wrapped on the holidays–a particularly personal time for all of us–I thought I’d share a little story about my trip home to Georgia, my mother’s proto-activist transformation, and the get-together that reaffirmed the reasons I do this work.

Georgia on my Mind

I grew up on the border of Georgia and South Carolina, in and around the City of Augusta–known for the Augusta National Golf Club (you know, the one that still bars women from becoming members) and James Brown. I haven’t lived in the South for more than six years now, and I have quite an ambivalent relationship with my hometown and its inhabitants, to say the least. There are great things about any place, and then there are reasons to never want to return.

At this point in my life I’m returning once a year for the holidays, usually for the week between Christmas and New Years. Typical family drama aside, being back in Augusta is a sobering and somewhat depressing affair. Conservative Christians run the city and surrounding towns (quite literally), and what I recognized as “good ole boy” behavior in high school, as inextricable to Southern living as “going to the river” and cooking with lard, now seems to me–a turncoat Yankee if ever there was one–seriously threatening.

For whatever reason I went to see the new buddy comedy Role Models (starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott) with my mother and stepfather (their suggestion, not mine). Besides being a cute idea for a movie, it was full of anti-gay humor, including (but not limited to) a number of “fag” remarks. I was disgusted, but I was also clearly in the minority in that darkened theater. Whereas it would have annoyed me six years ago to sit through that laughter, now it felt directed, purposeful, full of intent. The biggest laughs came with the gay jokes. I’d read too much recently about the rise in hate crimes. I skipped the customary post-movie trip to the bathroom on the way out.

In Somerville, MA, where I live, I walk hand-in-hand with my boyfriend. I curl up next to him on the train. Somerville, Cambridge, Medford and other Boston-metro towns are by no means perfect bubbles full of love and acceptance, but there’s a much better chance that someone will smile at me when I’m out with my boyfriend here than holler or do anything else. That’s all I need–a better than average chance of something positive happening–to stick my neck out.

It’s a different story in cities like Augusta, and yet it’s not all doom and gloom.

My Mother: From Bygones to Bye, I’ll Be Gone!

When I first came out, eight or so years ago, my mother was terrified. Though never against me, she didn’t really know how to be for me. She predicted illness, pain, dissatisfaction in my life. I tried to assure her those were all just as likely, if not more so, if I stayed in the closet, but it’s taken years to bring her fully (well, mostly) to my side.

For years I’ve asked my mother why she won’t come out about having a gay son at her place of work. A number of her co-workers are born-again Christians–no one with any authority over her, but co-workers nonetheless. She was afraid they would cast her out–socially if not literally. It bothered me at first, but I grew up a little and realized it was her place of work and her decision. She didn’t deny me, even as she didn’t proclaim me, either. Claim me, yes. Proclaim me, well, we’ve been working on that.

Looks like a lot’s changed since the last time I went home. Not only has my mother resolved to come out to her co-workers about having a gay son this year, but she’s told me in no uncertain terms that “if they don’t want me around because I have a gay son, then I don’t need to be around. I’ll quit.”

Whoa. This from the woman who always gave my teachers the benefit of the doubt when any dispute arose, whose philosophy of life might be summed up as “well, it’s not as bad as it could be.” The times, they are a-changin’.

And not just on matters of sexuality. My mother also recently reported taking a co-worker aside for making racist remarks. “You know exactly what you meant when you said ‘I’m not one of the black girls’ and you should never say anything like that around me again.” Go Mom!

I have no doubt this recent uptick in attitude has to do with my many years of prodding, but I must give some credit to my mother’s new friend–a young woman who started working with her a few months back. This young woman, Renee, is a lesbian, and she’s out at work. “She just doesn’t even care,” my mom tells me. “When rumors were flying that some people weren’t invited to her party, she cleared it right up: ‘Everyone is invited to my party, so long as you can come into my home and not judge me, my wife, and our life together, so long as you treat us with respect. I know some of you have a hard time with that, but if you can do it, then come on.’”

A House Full of Gays

I had the pleasure of meeting Renee and her wife, Mickey, at a little get-together my mother arranged at her house–a classic example of “introducing one’s gays” For the first time in my life, the heterosexuals were outnumbered by the gays 3:2 in my house. It was a good night.

Renee and Mickey have been together for almost ten years. They met in their early 20s. They’re just about the cutest couple you could find, and they’re as excited about starting a family this year as they are about coming out to strangers about who they are.

“We forget where we are sometimes,” Renee told me. “We’re so used to being comfortable together, being in love and at home together. We’ll be at the grocery store, and I’ll be nudging Mickey and putting my arm around her shoulder and she’ll say, ‘Renee, baby, this is Augusta, Georgia!’ ‘Oh, right, I forgot,’ I’ll say. We don’t like to admit it but our safety is at stake.”

Renee was born and raised in the area and Mickey, a military brat, moved to Augusta some twenty years ago. Their family is there. They’ve built their life together there. As much as it pains them to feel closeted in their own community, they have more reasons to stay than go. In the meantime, they plan to work it out–making as much change being out at work and with their ever-widening circle of friends as they go along.

Renee and I talked a lot about LGBT families, especially about preparing for school. She seemed optimistic about the climate area schools could offer her future children, and ready for the task of making sure her family was treated equally. I encouraged her and Mickey to come to Family Week this year as prospective parents, to make friends and gain strength in the LGBT family community. They’re looking into it. Cape Code is a mite exotic for any Southerner, gay or straight.

I was humbled by Renee and Mickey and my mother for the work they do each day for LGBT equality. In my mother’s case, it’s worrying about and supporting a gay son despite the obstacles she sees. For Renee and Mickey, it’s being as out and proud as they safely can be in a city I know to be incredibly conservative and, in some instances, dangerous for LGBT people.

All in all it was a good trip home, a trip that reminded me that we really are everywhere making change, and that the most profound moments in our struggle for justice and equality are not always (or even perhaps often) on election days.

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