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My Gay Mom: The Best Mom I Could've Ever Asked For (No Matter What The Straights Say)

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My mom, brother, and I one Christmas at her work.

I don't ever remember my mom not being gay.

 My mom came out to me when I was in third grade in the living room of our townhouse in Wake Forest, North Carolina. I don’t remember what she said. I only remember tracing the wooden whorls of the hope chest we used as a coffee table and wanting to go play.

 I didn’t understand what the word “gay” meant, and I didn’t really care. My mom’s partner was just Deb. She was just another adult in my life, another parent. It was never strange or different to me. I never felt weird about it. It was just my norm, and, as an adult, I still see it as my norm.

 My narrative as a child of a gay woman should not really be any different than that of a child of a straight woman. Yet, it is. It is not because of my mom or myself, but because of others in my life and in the overall greater world. I never saw anything wrong with my life, but other’s did. And because they did, they strove to change my life.

 I can still pinpoint the first moment I knew my life was different because my mom was gay. I don’t have an exact date or exact year, but I have an exact memory. It was storming and Deb was coming to pick me up from Girl Scouts. Even though it was pouring out, I couldn’t wait inside for Deb to get there. I had to wait outside because we couldn’t risk anyone finding out that Deb was the one picking me up. What that really means is that we couldn’t have anyone guess that my mom and Deb were more than roommates. There was a lot at risk if they did. We lived in North Carolina, where being fired for being gay was common, as was being evicted, and being beat up. Really any kind of discrimination was common. So we stayed hidden, and I learned to keep secrets even when my sneakers were sopping wet and I was scared of thunderstorms.

 As I got older, it became harder to keep this a secret. I didn’t understand why it needed to be one, but at the same time, I was scared shitless of anyone finding out. We moved to Sacramento, California after elementary school. Here it was safer. We didn’t have to hide. Yet, I still punched a kid in the face when he tried to tell other people in my class that my mom was gay. It was in California that I finally met another person with gay moms. Yet, it was also in California that I was reported to the principal by a friend for wearing a “pro-gay” t-shirt during the Prop 8 battles. That wasn’t too bad, I suppose considering when I moved back to North Carolina, I was shoved down and called a f****t because I had a rainbow ribbon on my backpack. I was also told I had no right existing if my mom was really gay.

 Nowadays, all my queer friends think it’s awesome that my mom is gay, and my mom adopts all my queer friends. She calls herself “their gay mom.” She’s started trying to understand gender-neutral pronouns and the spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations so that she can better support both me and the other queer folx in my life. When I mention my mom is gay to my queer students, they get excited. They can’t believe that someone has a gay mom. It gives them hope that one day they can have kids. Everyone in the queer community loves that my mom is gay. Yet, the straight community doesn’t.
Thanksgiving 2018 with my mom and her dogs.

People in the straight community have consistently said negative things about me having a gay mom. I’ve been asked if I feel like I missed out growing up because of my mom being queer. I’ve been told that my childhood was unhealthy because of it. I’ve been told that I’m only queer because my mom is and that she brainwashed me. In their eyes, there must be something wrong with me and my childhood since my mom isn’t straight.

 Everyone imagines that the children of queer parents are broken. Yet that’s the farthest thing from the truth. I am not broken or damaged from growing up in the queer community. In fact, I am stronger for it because the straight community taught me to always stand up for myself by constantly coming at me. If anything, any traumas I do have have come from the straight community due to their inability to accept my family because it was different from theirs.

 After all, all my mom has ever done is loved me and taught me to love myself.

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