Any­body can make a dif­fer­ence in other peo­ple’s lives

A blog­ger, a teacher, and a 15 year old boy make a dif­fer­ence in this amaz­ing post. Oh, and a mother, too. I al­most for­got to add that! Sure it was­n’t easy for her to step up and share her story.

You never know the rip­ples the things you say, do and write will have!

Re­shared post from +Sarah Rios

LGBT

Leav­ing this here for shar­ing. Ar­ti­cle link from +Mark Koenig, the only ac­tively post­ing blue head I know ;)

I’ll copy the text here since the pages seem to have is­sues load­ing (prob­a­bly a traf­fic is­sue). There’s a let­ter within a let­ter within a blog post, so I’ve put the blog­ger’s com­ments in ital­ics, left the mom’s let­ter in reg­u­lar font, and bolded her son’s letter.

Link to this ar­ti­cle: https://www.danoah.com/2012/04/a-teens-brave-response-to-im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html
Here is the orig­i­nal ar­ti­cle ref­er­enced: https://www.danoah.com/2011/11/im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I re­ceived the fol­low­ing email to­day in re­sponse to my post I’m Chris­t­ian, Un­less You’re Gay. I had de­cided a cou­ple months ago that it was time to let the whole thing rest, but this re­sponse was so pow­er­ful, I couldn’t not share it with you all. It was from a woman who sim­ply called her­self, “One proud mom.”

Hello Mr. Pearce,

I am the Chris­t­ian mother of a 15 year old teenage boy and about a month ago he came home from school with a copy of your ar­ti­cle “I’m Chris­t­ian, un­less you’re gay”. The teacher gave his class a home­work as­sign­ment to read it and write a 500 word es­say about “what it meant to them”.

He came home and showed me your ar­ti­cle and asked me what I thought about it. I read just the ti­tle and be­came fu­ri­ous at his teacher and at you (even though I know you had noth­ing to do with her hand­ing out the as­sign­ment). Any­way, I con­fis­cated it from him and told him he wasn’t to do any­thing with it till I had a chance to read it first.

And then I got mad­der and mad­der as I read it as I felt like it was a di­rect at­tack against our be­liefs and our Chris­t­ian re­li­gion and that it was pro­mot­ing ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity, a prac­tice that around here is a huge “sin”.

I gave my son an ear­ful about ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity and God and told him that he could tell his teacher that he would not be par­tic­i­pat­ing and if she had a prob­lem, she could come talk to me and then I threw the ar­ti­cle in the trash. My son didn’t say any­thing just walked into his room and shut the door.

Long story short, a cou­ple hours later it was sup­per time and I still hadn’t seen him come out of his room. I didn’t ex­pect it to be that big of a deal to him but I went and knocked and told him to come out, he didn’t an­swer so I opened his door and he wasn’t there, he had left the house and gone some­where. Of course I got more mad and tried to call him but he sent it to voice­mail. I sent him a text and told him he bet­ter get home and he was grounded.

This is the text he sent me in re­turn: “I don’t care. I’m at my friends house writ­ing that es­say and I’m not com­ing home till you read it.”

I think you would have seen steam com­ing out of my ears if you saw me. I started prepar­ing to go talk to the school the next day. I sent a few an­gry texts to my son that he didn’t an­swer. I got the ar­ti­cle out of the trash so I could take it into the school and get this teacher fired. My anger got a lit­tle out of con­trol and while I was sit­ting there fum­ing and plan­ning what to do, I got an­other text from my son that said “Just emailed it. Love, Jacob.”

My son’s name is not Ja­cob, and it took me a minute to re­al­ize that he was talk­ing about your friend Ja­cob in your ar­ti­cle. And when I re­al­ized that I sud­denly started shak­ing in fear and anger at what he might be telling me. I started out of con­trol cry­ing be­cause I couldn’t han­dle hav­ing a gay son and what if that’s what he was try­ing to tell me? Af­ter a long time I fi­nally got the courage to go look at my email and see what he had sent. And this is what he wrote.

I am gay and only my one friend knows so far. My mom doesn’t know yet. My dad doesn’t know yet. You didn’t know it when you gave us this home­work. I am only 15 years old and I have never felt so alone. My mom and dad al­ways are be­ing an­gry about gay peo­ple and talk­ing about how they are bad and go­ing to hell and they also al­ways talk about how all the gays should be shipped off to their own pri­vate is­land or some­thing so that the rest of us could live God’s com­mand­ments in peace.

I have been so scared of them find­ing out that I’m gay be­cause I know that they would hate me and would want me out of their life and at the same time I can’t keep this se­cret any­more be­cause it is not some­thing I asked for, never in a mil­lion years would I ask to be gay in a town like this where every­body would hate me. And any­ways I can’t keep this se­cret any­more be­cause I’m about to do some­thing crazy like run away or hurt my­self or some­thing. I just want to be dead sometimes.

And then you gave us the as­sign­ment to write this es­say for our home­work and I read it like ten times I even skipped lunch and just kept read­ing it in the bath­room and by the time I went home I de­cided that maybe I am only 15 years old but maybe this town will change if I can be hon­est about who I am and maybe my fam­ily will change if I can be hon­est about who I am with them too. I don’t see why I don’t de­serve love just like every­one else. I see some crazy stuff that so many peo­ple do and peo­ple still love them but for some rea­son every­body around here thinks its ok to hate gays and stuff. And I don’t know re­ally I think I just re­al­ize that I don’t want to be Ja­cob in ten years and still live my life in se­cret and scared of be­ing hated.

So I go home and I tell my mom to read this hand­out you gave us and she got so mad at me and started go­ing crazy about how evil gays are and how all of this was just the devil spread­ing his work and every­thing else she said. But this time I just got mad my­self and I got so mad be­cause I sud­denly re­al­ize that this is the woman that my whole life made me go to church where they talk about love just like the writer said but she and every other per­son I pretty much know just hate so many peo­ple es­pe­cially gay peo­ple. So I got mad­der and mad­der and mad­der and then I snuck out and came to my friends house to write this es­say be­cause its time to stop let­ting people’s hate stop me from be­ing happy. I mean should I re­ally have to hate my life and want to die be­cause other peo­ple are so hating?

And I don’t know what will hap­pen but I am done play­ing like I’m some­thing I’m not and if my par­ents don’t love me any­more be­cause of this then I re­al­ize that’s not my prob­lem and it will hurt but not as much as the way I hurt right now. I feel like if my mom and dad would just think about things they’d re­al­ize that what they al­ways say and how they al­ways hate gays is not what Je­sus would do and maybe there is a chance that they will some day love me like Je­sus would. I am their kid afterall.

Tonight I am go­ing to send this to my mom and see what she says I guess. I don’t know what will hap­pen but I know that I de­serve to be loved just like every­body else does I just hope she thinks so too.

I started cry­ing and couldn’t stop for the longest time. I don’t know why I was cry­ing ex­actly, just so many emo­tions came over me. I didn’t know what to do or how to re­spond. I fi­nally stopped and went and read your ar­ti­cle once more only this time I tried to read it through my son’s eyes and the whole thing was so dif­fer­ent than it was a cou­ple hours be­fore. By the time I fin­ished I felt as big as an ant and I re­al­ized just how much ha­tred I have in my heart to­ward others.

You see, Mr. Pearce, you are right. It’s not about what other peo­ple do. It’s about whether or not we are lov­ing them. Noth­ing else mat­ters at all. And it took all of this for that to fi­nally sink in.

I texted my son back that I loved him and left it at that. He came home that night and didn’t try to talk to me about it, I just told him I loved him at least ten times that night and made sure not to talk about any­thing else. My love for him was the only thing I wanted him to feel and I knew he’d talk to me about it when he was ready.

That was a month ago and in the last month my son and I (his dad lives three states away and still doesn’t know) have grown much closer than we ever were be­fore. We have both stood up against hate sev­eral times when we hear it com­ing from the peo­ple around us. You see, where we live peo­ple re­ally do have prob­lems “be­ing Chris­t­ian un­less…” But no longer in this home.

I’ve shared your ar­ti­cle now with count­less peo­ple. I have made my sis­ters read it. I talked about its mes­sage to my par­ents. I sent it to my friends and neigh­bors. And I’ve had some peo­ple get re­ally up­set by it, but a change is start­ing to hap­pen around here and it’s be­cause one teenage boy fi­nally had the courage to stand against what he felt was wrong. He be­lieved he could make a change. And I’ll tell you right now, it makes me happy to see him so happy. I never knew how un­happy he was un­til I could fi­nally see how happy he could be.

So thank you. I know this is long, but I thought you’d like to know what your ar­ti­cle has done in this lit­tle town we live in. And it’s just the beginning.

Sin­cerely yours, one proud mom.

Whew.

If you think you can’t make a dif­fer­ence, you are wrong. If you think you are too old or too young to make change hap­pen, you are wrong. If you think that some­body else will do it first, you are wrong. I think this let­ter is proof enough of that.

Dan Pearce, Sin­gle Dad Laughing

Em­bed­ded Link

A Teen’s Brave Re­sponse to “I’m Chris­t­ian, Un­less You’re Gay”
Af­ter get­ting a home­work as­sign­ment to write an es­say about I’m Chris­t­ian, Un­less You’re Gay, one teenager de­cided that enough was enough…

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