Love, Ellen: A Mother/Daughter Journey (25 page)

Another woman I met there is a psychologist who said that Ellen and I are literally saving lives. “It’s true,” a handsome young man interjected. “I tried to commit suicide when I was a teenager. If you two had been around back then, I don’t think I would have felt the same despair.”

In Detroit I met a teacher who reported having asked his ninth-grade class to name some current heroes—and several kids named Ellen.

In Chicago, an attractive young woman in her thirties told me, “I lived up to every expectation my parents had for me; whatever they wanted I did—including becoming a doctor. But the one thing they wanted that I couldn’t do was change my sexual orientation.” She said that for the last five years they were unaccepting—until El’s coming out episode, when finally, they understood that this wasn’t something she was doing to rebel or to upset them. “They are so accepting now,” she went on, “it’s a miracle.”

Amidst these affirmations about positive changes were reminders of the many obstacles still to be overcome. While waiting to board a plane as I was heading off for a weekend, I did a telephone interview one morning from Los Angeles International Airport. The interviewer said, “My brother is gay. Mom insists he just hasn’t met the right girl yet.”

“Oh,” I said, remembering that notion. “She thinks the right girl is going to fix him.” I told her the lesson I had to learn about that form of denial, and apparently a difficult lesson for many parents: our gay family members don’t need fixing. This is who they are. They are giving us their gift of their true, honest selves, living their lives as they were meant to.

This brought us to a subject of grave concern—recent attempts by extremists to “convert” gays and lesbians.

As El would point out, the gay people of this world aren’t asking for anything or asking anybody to change; they simply want to be allowed to live their lives as who they are. By what right do others presume to change this whole segment of society? And yet there are organizations that push families to “rehabilitate” or “deprogram” their gay family members. Most people with common sense know that being gay is not the same thing as joining a cult. I am especially concerned about the full-page ads in major newspapers that show throngs of so-called “ex-gay people” who have supposedly “fixed” themselves with religion.

The rhetoric is scary, and it’s being aimed at vulnerable family members who may think something can be done to change the fact that their son or daughter or sibling or parent is gay. My heart goes out to all the victims of this rhetoric.

Please, wherever you are in your level of understanding, don’t let anyone else impose ideas on you or your loved one about who they are.

Another area of serious concern is the lack of freedom so many gay citizens have in their place of work. At an event in Boston, I spoke to a teacher who has been teaching for twenty-six years and can’t risk letting anyone know she is a lesbian. Obviously this woman is well thought of and has a wealth of experience to share. The knowledge that she happens to be gay shouldn’t change one single thing in her life, or in the lives of her students, her students’ parents, or her coworkers. But sadly, she feels certain that if word gets out, she will lose her job.

You might ask, “Why tell?” This is why—because she shouldn’t have to spend twenty-six years of service and hard work being afraid of the possibility of losing her livelihood simply because one person or several may be homophobic.

At first, when I started hearing stories like hers, I searched within for something to say to soften the hurt. But after a while, I understood that this wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that I was listening, that I cared. And the more I listened to stories, both heartening and discouraging, the more I grew in the role of witness—an unexpected dimension of what I was doing—and the more motivated I became to continue working for change.

As this phenomenon grew—with more and more people coming up to me at events, wanting to tell me about themselves—my HRC colleagues got the idea of sponsoring a contest over the Internet for people to write in and “Tell Betty Your Coming Out Story,” offering an extravagant prize, a free T-shirt. The number of responses was staggering. Everyone’s story was unique. Some stories had happy endings—like the gay woman in her fifties from Texas who finally came out to her seventy-six-year-old mother, only for her mother to say, “I knew that. It’s OK.” All those years of living in fear and hiding—unnecessary.

Then there were heartbreaking letters like the one I received from a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in a very small northwestern town. She asked if I could please talk to her parents and tell them it’s OK that she’s gay—because, she said, “they don’t like me anymore.” Her letter continued:

Here is my reply to her parents, and to any other parents like hers:

Note to readers: You’ll find the phone number and address of P-FLAG’s national headquarters at the back of this book. This organization is a godsend—the most wonderfully supportive group of people imaginable. At our L.A. chapter, we often have excellent guest speakers. During another part of our meeting we divide up into rap groups of about ten people. Each group has a facilitator who makes sure the group stays on track and no one person dominates. People pour out their hearts—sons and daughters whose parents have rejected them; mothers and fathers who are beautifully loving and accepting; parents who have just learned that their child is gay and are in shock, struggling to understand and going through their own process.

For many family members it is a struggle, a gradual process; they may attend several meetings before they finally reach acceptance. But, at least, they are reminded, they’ve come to the meeting. It’s the first and most important step and because they’ve taken it, you know that their family will be fine.

I will never forget what a glorious and humbling feeling it was to finally attend my first P-FLAG meeting, a few days after the coming out show had aired. It was thrilling not to have to hide anymore and a relief to know that I was never alone in that experience. I discovered that most families—gay and non-gay members—do have to “come out” every day, and have to continually make decisions about the people with whom they share this information. Of course, my situation is different from most people’s. Because of Ellen’s fame, and the way she did it, I no longer have to worry about that. Usually, everybody already knows. That makes it much easier for me. I wish it could be so simple for everyone.

No matter how tough it is for families, the importance of talking and keeping the lines of communication open cannot be overemphasized, as the next letter shows:

James Bryson from Philadelphia, who is active in HRC there and on the national level, including the board of governors, wrote to me about coming out to his mother eleven years earlier, a few weeks before her eightieth birthday. He said that although she was accepting, he felt that she really didn’t get it. A week later, his mom sent him this letter:

James told me that his mother welcomed his new friends; set an example for other family members, his daughters among them; and began listening more closely to news about gay issues. Their relationship grew stronger, deeper, and more trusting. He expressed his belief that all people can grow in understanding, if only they’ll give themselves a chance.

Many of the letters I’ve received about coming out are, at heart, love stories. In fact, at one HRC dinner, I was introduced to two girls—both pretty in a quiet way, friendly yet shy—who met through an Ellen DeGeneres website on the Internet. They had lived in two different states, but now they had been together in the same city for almost a year. Who couldn’t be happy for them?

The more gay couples I met, the more examples of love, devotion, and true commitment I saw. These are partners who have been together not because of society, but in spite of it. They don’t have society’s blessing or society’s permission to celebrate anniversaries—they don’t even have legal sanctions available—but they are life partners in loving, monogamous relationships.

Knowing this makes more odious the Defense of Marriage Act—a mean, hateful, needless piece of legislation passed a couple of years ago. Heterosexual marriage undeniably needs some help, given the 50 percent divorce rate, but that abominable act isn’t it.

I stand beside the group working with the Hawaii Freedom to Marry agenda, who say, “Same-gender marriage confronts the American people with a core reality: that gay and lesbian people exist and that their relationships deserve equal treatment under the law. Equal treatment under the law. No more. No less.”

F
ROM THE MOMENT
I had come on board with HRC, any kind of regular social schedule in my personal life became a thing of the past. Though it didn’t last long, at first I kept my part-time on-call status at Cedars. Some of my colleagues were surprised by my new work, telling me they had no idea about that side of me.

“If we had known this before,” said one, “we could have put you to work a long time ago doing speaking engagements for us.”

“But nobody asked,” I said with a laugh.

They were really impressed, they all said, with the way I had been handling the tough questions being put to me on radio and on television, not to mention my endurance in doing interviews every day—sometimes, as many as five interviews a day.

This was an area of my work that was somewhat daunting. In the beginning, it made me quite nervous knowing that I was being watched and heard by millions of viewers and listeners. But after a couple of weeks’ practice, it was fun. Rarely did I feel tired or “talked out,” because callers and interviewers were so appreciative. Alter only a month on the interview circuit, I was thrilled to see how much speaking out seemed to be helping. Frank Butler of the HRC excitedly informed me that they’d never gotten so many calls for their excellent “Resource Guide to Coming Out.” There were 500 calls after Elizabeth Birch and I did
The Ricki Lake Show
and, after that, they started averaging 100 calls a week.

The interview questions that were the hardest for me had to do with the extremists’ negative rhetoric. When one interviewer asked me what I thought of Jerry Falwell’s name-calling of Ellen, I nearly started to cry. “She’s my daughter,” I said. “And she’s a good person.”

Friends with more experience being interviewed gave me sound advice about not letting myself become rattled. They suggested phrases such as, “Next question, please.”

That became an effective way for me to respond to gossipy questions about Ellen and Anne. For instance, one radio host was determined to know precisely where, when, and by what means they would have a baby.

Next question?

One of my most gratifying interviews was with Liann Hansen of
Weekend Edition
at National Public Radio. After years of listening to NPR’s evenhanded, in-depth reporting, I felt as if I were going to a holy place. Liann was warm and delightful, as one would expect her to be, and her questions were thoughtful and fair.

The day after that interview, Elizabeth Birch and I appeared on ABC’s
This Week
with Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, William Bennett, and George Will. Their green room was the best, with two attendants in tuxedos and all kinds of food, from breakfast dishes to boiled shrimp. Bill Bennett was in the green room with us and was very pleasant—off-camera. On-camera was another story. George Will was very stern and seemed intent on not smiling. When I was talking about working for equal rights for our gay and lesbian family members, he said, “Ellen certainly doesn’t seem to be oppressed.”