Posted on 04/13/2002 6:29:04 AM PDT by madprof98
A FAYETTE COUNTY COUPLE FOUND LITTLE HELP WHEN THEIR SON TOLD THEM HE WAS GAY. NOW THEY REACH OUT TO OTHERS WITH A MESSAGE OF ACCEPTANCE AND UNDERSTANDING.
Late at night, when she couldn't sleep, Patti Ellis sought anonymous solace on the Internet.
She was distraught because Adam, her teenage son, had revealed that he was homosexual. That news turned her life upside down and created conflict with the Christian teachings she'd absorbed since childhood. But she didn't find understanding on the Internet, only X-rated Web sites or church-sponsored sites telling her that Adam would burn in hell.
That was four years ago. Today, Adam, 20, is an openly gay college student. His parents have come out of the closet in their own way. Instead of being ashamed and fearful of their child's homosexuality, the Fayette County couple have turned activist. Last fall they paid to create their own Web site, familyacceptance.com, that tells in detail what it's like to be the parents of a gay child.
The Web site, put online with Adam's blessing, preaches parental understanding and describes how Jeff and Patti Ellis' religious beliefs evolved after Adam told them he was homosexual.
The Web site addresses such subjects as "Is My Child Gay or Confused?," "Is Homosexuality a Sin?" and "What Is God's Plan?" The Ellises, both in their early 50s, are speaking to business groups about their experiences and want to reach out to church groups, too.
Jeff, a builder, and Patti, a Realtor, were churchgoers while growing up in South Carolina and regularly attended a Methodist church in Fayette County --- "We should have had reserved seats," Jeff quipped. About five years ago --- well before Adam came out to his parents --- the family quietly dropped out because of an uneasiness with the rules and what they regarded as the narrowness of the organized church.
On Dec. 17, 1997, Adam dropped the bomb. He was 16.
His parents were devastated. At first, Patti held out hope that Adam was just a confused teenager and would change his mind. They sought counselors who would confirm that belief. Patti now calls that attitude a form of denial that many parents of gay children go through.
"I was certain of only one thing back then: I did not want to lose my child," Patti writes on the Web site. "I knew I would have to find a way to change him or to accept him. . . . I felt trapped between my love for my son and the teachings of my church."
Jeff and Patti told Adam to stay in the closet --- for his own safety --- until he finished high school. Though Jeff and Patti kept giving Adam hugs and support, everybody in the family was frustrated. Counseling didn't help. Their beautiful two-story house became a tinderbox of denial, depression and anger.
"It was kind of hush-hush and nobody knew what to do. It was very emotional," said Danielle Dail, Adam's best friend in high school.
"Our confusion was caused by two major beliefs that were irreconcilable," Jeff writes on the Web site. "The first belief was that Adam was a wonderful son. . . . To the other extreme, we were told to believe that homosexuals were perverted, sexual deviants. . . . Either our son had pulled the biggest con job on us for his entire life or our concept of homosexuals was based on misinformation."
The Bible seemed pretty clear on the subject, Jeff said. Leviticus 18:22 states, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination."
That discouraged Jeff and Patti, but they felt worse when they tried to share their feelings with selected friends. Patti unburdened herself to a woman she felt close to, but instead of offering support, the woman said she better stop telling gay jokes. Jeff told two other sets of trusted friends, but they stopped calling. It was clear nobody wanted to talk about the fact that Adam was gay.
"Their lack of checking in on us felt like alienation, whether it was or not," Jeff said.
Churches' views
Turning to the church for advice didn't seem like a good idea. Most mainstream churches don't embrace homosexuality. For instance, the United Methodist Church's quadrennial General Conference in 2000 voted by a 2-to-1 margin to retain language that says "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." The church also maintained prohibitions against the ordination of practicing gays and lesbians and the blessing of same-sex unions.
That hardly makes a gay person feel welcome in church, Adam said.
"I never want to surround myself with a place that doesn't accept me for what I am," he said. "If they don't want all of me, I will separate myself."
Adam came out to his friend Danielle shortly after telling his parents. They jokingly compare their relationship to that of the gay guy and straight girl on the sitcom "Will & Grace." Danielle said Adam reconciled his religion and his homosexuality a lot faster than his parents did. He still considers himself Christian, but doesn't go to church.
"Adam is religious, but his big thing is that God made him and God made him the way he is, so God loved him," she said. "I don't think Adam had much of a problem with his religion, but he had a problem with his parents and the way they handled it."
Jeff and Patti didn't have rock-hard attitudes toward gay people in the first place; it was just that homosexuality was never an issue. Jeff said he used to tell gay jokes. Patti said she never really thought about gays, but felt they deserved God's love. When Adam came out, her passive attitude disappeared.
Jeff and Patti kept praying, too.
"Faithful to his word, God answered our prayer," Jeff said. "However, the changes that took place were not in Adam but in us. God . . . opened our eyes to the fact that he had created Adam gay for his own reasons and we, in our arrogance, viewed God's creation as flawed."
With a bit of interpretation, Jeff found other passages in the Bible that gave him hope, such as John 8:7, in which Jesus says to a crowd criticizing an adulterous woman, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." Jeff asked: "If the story were to be exchanged with a gay man, would Jesus have responded differently? Would he have said, 'You have my blessing in stoning this man to death?' I don't think so."
When asked about Jesus' parting words to the woman --- "Go, and do not sin again" --- Jeff said that advice is intended for everybody. He doesn't consider homosexuality a sin and doesn't equate a homosexual and the adulterous woman.
'Will always love you'
Through groups such as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the Ellises met other homosexuals. Jeff and Patti were struck by the way young gays and lesbians stared at them when they attended meetings with Adam. They discovered that many of these young people had been rejected by their parents after they revealed their homosexuality. That strengthened their resolution to stay connected to Adam, no matter the cost.
"One of the most comforting things during the strife of my outing process was my parents' repeating phrase, 'No matter what you say or do, we will always love you,' " Adam said. "Just having them say this gave me enough strength to come out to them."
Jeff said the young homosexuals he met seemed, for lack of a better word, normal. That attitude is decried by anti-homosexual groups that say "normalizing" homosexuality is part of a nationwide gay agenda.
The anti-gay voices helped to drive Jeff to activism. When the tri-weekly Fayette Citizen ran a syndicated column by the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition contending that gayness is a life choice, not genetic, Jeff fired back with a 17-paragraph letter to the editor. The letter said that Jeff's son was gay and included the words, "If God created them that way, it must not be a sin."
After Adam left for college, Patti and Jeff turned a corner.
They started talking openly about Adam's homosexuality and looked for ways to help other parents of gay children. They wanted to start their own Web site because they thought anti-gay rhetoric dominates the Web. From experience they knew that suffering parents were looking for any sign of understanding.
"The Web site came about because most people deal with this silently," Patti said.
Familyacceptance.com went online Sept. 1 and has recorded more than 16,000 hits. When people send e-mail to Jeff and Patti, the stories echo what Jeff and Patti went through. Adam said some college friends coming out of the closet ask their parents to look at the Web site.
Home study group
Gayness is still an ongoing discussion in the Ellis household. Adam's brother, Austin, loves Adam but is uncomfortable talking about homosexuality. "It's a subject he wishes would go away, and I think that's a typical 15-year-old attitude," Jeff said. "But I want him to know I would stand up and fight for him in anything that's not of his own making."
Jeff and Patti now belong to a small spiritual study group that Jeff affectionately calls "a bunch of weirdos." The group meets a few times a month at the Ellises' house, where members talk about books such as "Conversations With God" by Neale Donald Walsch and "Love Without Conditions" by Paul Ferrini.
Maureen Hughes, a regular member, said the people who attend "don't quite fit in the boundary of the church but have a basis in Jesus. . . . We are more open to a God of all people rather than excluding other people."
When asked whether they consider themselves Christian, Patti flatly said yes, while Jeff answered, "Christ is my example on how to live."
Jeff and Patti hope to talk to church groups and persuade others to be more open to homosexuals. Jeff, taking a political point of view, said conservative churches can't be swayed. His target audience is moderate church groups. The family's goal is to put anti-homosexual discrimination into a family context, with a human face.
"It's not about the gays," Patti said. "It's about the Ellises."
This really shows how well the news media has been able to be brain-washed by the Gay activists and they are now spouting the party line perfectly. (It is possible that the reporter but I've seen so many cases lately where the "stupids" never really think about the subject and just put out the "Gay is wonderful" party line.
So her son is sure to catch AIDS or hepatitis and die early and she supports that, OK, WELL. How wonderful! When I was a 15 year-old 40 years ago we had "chicken hawks" (queers who were very friendly to young boys and seduced them) who prayed on young boys and they went to jail for forcing boys to have sex with them for 25 years. Now it is a "life-style"??
Addictions are many and painful -- sex or alcohol.
I've seen native-americans take their first drop of alcohol and from that moment on they are addicted to booze and hopeless drunks while europeans are not so genetically programed socially drink without consequences.
I've seen committed christian kids get in to all kinds of sexual problems -- gay and straight. Parents have the burden to save their kids from the world.
If man was to intrepret sin, there would be no sin. Everything goes in total abomination anarchy! Screw kids, kill whoever, steal, commit adultry and blasphemy all over in the face of God. However it is God lays down the law and he could give a good damn how YOU interpret it. It is how it is. Our perversions are not to be interpreted against the divine majesty of the creator of the universe!
God didn't make him homosexual. Something (or someone) else did, and now Adam has accepted this lot as "normal". God would never say homosexuality was a sin if it weren't a sinful condition one could control. After all, God doesn't condemn somebody for eye or skin color over which one has no control, does He? He only holds us morally responsible over that which we have willful control.
"However, the changes that took place were not in Adam but in us. God . . . opened our eyes to the fact that he had created Adam gay for his own reasons and we, in our arrogance, viewed God's creation as flawed."
Well, here is one of the problems; God's creation IS flawed. It is flawed by sin! Rather than accept that, they reject God's Word, which is NOT flawed, and accept the sin - which IS.
When asked about Jesus' parting words to the woman --- "Go, and do not sin again" --- Jeff said that advice is intended for everybody. He doesn't consider homosexuality a sin and doesn't equate a homosexual and the adulterous woman
..."everybody", except Jeff, Patti and Adam. So, rather than accept the teaching, they reject it in self-justification of their own son's sin (it's too painful to do otherwise)? Rather than accept homosexual behavior as sinful and deal with the problem, simply refuses to consider it as sin. Talk about rationalization!
But, that is the name of the game with most sinners who don't want to deal with it, is it not? The First Adam treated sin the same way, so it's nothing new!
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