I watched a documentary the other night called Family Fundamentals. It was about LGBT children of different faiths whose families or friends were not only fundamentalists but held anti-gay beliefs.
The pain on both sides was palpable, parents rejecting their adult children and the children trying to understand that rejection and live with their pain as best they could.
I think what saddened me was not only the hurt and pain on both sides, but that the "religious" would not only not listen to their children's stories about deciding to come out, and how they couldn't live their lives in a lie, but wouldn't research to try to find out the truth about what they perceived solely as sin, no ifs ands or buts. They sent tracts and literature about the ex-gay reparitive therapies to their children and lectured them on going to hell or cut off nearly all contact with them.
As I follow the state supreme courts decisions in Iowa and Connecticut and the votes in the legislatures of Nevada, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, I am struck by the comments of those who have voted for equality. Almost all of those for equality have discussed their own prayers and research they have done not only into the law, but into the lives of the LGBT community.
These men and women have chosen to look at the facts and not the myths and in doing so have come to the realization that our nature is unchangeable. And as such have discovered it IS A MATTER OF EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW. Not a matter of sin.
I can only hope and pray the families of those portrayed in the documentary begin to open their hearts and minds to do the hard work of discovering the truth for themselves in time for real healing to begin.