ONE BOOK OR PIECE OF RESEARCH NEVER ANSWERS ALL the questions about a particular topic. As a matter of fact, findings from the best studies often leave additional, more sophisticated questions in their wake. As illustrated in the last chapter, there is much more we need to know about the families of lesbian and gay youth of various ethnic groups. Furthermore, clinicians need more information on families of bisexual and transgender people. The focus of this study was not on families of daughters and sons who identified as bisexual or transgender. However, when the net was cast for gay and lesbian participants, a small group of bisexual and transgender respondents were found as well. The very tentative findings from these young people and their families suggest clinical strategies and areas for future research.
As we have seen in the family sensitization and family discovery stages, the prospect of telling their parents they were gay or lesbian filled the young respondents with anxiety. So can they really be blamed for trying to find a way to make things easier on themselves and their parents? In systemic desensitization a clinician gets the phobic client to face her fear of spiders by gradually exposing her to the object of her terror in small steps. If treatment goes well, she will eventually be able to face a live spider. Based on this logic, it is perhaps understandable why some youth thought it might be helpful to gradually expose their parents to their homosexuality by first claiming that they were bisexual. Once parents got used to the idea, the young respondents then told their mothers and fathers that they were gay. In this study, six of the young respondents tried this strategy.
Unfortunately, this strategy didn’t work. One consequence of the break-them-in-gently approach was that parents came to believe that their children were confused. This mother talked about how her son, who was white, had first told her in high school he would only date black women. Then he told her he was bisexual. As a result, she began to doubt the seriousness of her son’s declarations:
Another time we were doing something, he said, “Mom, I think I am bi.” I guess I was not up on things, and I said, “Bi what? What are you talking about?” He said, “Well, I like guys and I like girls.” I am thinking, “OK, this is like a little joke. Now we are bi, next week maybe we are going to go out with a giraffe, I don’t know.”
Six months after he told his mother he was bisexual, he brought a boyfriend home to meet his parents, also proclaiming he was actually gay. Both mother and son reported that the mother was highly distressed when he told her he was bisexual and was just as upset a few months down the road when she found out he was gay. Thus thinking he was bisexual first did nothing to soften the blow that was to come.
Lydia, a college student, described coming out as bisexual when confronted by her mother: “I remember we were working together at her office, and she was like, ‘Are you a lesbian?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m bisexual.’ And then she became a big mess and started yelling at me. And she’s like, ‘Well, how do you know?’” Her mom said:
I don’t remember how I addressed my initial disappointment, but I would say to her, “Do you want to go back and see your therapist, you know, maybe you’re confused.” And she said, “No, I’ve really thought about this, I’m pretty sure.” And I think actually, for a little while, she was like, “Oh, maybe not, but maybe I’m not sure,” just for a little while, but I think she told me this later to kind of appease me, make it sound like she was bisexual or she wasn’t sure of her sexual orientation . . . I guess to ease me into the idea.
Franklin described a somewhat similar situation with his mother:
I ended up coming out to her as bi several times. The first time was in junior high school, the summer after seventh grade . . . A friend kind of outed me—actually an ex-girl friend. We [the friend and I] were having some conversation about Madonna, and I was like, “I am just like Madonna.” She was like, “What do you mean?” and I was like, “Because Madonna had said that she would sleep with another woman.” I said, “That is how I am.” “She was like, “What? Are you serious?” The way our relationship was, we were close, but we would have our arguments at points. And that same day, after that conversation, for some reason—maybe she was upset or something—but we had an argument, and I turned the ringer off and refused to take her calls. So we had voice mail on the phone, and all that time when I had the ringer off she was leaving all these messages. One of the messages was, “Mrs. Isaac, you don’t know this about your son, but he is bisexual and he wants to sleep with other boys.” So, when my mom got home, she checked the messages and heard the one from my friend. She was like, “Franklin, come here. Listen to this.” So I actually got to hear her [my friend] state those things. I froze. I didn’t know what to say. And she was like, “Is this true?” I said, “No!” She kept grilling me. She was like, “Why would she say it?” And after a while I said, “OK, yes, it’s true, I’m bisexual.”
Franklin’s mother had passed away two years before the study. Nevertheless, according to Franklin, first disclosing he was bisexual did not make things easier once he told her he was gay. His mother was just as angry, shocked, and hurt when she learned he was gay as she was when he told her he was bisexual.
Another reason children telling parents they were bisexual did not work is because bisexuality holds the possibility that the child will choose an opposite-sex partner with whom to enter a heterosexual relationship. In light of the self-blame, grief, and worry parents face when they find out their child is gay, could they be blamed for wishing their supposedly bisexual children would choose a long-term partner of the opposite sex so they could settle into a “normal” heterosexual life?
Lydia recalled how she realized telling her mother she was bisexual was a mistake. Her mother always seemed to be hoping Lydia would find a nice man to go out with—until she finally came clean and told her mother she was a lesbian. “Yes. I guess because—even up until a year after I told her I was a lesbian, she would still be like, “Are you sure there’s no guys?” Even like the beginning of this year she’s like, ‘So did you meet any guys?’ I think she was like half kidding but half hoping. And I was like, ‘No, Mom.’”
Joelle first told her mother Nancy she was bisexual then a year later told her she was a lesbian. Her mother talked about how she schemed (and still schemes) to find ways to encourage her daughter to consider dating boys:
I think that I became more manipulative. When she told me she was lesbian, I was still at the point where I thought that this was something where maybe I could alter these events because initially she had said to me that she was bi. Now my daughter, at least up until the start of this semester, was still a virgin, because she told me . . . I mean she may not come and tell me now but up until the start of this semester she was a virgin. So in my mind I kept thinking, “Well you haven’t done anything with anybody so how do you know?” And she had defined herself as bi, and I kept thinking, “All right, is this going to swing either way depending on the quality of her first experience?” Because I think Joelle has been looking for some kind of acceptance and place to belong. So I think when I say manipulative it was just like can I like push her to go out with this guy or . . . ? It was just like subtly like, “Oh you want to go out with Robert? Fine. You want to stay out late with him? Fine.” But it was just kind of like I felt the ball had been tossed up in the air and maybe it could still go either way. And I don’t know if she really did think that she was bi, because I sometimes wonder did she say bi to me because she thought I would handle it better than if she just said “I am a lesbian?” I don’t know.
In contrast to the previous examples, there was one respondent who first identified as lesbian and then as bisexual. Since coming out as bisexual, she knew her mother held out hope that she would eventually settle down with a man: “Well, I came out first as a lesbian, then as bisexual years later. So at first I think she was hoping that I was bisexual, so at least there was the hope of me marrying a man or ending up with a man.” Like gateway bisexuality, true bisexuality could be just as confusing to deal with, particularly if the child first comes out as gay. This last respondent’s mother seemed confused and weary of trying to keep up with her daughter’s shifting labels, boyfriends, and girlfriends. First her daughter told her she was lesbian . . .
Then it turned out that she had a boyfriend, and I thought about saying, “So, you’re not gay?” So I just left things for a while. And then another time she said she had a girlfriend, and I said to her, “So I guess you are bisexual.” She said, “I don’t like to label myself.” So we left it at that. Then, when I finally got comfortable with the fact that she was bisexual and seemed to be with men a little more, she would say, “No, I am gay.” So I don’t know what to think. The truth is it doesn’t really matter.
In the end, coming out as bisexual when one is really gay or lesbian seems to only complicate matters. Bisexuality can be difficult for parents to understand, and, as the last example demonstrates, even true bisexuality could be difficult for parents to deal with. Although more research is needed, these findings suggest that coming out to one’s parents as bisexual as a way to soften the blow is a strategy that, at best, doesn’t work and, at worst, gives parents false hopes, which might make their adjustment to the news that their daughter or son is gay that much more difficult.
Two young women in this study identified as bisexual when asked what their sexual orientation was during the interview, even though they first stated they were lesbian when they signed up for the study. Two additional female respondents identified as lesbian at the time of the study, but, when questioned about their sexual orientation, said they truly viewed themselves as bisexual at some point before they identified as lesbian. In addition, there were a small number of young women who tried to avoid attaching firm labels on themselves. In response to the question of what her sexual orientation was, this eighteen-year-old African American young woman gave an intriguing response:
RESPONDENT: Controversial. I am a lesbian for the time being.
INTERVIEWER: What do you mean by that?
RESPONDENT: You never really know what can happen. I am about to go to college. There are going to be some nights I am not going to recall participating in.
When asked about her sexual orientation, this next young woman, who was in law school, responded:
This is always a fun one. I would personally describe it as not straight. I am very strongly not straight, but I don’t really feel that I fit very well into the other categories. I let people believe that I am gay, because that is easier and less complicated. I first identified as gay when I came out, because back at the time I thought that anything else would be too wishy-washy. And, because I was a teenager, people would think “You are going through a phase” if I said I was bisexual or anything else. So I said I am gay as a way to say I am very, very not straight, I am not going back on this. It was just very important to me to come out strong, and to me that was coming out strong. I identified as gay throughout high school and then I came to college. And basically, since being at college, it ceased to matter so much. I am at a women’s college, we have a very large GLBT population. It is a very positive atmosphere . . . But I feel closer to the bisexual and transgender community than the gay and lesbian community. I have my own sense of what those communities are, but I identify more with the queer people than the gay and lesbian people.
Remember Bob’s daughter Ellie? When asked about her sexual orientation, she replied: “Bisexual. I am lesbian, but I don’t believe in the complete removal of other genders.” Even Joelle, when she spoke of her sexual orientation, seemed to want to avoid being definitive. At first she told her mother she was bisexual as a way to soften the blow. Then later she told her mother she was indeed a lesbian. When I asked her about her current sexual orientation, she identified as lesbian but seemed to leave the bisexual door open:
INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your sexual orientation?
JOELLE: Don’t have a definitive line. I used to associate myself as bisexual, but now I kind of associate more as a lesbian.
INTERVIEWER: What made that transition?
TOELLE: Relationships and just, like, experience and discovering what I prefer, I guess.
INTERVIEWER: So would you say you are attracted sexually to women . . . and men?
JOELLE: I would say more so to women than men, but both.
The replies from this small number of women suggest that the relationship between sexual identity and sexual attractions can be complicated. These responses lend some evidence to the idea, introduced in chapter 4, that sexual feelings, along with related self-identified sexual orientations, are not always firmly set but instead might be changeable, depending on an individual’s culture, environment, and available partners.
There is good reason to believe that women’s feelings of sexual attraction are less fixed and more flexible than those of men. Sex researchers have examined the factors related to women’s and men’s sexual arousal and have found that, no matter what their stated sexual orientation, women were more likely than heterosexual and gay men to become sexually stimulated in response to erotic images of both women and men (Chivers, Seto, and Blanchard 2007).
Another researcher followed a sample of one hundred lesbians over a period of ten years to determine whether there were any changes in their sexual feelings over time (Diamond 2008). She found that women who identified as lesbians could find themselves periodically attracted to and sexually active with men then women then men again. Some women could be having relationships with members of both sexes at the same time. In fact, only one-third of the women who identified as lesbians reported exclusive sexual attractions and behavior toward women over the course of the study. The greater likelihood of women, no matter what their self-described sexual orientation, experiencing attractions to both women and men could explain the greater propensity for some girls and young women in this study to be a bit more flexible in how they described their sexual orientations.
Although this previously cited research focused on female sexuality, there is evidence that male sexual attractions and behaviors can also shift. First of all, men in other cultures, including non-Western societies and those of ancient Greece, have been known to participate in a transitory period of homosexuality at some point during their lives (Halperin 1990; Herdt 2006; 1984; Hubbard 2003). Second, it is possible for a self-identified gay man to have experienced sexual attractions to women before he identifies as gay. Even though Franklin described himself as gay, he recalled his previous attraction to a woman: “I don’t know how I phrased it at that point where she would still agree to go out with me but I let her know that I was attracted to men. But, for some reason, I don’t know, she was very attractive, so I guess some part of me was still attracted to women at that point.”
The reports of Franklin and the other respondents quoted in this section, along with the research cited, raise interesting questions as to what leads people to identify as gay or lesbian. Is it the relationship they are in? Is it the pressure not to appear undecided or on the fence, like the previously quoted law student who did not want to appear “wishy-washy”? Or is it in response to the common belief that bisexuality does not really exist? Does society push people, including those who are not inclined to limit their sexual identities and activities, to pick a definitive sexual orientation (straight, gay, or lesbian)? It should be noted that when I was gathering a sample for this study I specifically called for gay and lesbian youth and their families in my recruitment materials. That may be why most of my respondents identified as gay and lesbian and reported that their attractions corresponded with their identities. Perhaps respondents who were attracted to both men and women did not see themselves as clearly different from their gay and lesbian counterparts—at least not different enough to refrain from volunteering to be interviewed.
In my clinical practice I have found that a large part of my initial work with bisexual clients is demonstrating that I truly believe they are bisexual. In light of the skepticism bisexual people face, it makes sense that these clients need to be reassured that their therapists do not think they are either confused or trying to shield themselves from the discrimination and prejudice gays and lesbians experience. One of my recent bisexual clients referred to gay men, lesbians, and heterosexuals as “monosexuals who just don’t understand.”
Of course, no matter what our sexual orientation, it is our job to understand how our clients see themselves. Those among us who are “mono-sexual” therapists who have trouble understanding that bisexuality exists need to get themselves educated. A good way to start would be to become familiar with the Kinsey reports, which found that bisexual behavior was much more prevalent than originally thought (1948, 1953). This discovery still has relevance in today’s world. Diamond’s (2008) study is also recommended reading, and good overviews by Weber and Heffern (2008) and also McClellan (2006) can be found in social work texts describing work with LGBT populations. Therapists should also consult the Journal of Bisexuality as well as a volume of research examining this much misunderstood topic (Fox 2004). It might also be beneficial for therapists who are new to these ideas, or are uncomfortable with them, to find bisexual individuals to interact with and learn from.
If a therapist is confronted by a young gay man or lesbian woman who is thinking of coming out to his or her parents as bisexual to soften the blow, this should be discouraged. Of course, the children’s anxiety is understandable, and a sensitive clinician will empathize with their young clients’ motives to try to make a very difficult task a bit easier on both themselves and their parents. However, based on these findings, gradually coming out in this way is not a good idea. Perhaps young gays and lesbians who are considering such a plan are not quite ready to come out and need to wait until they are more emotionally prepared to face their parents’ possible reactions to the truth.
However, therapists might be confronted with the potentially difficult task of helping families in which a truly bisexual child has come out. Some of the previously mentioned clinical suggestions for working with parents who are just finding out their children are lesbian or gay could prove helpful. Parents might need to vent their grief, self-blame, and worry as well as their confusion and hopes that the child will eventually “pick the right team” and develop a relationship with an opposite-sex partner. It is reasonable for parents to want their children to avoid the consequences of societal stigma by choosing a heterosexual relationship, and therapists need to empathize with these parents’ wishes. However, ever since the times of Romeo and Juliet (and no doubt before then), parents’ plans to influence their children’s love lives have been known to fail miserably.
Thus, parents need to be coached to back off and try to eventually support their children’s choices. As recommended in earlier chapters of this book, when the family is ready for conjoint sessions it is a good idea for therapists to encourage productive, open conversation between family members about coping with stigma—particularly as it relates to the child’s choice of partner.
It seems that, as a society, we are slowly realizing how complicated the relationship is between social pressure, stigma, sexual attractions, sexual orientation, and identity. People, within and outside the lesbian and gay community are beginning to become more knowledgeable about bisexuality. It would be interesting and useful for future studies to further explore issues of sexual attraction, sexual identity, and social pressures and how they get processed in families, particularly those with bisexual members.
If you thought it might be hard for a parent to hear that a child is gay or lesbian, imagine what it must be like to hear that your son feels he was born into the wrong body and is really a woman or that your daughter is certain she was meant to be a man. As described previously, parents, like most people in our society, are uncomfortable with cross-gendered behavior, especially in their children. So it must be especially difficult for a parent to adjust to the news that their children feel as if their psychological gender is at odds with the bodies they were born into. Mallon (1999) and Lev (2006) describe how deeply distressing such a disclosure can be for parents and how children coming out as transgender are at great risk for being thrown out of their homes.
In this study two youth reported they were lesbian when they signed up, but identified themselves as transgender during their interviews, and one additional young woman who originally identified as lesbian came out later as trans once the study was over. Of course, no real conclusions can be drawn from the families of two or three respondents. However, when Eula found out her son was impersonating a woman (first described in chapter 2), her strong reactions suggest the magnitude of panic and resistance a parent might feel at the thought that a son or daughter might be transgender.
Andrew . . . he wasn’t sure what he was, and he was telling people he was a girl. And I got terrified one night . . . I had this man call here, a young man, who was straight . . . and met Andrew, and Andrew told him his name was Alexis. This man called here and he was giving me all this, “I don’t play that . . .” And it scared me to death and . . . I was trying to talk to [my son], “Andrew! No! You are not a girl, you are a gay man! You are not a girl!” And I said, ‘Andrew, you’ve watched Jerry Springer. You’ve seen when these men come on here and tell these men that they are really men although they have been thinking for months that they are women. They beat the hell out of them! And that is the fear I have. You are not a woman! You are a gay man!” And that was the first time that we actually had a long, quite civil discussion. I also had . . . a couple of my friends talk to him . . . gay male friends. And I don’t know what they talked about. I didn’t ask them how the conversation went. I wasn’t there. But I know that after they talked to him we didn’t have anymore of the Alexis issue. It was Andrew the gay man.
She described her attempts to get her son some help:
He would never admit to me that he was telling people he was a girl. He was always denying it to me, and I’d start throwing out names of men who had called here and asked for Alexis—and it was just like a total denial on his part. I even at one point made an appointment . . . I can’t remember the doctor’s name now . . . he is a black psychologist who specializes in transgender youth. My doctor gave me his name. We made an appointment . . . and I ended up really telling him off . . . We never even got in his office . . . We were sitting there, and I had a phone interview with this man, explained the whole situation to him, which is why he (Andrew) was going to see him. He came out, and the attitude he approached us with . . . it just put Andrew on the defensive right away. His arrogance . . . first he is calling him a girl. Then his secretary or nurse, whatever you want to call her, she is just like, “Well tell her . . .” And I said, “No. He is a boy. His name is Andrew.” She said, “Well he’s got long hair.” Andrew’s hair is long under those braids. So I told her, “Help me understand . . . if he were white and had a guitar in his hands it would be OK for him to have long hair? Kenny G’s got long hair. Jesus had long hair. But because he is black and has long hair and has a very attractive face . . . Why are you here if your mental attitude is that way?” It just ticked me off.
INTERVIEWER: So they just assumed and started treating him as a girl?
EULA: Oh yeah. And then when I corrected them that he was a boy the arrogance came out on me . . . the defensiveness came back towards me as though I was wrong for correcting them.
INTERVIEWER: So the psychologist and his staff were attacking you for not considering him a girl?
EULA: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Without any discussion, without even talking to your child?
EULA: Because I corrected them. And you are right they hadn’t talked to my child. No. He hadn’t opened his mouth. We had filled out the forms. Andrew. Sex: male. Damn! You can’t read either? So we never went back.
Was Andrew really transgender? Maybe, but I will never know for sure. During his interview, he sported long nails, long hair, and seemed like he was wearing cosmetics, yet he denied thinking he might be a girl. Perhaps he did not—or perhaps his mother’s fear led him to put the idea aside, at least for the time being.
Another mother became extremely anxious when she began to talk about her daughter’s cross-gendered behaviors. She seemed to enter a dissociative state, becoming highly agitated, disoriented, and unable to speak once she started to think aloud that her daughter might be transgender. (Her daughter freely admitted she was transgender, but she reported that she did not mention this to her mother, instead telling her she was a lesbian.) Her mother’s reaction, along with that of Andrew’s mother, shows how very distressing it can be to think that one’s child might be transgender.
Nevertheless, the experience of a third family suggests that these families may be similar to those of gay and lesbian youth, whereby parents might employ the same methods to help themselves adjust. This mother, a teacher living in the suburbs, recalled how her twenty-two-year-old daughter seemed to show signs of being transgender from an early age:
Since she was born it seemed like she was allergic to her skin. Then when she stated she was a boy and she had a penis and everybody should come and see her penis—I mean that’s pretty out there . . . She may not have known it, I may not have acknowledged it, but she was out from four years old, five years old. She was identifying herself as a boy, and at school that would cause problems for her, because she was rather vocal about it. But yet, on the other hand, she was very self-conscious. So she was kind of a, a strange mix, you know? Extreme self-consciousness and yet announcing things to the world that were causing her problems.
Like many of the parents of the gay male and lesbian respondents, this mother was initially very depressed when her daughter told her three years ago that she was transgender. What helped her adjust was the passage of time along with the information she sought out. She came to the conclusion that gender was innate, even if it didn’t match up with one’s biological sex, and this helped her feel better.
Her daughter came out as gay first and then later as transgender. Like some of the lesbian and gay respondents, her daughter overestimated the beneficial effects of her own self-confidence in who she was. Furthermore, her daughter thinks her mother is now comfortable with her dressing and acting very masculine, which, by the way, she isn’t. However, both agree that their relationship has improved since the daughter came out.
The findings from this mother and daughter suggest that some issues for transgender families might be similar to those of lesbian and gay youth. For example, parents may have early suspicions, and parents and children might have distinctly different ideas about what helps parents adjust. Arlene Istar Lev (2004) developed a stage model of how families might adjust to the discovery that a member is transgender, and her model shares some similarity with the stages described in this book. In a study of eighteen mothers of female-to-male transgender children, respondents spoke of feelings of loss, the need for support outside the family, and how seeing their children happy helped them adjust (Pearlman 2006). Undoubtedly, however, there are unique issues faced by families of transgender children, and more research in this area is needed. In the meantime therapists needing information are advised to consult Lev’s seminal text, Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families.
What is it like to have a sibling who is gay or lesbian? Based on the little bit of information in this study as well as the small amount of scholarly literature in this area, it seems that siblings may share in the stigma of their gay brothers and lesbian sisters whereby they may have to cope with taunts from peers, which include accusations that they too are gay. Remember the young African American men in the group mentioned in chapter 6? These men talked about how their brothers and other male relatives felt they were adding to society’s already negative image of black manhood. Like parents, their brothers also felt they had to find ways to handle their peers’ homophobic comments and behaviors.
A sensitive, insightful anthology consisting of essays written by siblings of lesbians and gays reveals how sisters and brothers feel they too become objects of abuse and intolerance, sharing in the stigma of their gay siblings (Gottlieb 2005). However, like some fortunate parents, people who learn their siblings are lesbian or gay can find ways to grow and gain new perspectives. Several of the contributors to this volume discussed how they formed especially close bonds with their gay brothers and sisters and, like some of the parents in this study, developed new, more tolerant worldviews that enriched their lives.
The paucity of available information about siblings of gay and lesbian youth does not mean their issues are small or unimportant. Effective family therapists are accustomed to incorporating siblings in their sessions, even if they do not initially seem to be suffering or playing a significant role in the presenting problems, and it makes good sense to include siblings when working with gay and lesbian families.
In my clinical and research experience, sisters and brothers might need help coping with feelings of shame that they have someone gay in the family. They may also need help dealing with peer condemnation and harassment once it is found out that they have a gay or lesbian sibling. Furthermore, they may be anxiously questioning their own sexuality—even if they have no same-sex attractions. A lack of such feelings does not necessarily preclude a sibling from wondering “Could this happen to me too?”
In addition, I have also seen parents with good intentions isolate their gay child’s younger siblings, keeping the gay child’s sexual orientation a secret and therefore excluding brothers and sisters from family discussions of this topic. Sometimes parents do this because they want to protect their younger children from information they believe they cannot handle. At other times this is done inadvertently when, after the gay child comes out, parents and gay kids emotionally withdraw from the family, leaving siblings to deal with their reactions alone. If the siblings are not aware why the family is in turmoil, they can even feel more confused, isolated, and distressed. In either scenario there is no one left to help the sibling(s) deal with their feelings.
For all these reasons it is a good idea to pay close attention to siblings in families with coming-out gay and lesbian youth. Early in treatment, therapists should encourage parents to give siblings age-appropriate explanations they can understand. Parents might fear that by telling younger children they might upset them too much or reveal something sexual that the youngsters are not ready to hear. However, there are ways to explain homosexuality to a small child without getting into the nitty-gritty sexual details. For example, “Mary wants to marry a woman instead of a man when she grows up” or “Johnny told us he wants to date other boys rather than girls, and Mommy and Daddy are surprised and are trying to understand.” Many therapists who have worked with young children, whose prejudices are usually not fully formed, know how surprisingly flexible they can be when it comes to understanding topics such as homosexuality if they are explained in ways that are in line with their cognitive abilities.
Once siblings are aware of what is happening, the guidelines regarding family sessions mentioned in earlier chapters still apply. If the family is too distressed and reactive, it is recommended that siblings be seen alone, at least initially, so the therapist can get a sense of their concerns and also offer support and education. Since dealing with courtesy stigma might be an issue for brothers and sisters, it would also be a good idea to include siblings in the family discussion of how to cope with issues such as societal intolerance and other people’s prejudices.
Mothers and fathers might also fear that such information could influence the younger sibling to actually “turn gay.” Parents need to be reassured that such concerns are unfounded. There is no evidence that having a lesbian sister or a gay brother can persuade a child to become gay. Furthermore, one gay child in a family does not necessarily mean that others will be as well. However, there is some evidence that, compared to families with no gay siblings, if one son in a family is gay, his brothers are statistically more likely to be (Dawood et al. 2000). Thus therapists need to be prepared for the possibility that there might be more than one lesbian or gay sibling in a family.
In this study there were two families that included two siblings who were gay, and in both cases it seemed that by the time the parents found out about the second child they had an easier time adjusting than they did when they found out about their first child. However, it is possible that some parents might experience exponentially more self-blame, guilt, loss, and worry if they have two or more gay or lesbian children, so the therapist may have to work twice as hard to help parents deal with their feelings. Hopefully, more research will be forthcoming to provide guidance in helping families with the special challenge of having multiple gay children.
How families of different races and ethnicities cope with a coming-out gay or lesbian child, the special concerns of families with transgender and bisexual youth, how mothers and fathers cope when they have multiple LGBT children . . . these are all areas for future research, each of which could constitute a book in and of itself. Moreover, many of the findings about gay and lesbian families in this book, particularly the divergent perceptions and recollections of parents and children about various components of the adjustment trajectory, cry out to be further investigated. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the information here further enriches the existing literature and provides yet another set of tools that will enable therapists to more effectively assist these vulnerable families.
Anyone who has grown up in a northern climate knows what it feels like to trudge though cold and snow after a long day—to see home waiting in the distance. As we get closer, our dark, tired mood begins to lighten. Whether it is a house or an apartment, there is something so reassuring about the shining lamplight glowing in the windows telling us that, despite the harsh weather outdoors, inside is filled with warmth, light, and life. As we enter the house or the apartment, we almost involuntarily exhale a sigh of relief. We’re home—and the people there, our family members, are happy to see us. Not all of us have experienced these feelings, but as children, each of us needed to—a warm, safe, secure, loving home is the birthright of each and every child.
For lesbian and gay children and their parents, this safety and security is perhaps even more vital, while more at risk. Families need a way to shelter themselves from the cold wet storm of societal intolerance, which can leak through the roofs of even the sturdiest houses, dampening the relationships of those inside. When this happens, some families will turn to us, family therapists, social workers, school counselors, and other human service professionals, and we need to be ready to help them patch things up.
Parents need to talk about their grief and self-blame, and they also need help broadening their views of what constitutes a happy and healthy life for their children—letting go of old images to make room for new ones. Children need a buffer from the harsh realities of societal homophobia and heterosexism, but they also need to find ways to be patient with their parents, at least temporarily doing without their parents’ comforting while their mothers and fathers regain their footing. Furthermore, and perhaps most important, both parents and children need to see how growing to adjust to a gay or lesbian sexual orientation holds out the promise for new, stronger relationships and a broadened, more humane view of the world.
During one of my visits to an LGBT group, several of the members spoke of how, when they told their parents they were gay, they were asked to leave their homes. Upon hearing this, one African American girl exclaimed, “Parents throw their children out of their homes because they’re gay?! You mean mothers and fathers reject their children?! That’s wack!” Indeed it is—and it is my fervent hope that, in some small way, the stories of the families in this book, in which parents and children rode out the storm holding on to each other, not only will make it less likely that parents reject their children but also more likely that parents reap the rewards of learning to accept and indeed cherish their gay sons and lesbian daughters.