A very important event occurred in my family last week: out of my generation of cousins, a fourth cousin came out as gay last week to his parents, then public to other friends and family. Of my cousins/second cousins, this makes the third out gay man and we have one lesbian cousin. I won't even begin to conjecture on those in my family still in the closet.
Members of our family helped raise us, saw us grow, cheered our accomplishments and celebrated our lives. That is, until each of us came out. Some of our family members have chalked us up to "sinners". Others "tolerate" us because we are family, but in their eyes, we are still sinners and somehow less than we once were.
I think family can be a place where our prejudices are challenged...if we allow them to be. For example, I grew up in a home where black people were regularly referred to as "niggers". That ugly moniker still gets used by my parents and brothers, largely because one of those "niggers" has not found his/her way into our family.
I also grew up learning to refer to Hispanics and Latinos as "spics" and "wetbacks". However, this terminology largely disappeared because we ended up with some wonderful family members of Latino background. Over time, my family's prejudice was challenged and the knee jerk assumptions were fewer and far between.
My hope is since there is a third "faggot" in our ranks (and one "dyke") my immediate family and members of our extended family would start questioning biases. At some point, ridiculous accusations of molestation, "giving in to Satan" and chemical imbalance as explanations should give way to emerging understandings of sexuality, including medically, psychologically AND theologically.
If nothing else, I wonder how many more family members have to come out before our family evolves some of its thinking. If our family could adapt and accept other "scandals" in our family: affairs, women in the work force, divorce, drug abuse, mental illness, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and bastard children, I'm sure this whole "gay" thing can be dealt with as well.
