Articles For/By/About Parents 
 
Charlotte Observer, August 6, 2000 

I Am My Father's Son
Cullen Ferguson's older son didn't turn out the way he expected. Cullen tried to change him, but changed himself.

By ELIZABETH LELAND, Staff Writer
 
Cullen Ferguson cried himself to sleep the night his oldest son told him he was gay.  He drank himself to sleep for most of the next six months.
 
When his alarm rang at 4:45 a.m., he would struggle out of bed, head pounding, mouth dry. He anchored the morning and noon newscasts for WSOC-TV (Channel 9) and managed to look professional no matter how hung over he felt. He had to guard his reputation as carefully as he combed his hair.
 
Inside, he struggled with anger and embarrassment, fear and sadness. He wanted to change his son Doug. It hurt just to look at him. He daydreamed about fleeing from Charlotte, from his wife and three children.
 
"I felt helpless," Cullen says. "I felt all alone."
 
He had waited up that night in March 1990 for his two oldest children, Doug and Michelle, to come home from spring break at UNC Chapel Hill. The family would be together again. Cullen had been looking forward to that.
 
Doug hadn't planned to tell his parents his first night home. He confided in Michelle on the drive down and she didn't want to be the only one who knew his secret.  Doug sat on his parents' king-size bed and blurted it out: Mom, Dad ... I'm gay.
 
The words stung. Five years earlier, a psychiatrist told them Doug was going through a phase when he said he might be gay. Cullen had felt reassured then. He put aside suspicions about Doug's effeminate laugh, his awkward attempts at T-ball and basketball, the teary nights after classmates chased him down and called him "fag." Doug would marry, raise children, be the son Cullen dreamed of. A real man.
 
Cullen cried, one of the few times Doug ever saw his father cry. His mother, Gwen, cried, too.
Doug stared back, dry-eyed.
 
"I'd done my crying," Doug says. "I'd done my agonizing. I'd done my praying. When I was in high school, I had cried myself to sleep night after night after night and it usually involved a lot of praying because really the only person I was honest with the whole time was God. And the prayer usually went something like this: 'Change me. I don't understand why I'm this way.
I'll do anything.'
 
"By the time I told them, I was feeling very happy. I finally met other people who were gay. Despite the fact I knew they were going to have a difficult time, I didn't want to be dragged down into it."
 
Cullen and Gwen told Doug they loved him. That would never change. 'I had lost my son'
The next morning, Cullen set up a lawn chair next to the hammock.
 
This would be the father-to-son talk they rarely had while Doug was growing up. Cullen had left most of the talking to Gwen. She was his go-between with Michelle and Doug and Bo. Cullen hiked and fished and camped with his children, but he kept away emotionally the way his father had with him. Men are supposed to be in control, Cullen learned early on. They're not supposed to show emotion.
 
As they sat across from each other, Cullen saw a lot of himself in Doug -- the set of his jaw, the wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled. Doug stood 6 feet 6, an inch and a half taller than Cullen. He was as stubborn and proud as his father. It was just as hard for him to show emotion. He expressed himself best the way his father did, not in person, but in writing. Cullen fired questions at Doug: How do you know you're gay? Who's this guy you're seeing? Aren't you afraid you'll get AIDS?
 
If Doug chose that lifestyle, Cullen said, he'd never again look at him without feeling sad. Cullen begged Doug to hold off for a couple of weeks so he could find a sexual reorientation program. "We're conditioned as parents to think one of the worst things that could happen is for our children to come to us and say they're gay," Cullen says. "Gay people run into such ostracism and negative reactions. There's so much shame associated with it. Our own denomination considers it sinful. We're programmed to want to have heterosexual sons who marry and have children.
 
"I felt that I had lost my son."  He's just rebelling
 
At Cullen's insistence, Doug saw a psychiatrist that summer. She was the only professional Cullen found who thought Doug could change. After two visits, she predicted he would end up with a woman, he was so romantic.
 
Doug didn't go back.
 
The sight of Doug sunning in a skimpy Speedo bathing suit in the back yard repulsed Cullen. The smell of Doug's cologne nauseated him. His son -- the Eagle Scout, the straight-A student at Olympic High, a member of the church handbell choir -- was primping in the mirror and partying at gay nightclubs until 3 in the morning. No telling what else he was doing.
 
Cullen told Gwen he would always love Doug, but he didn't like him. He wouldn't have Doug's friends over for dinner.
 
If they didn't accept his friends, Gwen told Cullen, they'd drive Doug away. Doug was rebelling, she said. He'd settle down. Cullen and Gwen had rarely argued in 23 years of marriage. Now they were shouting.
 
When Cullen got home from work about 1 p.m., he would mix his first gin and tonic. He drank six or seven a day. He kept a gin bottle in the basement and used it to refill the bottle in the liquor cabinet so Gwen wouldn't notice.
 
"It was eating me apart," he says. "It wasn't something I could talk to anybody about. She was accepting it and I wasn't. I felt Doug was evidence of my failure as a father. I couldn't reject him, but I didn't have to accept him."
 
On their 23rd anniversary, Cullen startled Gwen by confiding that he felt like running away.
'Just something that is'
 
A couple of days later, he came to Gwen in tears.
 
He needed help, he told her. He had been drinking way too much, and that was making their problems worse. He was going that night to Alcoholics Anonymous.
 
Cullen went to AA nearly every night for two years. A change came over him within a few weeks. He took the group's prayer to heart: "God grant me serenity to accept those things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference."  "I came to the pretty quick realization that this was not something that was going to change and it was not something that should be changed," Cullen says. "It was just something that is. Considering all the ostracism, who would choose to be gay? It's who Doug is. He's the same son I always had."
 
Cullen wrote Doug, then visited him in Chapel Hill.
 
"It was like receiving a letter from a stranger," Doug says. "It was so different from our last serious conversation -- that conversation about him never being able to look at me without being sad. He told me how proud he was of me, how he regretted a lot of things he said. It was such a shock."
 
Doug needs to talk
 
Cullen was interviewed by his own TV station in January 1992 after Doug wrote a column for the UNC student newspaper about being gay. Cullen and Gwen joined the board of Time Out Youth, a support group for gay and lesbian young people. They joined Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and served on the Gay/Lesbian Task Force of the Clergy Association of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. They marched in the 1994 Gay Pride Parade in Charlotte.
 
"I thought ... this is my son and I'm not ashamed of him," Cullen says. "It was exhilarating. This was our coming out as a family."
 
The family had mended.
 
But Doug was confronting a crisis. He didn't know how to tell his parents. He asked the Rev. Steve Caddell of South Mecklenburg Presbyterian Church to tell them. Caddell spoke with Cullen and Gwen after choir practice one Wednesday night in January 1995. When they went home, he told them, Doug would be there. Doug needed to tell them something, but didn't know how.
 
Doug wants you to know he is HIV positive.
 
"We had become very close and that made it almost insufferable," Doug says. "How could I possibly add this to their plate after how great they had been? I felt extremely, extremely guilty." That night, they cried together.
 
"I've grown to understand why some of this happens, why so many gay young men throw all caution to the wind," Cullen says. "They don't have the kind of maturing, dating experiences that heterosexual kids do in high school. It's all repressed until they go away and can be true to themselves. Then it's too much all at once.
 
"Had society had a healthier attitude toward gay people, he might have dated and had counseling in high school and maybe he wouldn't be HIV positive today."
'I am my father's son'
 
In September, father and son will bike in the 275-mile Boston to New York AIDS Ride, helping raise money for health care for AIDS patients. Those three days will be the longest they've spent one-on-one since Doug's junior high Boy Scout camping trips. Afterward, they hope to publish a book about their experiences.
 
Cullen, 57, trains for the ride on weekends in Charlotte and Black Mountain, biking as many as 100 miles in a day.
 
Doug, 29, bikes about seven miles to and from work in Chicago. He's a lawyer there with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and shares a home with his partner, Chip Howard. He takes a protease inhibitor and other drugs to fight the HIV virus.
 
Cullen says: "This whole experience has opened my eyes to an awful lot of prejudices I grew up with, to a lot of negative stereotyping. I've had the luxury, I guess you could say, of having had no choice but to come face to face with what I thought. I think Doug has sensed that I've grown a lot and changed and opened up, and he can now trust me to have unconditional love. I hope this AIDS ride will bring us even closer."
 
Doug says: "We still have a lot of mending to do. And a lot of it I attribute to me after I told them I was gay, I threw up a wall and I was not willing to let that wall down. I rebelled so much against who I had tried desperately to be as a child. I think I lost myself for a while. I certainly lost my connection with my family, deliberately so. Now I'm trying to get that back.
 
"Dad is reaching out, and it's going to take some time to get used to it. He's reaching out for a hug like he didn't do before. He says things he didn't say before, like how proud he is of his children. While we were growing up, my father was very, very uncomfortable with intimacy with his kids. His father was even more distant from him. And I've struggled with the same intimacy issues. 
 
I am my father's son."
  
 San Francisco Examiner, December 24, 1999
P. O. Box 7260, San Francisco, CA, 94120
(Fax 415-512-1264 ) (E-MAIL: letters@examiner.com )
( http://www.examiner.com )
GIFTS OF THE HOLIDAY SEASON

'Mom,' he said, 'I'm in love; his name is Jeremy"

SANDRA SMITH

My son David tried several times before he found the words to tell me that he is gay. "Mom," he said, "there is something I have to tell you. I'm in love. His name is Jeremy." My heart stopped. Not because of his words but because I saw absolute terror on his ashen face. I'm ashamed to admit my first reactions were selfish and fearful. I wanted grandchildren. I even asked him, "Are you sure?" Eventually, I said what was in my heart: "I want you to be happy. This is a terrible world in many ways and you must accept love where you find it."

Think of the gay and lesbian children who are too afraid to tell anyone. David found it nearly impossible to tell me, even knowing I would accept him. Young gays are nine times more likely to commit suicide than their

peers who are not gay. Jeremy and his mother didn't speak for two months after she learned he was gay, and it took two more years before they could behave as a family again. Jeremy's experience is common.

David told me he learned about sex in public restrooms because there was no safe way for him to satisfy his curiosity. Adolescent sexuality is confusing at best. Sex in a public restroom is an aspect of gay life that leaves vulnerable kids open to experiences that will profoundly affect the rest of their lives. AIDS, rape, abuse, hatred and prejudice abide in this silence and secrecy that endangers our children. We must give them safe options.

David decided to tell the rest of our family that he is gay. As he prepared to approach each one, he had to steel himself against the possibility of losing that person's love. He had no idea how his brother, Kelly, would react, so I offered to tell him. They had a history of not getting along well. And yet today they are closer than when they were growing up. Kelly and his wife, Christine, spend a lot of time with David and Jeremy. They are good friends, not just family.

Next, David spent weeks gathering the courage to tell his father. After the initial shock, Chris realized it wasn't the end of the world; today he welcomes Jeremy into our family. And David's half-brothers, Calen and Cale, said, essentially, "What's the big deal?" Sadly, David didn't trust their feelings at first. He didn't speak to them until he learned they were hurt because they weren't invited to his wedding.

After years of listening to my father's ethnic slurs, we were stunned when he accepted David's news with a shrug. "He's my grandson and I love him," he said. "And, by the way, did you know that your cousin . . . ?" Yes, I knew about my cousin, but I was astonished to learn my father did, too. I watched disbelief and confusion battle across my brother's face when I told him. Bernard is a good man struggling to reconcile church philosophy with what he knows about David. Most of all, he doesn't want David to suffer.

It was Barry, my sister's husband, who shocked us all. He would not participate in our family holiday gathering if my gay son were there. It was this ugliness, in the midst of the holiday season, that nearly ripped my family apart. My sister, Robin, and I are close, but she felt she must support her husband. I was angry and hurt. I refused to associate with anyone who wouldn't accept my son and I wouldn't take part in the family celebration, even though my father was very ill and I knew it might be the last holiday we could spend together. Bernard's wife, Anne, stepped in. She talked to Barry. I don't know what she said but the family holiday was back on. My father died soon after.

Family values? I am proud to be part of a family that represents family values in their finest sense. This doesn't mean that all issues are resolved, but we all do agree on one thing: David is family. Too many gays and lesbians lack even the rudiments of such a support system.

David likes to tell about what happened while he was working for a local business. He worked hard, made friends and was successful. Everyone gradually came to understand that his partner was another man. When David quit to go to another job, a co-worker told him, "I was brought up to believe that you are going to hell. But I've gotten to know you and that just doesn't seem right. You are a good person, David. I'll miss you." That story gives me hope.

I remember David when he was 2 years old. His favorite bedtime activity was to stand on the side of the couch and jump off into his dad's arms. He trusted that he would always be caught. Too many of our children are falling through the arms that should be sheltering them. Dealing with David's gayness has challenged everything I thought I knew. I think of the years when David was growing up when I was sure that life was one way, and it turns out it wasn't after all. This has been humbling and frightening.

I have come to understand that people are like dominoes. Hurt one person and you may harm his parents, possibly his nephew, or his children even strangers whose lives might briefly intersect with his. Treat one human being with courtesy and respect and the results ripple throughout many lives. I try to believe that if I find the right words, I can help you  understand.

• Examiner contributor Sandra Smith is a freelance writer and graphic designer.

____________________________________________________________________

 
 Sunday, March 18, 2001, Spartanburg, SC Herald Journal
By <mailto:gary.henderson@shj.com

GARY HENDERSON - Staff Writer

Rhea Murray had suspected her son was gay for a long time. Though she knew little about such things, Murray thought the signs of her son's sexual orientation were too obvious to ignore.

From the time he was a boy, Bruce Murray cared little about rough-and-tumble boys' play. Sometimes his mannerisms seemed effeminate, and at times, he displayed a persona that seemed more like a girl than a preadolescent elementary school boy.

Yet, the day 13-year-old Bruce Murray walked into his mother's kitchen and said, "Mom, I'm gay," was one of the most frightful days of the Indiana woman's life.

"I was terrified," Murray said. "Even when I was an expectant mother, I wondered how a family would deal with something like this."

Murray's answer was not long in coming. She said the minister of her church in the Southern Indiana town of Seymour helped spread the news by telling some members of his congregation in a small town of only 17,000 people.

"Our pastor told me he didn't think any church would accept us as a family any longer," Murray said.

After that incident with her pastor, Murray and her family withdrew from the church and began traveling to a nearby forest preserve on Sundays, using the natural setting as a place of family worship.

Today, however, Murray and her husband, Butch, are welcomed members of an Episcopal church. "The first Sunday, I told the pastor, 'Our son is gay and I want to know if we'll be accepted,' " Murray recalled. Immediately the church rector said yes. "I didn't want to take many

Sundays to find out."

On Thursday, Murray will share her family's story of a nine-year journey that has been full of physical attacks against Bruce, death threats and the loss of friends and family.

Murray will speak at a special meeting of the Parents and Friends of Gays and Lesbians. The event is open to the public. It is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the fellowship hall of Central United Methodist Church at 233 N. Church St.

Joyce Harrison, facilitator for PFLAG's meetings in Spartanburg, said Murray's visit is part of a plan to make people aware of the organization's presence in the community.

"Many (parents and friends) suffer in silence without access to reliable information or support," Harrison said. "The sharing and support that occurs at PFLAG meetings helps people to understand and have patience with the process of accepting their own or their loved one's sexual orientation."

Harrison says people can be assured of confidentiality if they contact the organization for information or times and location of PFLAG's monthly meetings.

Murray said PFLAG helped her address her son's sexuality "outside the role of a victim." "If they feel any discomfort in you, they're like sharks that smell blood," Murray said.

Bruce's kitchen admission of his homosexuality followed several physical attacks that put him in a deep state of depression.

Murray said her decision to accept Bruce, regardless of his sexual orientation, saved his life. "He told me later, he was planning suicide," Murray said. "I felt both empathy and anger to know people wanted my child dead just because he is a homosexual."

One such message left on the family's answering machine threatened Bruce with sexual torture and beheading.

Murray later told her husband Butch, a diesel-engine technician, what Bruce had said. "Butch said, 'All I know, Bruce is a good boy. I fear how the world will treat him,' " Murray recalled in an interview from her home.

Murray said her husband's continued expression of love for Bruce helped keep their family together in the face of revelations that have destroyed others.

"I know several woman who had to choose between their gay sons and their husbands," Murray said. "Butch lost most of his side of the family."

Murray said many people she's met seemed to think their children are an extension of themselves. "That's why they ask, 'What will people think of me?'" Murray said.

A few days after Murray spoke to her husband, Butch Murray told his son, "I know (about your homosexuality) and I'll still be here for you. I love you."

Bruce is now 22. The Murrays backed that first affirmation of their support by never backing away when they've been asked about his sexuality.

Murray acknowledges she has concerns about AIDS, but no more than she would have if Bruce were in a heterosexual relationship. "I have no more fear for him that I would anyone who has unprotected sex," Murray said.

Rhea Murray has gained national attention for her PFLAG affiliation, and acts as a spokeswoman for the organization.

She and Bruce have testified before congressional hearings related to hate crimes, and the problems faced by the country's gay and lesbian population.

"Many of my childhood friends have 'come out' to me as an adult, since I started this," Murray said.

Murray details her family loss of friends, family and church life in the book "A Journey to Moriah." She said the book is so titled because she, like Abraham in Genesis, Chapter 22, was asked to sacrifice her son.

At the time of the revelation to his parents, Bruce was active with his church youth group, played hand bells for worship services and assisted in the nursery.

"I tried to deny I was homosexual," Bruce said by phone from his home. "I'd often go to my church sanctuary and get on my knees, praying that God would make the feelings I had go away. They never did. What came to me in the silence was a realization of who I am."

Bruce said the "feelings" that he later realized were his sexuality, began early in his life, void of experience. "I didn't choose this," Bruce said. "In fact, I was still a virgin when I came out."

Fearing for Bruce's safety, the Murrays pulled him from public school and began a home-schooling program.

"Without my parents support, I'd have never gotten through high school," Bruce said. "I had to decide which would cause (my parents) more pain --my suicide or knowing I was gay."

Gary Henderson can be reached at gary.henderson@shj.com or 582-4511, Ext. 7230.