Dog Fight

During the last week of August 2014 things came to a head for Daniel Pierce of Kennesaw, Georgia, USA. A year ago he had “come out” to his family. Apparently they did not accept that as well as Daniel had thought they did. Last week they demanded that he go into a reparative therapy program to “pray the gay away”. The conversation did not go well.

As it happened, when Daniel sensed that he was being ganged up on by his family he turned a video recording app on his cell phone on and got the terrifying encounter online. It was put on YouTube, called “How not to react when your child tells you he’s gay.” Perhaps a better title would have been, “How not to react when your child doesn’t think ‘praying the gay away’ is going to work”. The conversation grew heated, then violent, and then Daniel was sent away. As of the end of the month Daniel’s encounter has had 5 million views – in one single week. Within a week “the people” have rallied and raised nearly $100,000 to help Daniel start life over and stay in college. [This sounds like a lot until one considers the cost of a college education these days.]

I am posting thoughts about this for two reasons: first, to help spread the word that the threat to gay and lesbian children is still real; second, to suggest what underlying issues might have energized this violent event.

Behind the dramatic confrontation was an initial communication failure. (1) There was a basic lack of agreement about what facts are relevant with regard to being gay. Daniel said he was counting on “science”, but his mother insisted that she was going to go with “the word of God”. When there is no agreement about realms of discourse debate fails. This conversation was doomed from the beginning, but it didn’t stop there. (2) There was a lack of agreement about the form of discourse. Rules for engagement had not been built into the meeting between Daniel and his family. So the talk deteriorated into a physical attack. (3) There was a lack of parity. That always impairs communication. In this case Daniel was alone against an alliance of authority figures. It was a question of power against vulnerability, and never actually a question of science versus religion.

The real issues were not the presenting issues. The topic they had come to discuss was whether Daniel would either agree to the plan to “pray the gay away”, or agree to move out of his family home. The presenting issue was resolved when Daniel agreed to move out “by 
Thursday”, apparently a few days in the future, longer than “tomorrow” but less than “next week”. Still the encounter was not over. The real issues then surfaced.

Without going into a verbatim analysis of the recording, I would like to suggest that the real issues were two: (1) what does a 20 year-old son “owe” his father for the past twenty years of food, shelter, healthcare and so forth? This is a cultural, not a universal, matter. Here in Thailand, for example, it is not usually the father who is first mentioned in citing filial piety, but the mother. Furthermore, in the USA children are expected to move into independence and parents look forward to taking care of themselves. It is a question of when. Here in Thailand it is never acceptable for a child to claim utter independence, and living separate from parents is understood to be temporary at most (even if everyone suspects it will be fairly permanent). The dialogue between Daniel and his family about what obedience he owed his parents only makes sense, however, if we see that it was a surrogate argument for the real one. 

(2) What is the engine driving the parents’ anger? First there was a DISPUTE in which “the word of God” was cited. Daniel protested that God had made him the way he is. His being gay was from the time he was born, perhaps even earlier. His mother countered repeatedly that God would not make anyone gay. Being gay is a choice. If Daniel was going to continue choosing to be gay he would have to move out. Then his mother threw in a very telling comment, “I won’t have people thinking I condone this choice.” That goes a long way toward explaining what has happened in the past year. It would appear that the mother, step-mother and father have been challenged to become more socially acceptable. The terminology was conservative, “being gay is not an orientation it is a lifestyle choice”. The solution was religiously conservative, “Pray and be saved.” 

Then the encounter turned into a DOG FIGHT. Daniel’s father is heard denouncing his son for putting the scandal of his being gay on Facebook. Daniel challenges his father to show anywhere on Facebook this appears. “You’re a disgrace”, his father says. Now we have the heart of the matter. Here is where the heat is generated. It is, from the father’s point of view, about shame. Shame is a hot flame. “You’ve shamed us,” is what this is all about. Daniel senses this immediately and counters, turning the trust issue against his adversaries. Daniel is emotional: “I trusted you,” voices are beginning to be raised and strained. “You never trusted us,” a woman screams. This is where anger turned violent as words failed. The step-mother will not stand for her husband being called a bad parent. So, ironically, as if to disprove she also is bad and untrustworthy, she attacks her step-son and bloodies his lip. The discussion turns into a dog-fight. In calling this now a “dog fight” I am latching onto the word “bitch” shouted back and forth after dialogue had disintegrated. What infuriates the step-mother, I would contend, is that the whelp has barked at the alpha male, so his bitch attacks. The time has come for the pack to have just one alpha male. The challenger must be driven out.

The Orlando Weekly postulates that 20% of homeless people are gay. That would be about twice the percentage of heterosexual people who are homeless in the USA. 42% of homeless youth are gay. And most astonishing of all, 26% of youth living at home when they “come out” are kicked out of the house “from the day they admit they are gay”.

Post-script: Two days after writing this blog, Rolling Stone magazine published a marvelous article detailing the horrendous situation of homelessness facing many LGBT youth in the United States. The article can be accessed here: The Forsaken: A Rising Number of Homeless Gay Teens Are Being Cast Out by Religious Families