31/10/2022 | Writer: Nedime Erdoğan
A religious mother learns his son is gay after he tries to kill himself: “Learning about my son’s sexuality further strengthened our bonds.”
President Erdoğan has recently denied the existence of LGBTI claiming that a strong family union would not include an LGBTI person as a family member. As LGBTI families, we have been asking to be summoned by the officials. We want to explain what it means to us to be a family, and what it is to parent an LGBTI child with unconditional love. We know well that a strong family means love, compassion, support, understanding, and solidarity. The more you have of those ingredients, the stronger your bond becomes with your children. We have long known that LGBTI persons are not just “someone”, they come from all walks of life, regardless of their origin, class, or political views. We don’t know if we will ever be heard, but to share the diversity within the stories, I wanted to interview a mother who met GALADER (Ankara Rainbow Families Association) for the first time six years ago. Let us now lend an ear to her story. “Do not stand in the way of our children’s lives. This is such a grave sin to commit”, she says.
How did you find out your son was gay?
We were a conservative and religious family who tried to raise their children in traditional ways. Having two friends only, my son was an introverted kid. He would mostly spend time alone in his room. Growing up, he started telling us that he was questioning his religious beliefs. One day, I walked into his room to wake him up for school and saw empty drug containers on his table. I figured out what had happened and took him to the hospital right away for gastric suction. My son wouldn’t talk to us, but he had told the doctor that he was bullied at school. I don’t know if he had also told him why. We learned about the bullying from the doctor, who contacted official authorities. An investigation started at my son’s school. As he was going through tough times, we never pressured him to speak until one day he called me to his room and told me he was gay. I asked him whether he would be willing to tell this his father, which he agreed to. At the time both me and my husband remained calm as we thought this was a temporary period, resulting from depression.
But as the suicide attempts continued, my sister invited us to Istanbul so that we could see a reputable doctor that her boss knew. The doctor told us that he himself had LGBTI relatives and that it wasn’t necessary to come to Istanbul. We were advised to see a few experts at Hacettepe Hospital in Ankara. “Your son is so smart”, said the doctor, but Serdar, my son, would say “I don’t want to live anymore, leave me alone”. We couldn’t leave him alone for a moment. He was later hospitalized at Hacettepe Hospital where my husband and I could comprehend what being gay meant and that it was not a temporary period our son was going through.
Learning that my son was born that way, I started imagining how difficult it would be for him to put up with all the societal pressure he had been facing. I came to realize why all this time he had been running away from people. As his parents, we started blaming ourselves. Things would have been so different if only we could have been by his side. I thought if I had been able to understand what he was going through as a child, I could have given better support as a parent. My husband and I didn’t talk about my son’s sexuality for some time. We were both blaming ourselves for the way we raised him. We must have made a mistake somewhere along the line and now he’s gay. We both were relieved when we finally learned that being gay had nothing to do with upbringing and environmental factors.
Recently there has been much to fuel prejudice against LGBTI. The anti-LGBTI rally in Istanbul is one example to that. How did it make you feel?
I am extremely furious. What they did was wrong. No one deserves to get a such bad social reaction. Their hatred is born of ignorance. They claim that being an LGBTI is imposed by the west. We are leading our lives by our religious rules, not by western values. Why would my son emulate West as an example? I wish they would imagine all the violence LGBTI persons are facing. Then they would understand sexual identities have nothing to do with emulating. I am mad at how they can say such things about my precious kid.
Our children are treated as “viruses invading the country”. They are referred to as the “perverts” in such slogans as “Protect your family and stop perversion”. This drives me mad. How do you feel about it?
They themselves are the virus. I am also mad. I feel like crying and telling everyone that this is not the case. But I lack the courage to do so. I think society fears the unknown. I wasn’t prejudiced against the LGBTI community before learning about my son. After I learned about his sexuality, I became supportive. Trying to understand and learn make a huge difference. I guess, our society fears the LGBTI community.
Do you think it is ignorance that causes all these hostile reactions, then?
I guess ignorance, fear, and prejudice are all causes of the reactions. The more the LGBTI community become visible and fight for their right, the more people are disturbed by them.
I believe in God’s mercy and compassion. Unfortunately, there are a lot of so-called pious people in society who lack compassion. It is the responsibility of us all to be understanding and compassionate to one another. It is through getting to know “the other” that they will get rid of their prejudice. That I would like to hope for.
Was your son’s sexuality something that disturbed your family system?
On the contrary, it further strengthened our bonds. We built a more intimate, more transparent relationship. It was as if there were gaps among us and those gaps were filled. We lead a normal family life and if there exists any discrepancy in the recognition and respect we are given as a family compared to other families, then that is unfair. We should be the one to gain more recognition and respect. For, we are the ones who face the societal challenge and feel the responsibility to embrace our children as who they are.
What would you like to say as the last word?
One day, I was feeling so bad and shared my son’s sexuality with a co-worker of mine. She told me it was no one else’s business and that those who question and doubt the LGBTI existence are the ones to be blamed. She told me that no matter how hard I tried, some parts of society would never recognize the existence of LGBTI and advised me to let it go.
Sometimes, I feel like screaming so hard for my child, but I lack the courage to do so. Nor do I think this would be the right way to fight against discrimination. My son is such a naïve, vulnerable, and kind soul. I am shouting out: Do not stand in the way of our children’s lives. This is such a grave sin to commit.
Translation: Kerem Selçuk
Tags: life, family
