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28 December, 1998
Even in super-functional families where everyone is just peachy with each other the holidays are stressful. And it doesn't really matter which holiday it is. If it's a big holiday in your family, there's going to be stress.
In my family, the Christmas tradition is that everyone brings presents and at least one unresolved issue. For many of my relatives the unresolved issue is my sexuality. For example, one of my aunts once sent me a twenty-eight page handwritten letter explaining the "rules" if I planned to bring my "friend" to the Christmas Eve celebration at her house. My "friend" was welcome, but we had to refrain from touching each other in any way in the house, refering to each other by any pet names, saying anything like "I love you" to each other, or otherwise act as if he was anything more than some stranger I barely know.
The list of words we weren't allowed to use, as well as topics we weren't to bring up, really did go on for twenty-eight pages. And my aunt never understood why I wrote back a short note saying that if she was serious, then I wouldn't be setting foot in her house ever again.
I have to admit that I'm pretty lucky. I live in a city that has a gay rights ordinance. I work for a company with one out gay vice president and several other out employees. When my partner was still alive, I used to bring him to the company Christmas party, and he was quite popular with several of my straight co-workers and their spouses. I came out to my family many years ago, and a few of my relatives are both accepting and supportive.
I know there are several people in much worse situations. People for whom it isn't safe to come out to their parents or siblings. Or who have only one or two relatives that know the truth. But all of us who are gay, lesbian, or bisexual have a little extra stress at the holidays. We're pulled in one extra direction, because in almost every family at least some members aren't comfortable with the life partner of the gay family member. So do we spend Christmas with the family and endure being uncomfortable? Do we each go to our separate families alone and spent the holiday apart? Or do we stay home together and endure guilt-trips from the family who can't understand why we don't visit more often?
Seven years ago I made my choice. I told my family that I would not come to visit them on any day until they were ready to treat my husband the same as they treated the significant others of all my siblings and cousins. They were invited to come visit us in our home whenever they liked, but it would be as guests in our home, where we would behave as we chose.
It took five years of this exile to get my mother and grandmother to come up and visit. They haven't moved all the way to accepting me for who I am, but they treated Ray with respect. Eventually they learned to like him. I think the effort was worth it.
There are still a lot of relatives on both sides of the family in the actively hostile camp. But a few more appear to be coming around. I keep quoting a bit of the Tao to myself whenever things get rough: "Only the softest thing can destroy the hardest thing. As the water, soft and fluid, flows over the through the rock and wears it away over time."
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This page is copyright 1998 by Gene Breshears. Photograph is copyright 1998 by Julie Rampke. All Rights Reserved.