“My son is gay. Or he’s not. I don’t care. He is still my son. And he is 5. And I am his mother. And if you have a problem with anything mentioned above, I don’t want to know you.”

When Sarah Manley published those words under the image above on her blog last fall, she expected no one would read it, except the “few friends” who already read her blog.

Instead a million people read the post, called My Son is Gay. Nearly 50,000 of them left comments, ranging from “Thank you for being such a loving mother” to “How is THAT being a loving mother???”

The post defended her 5-year-old son’s decision to dress up as a girl for Halloween.

She describes how her son wanted to be Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween. After much discussion making sure it was what he wanted, she ordered the costume.

But when his Halloween costume day came at his church’s preschool, Boo (as she refers to her son) got cold feet. Manley writes she encouraged her son to go in and that’s when he was ridiculed. Not by the other children, but by other mothers.

“Just as it was heartbreaking to those parents that have lost their children recently due to bullying. IT IS NOT OK TO BULLY. Even if you wrap it up in a bow and call it ‘concern.’ Those women were trying to bully me. And my son. MY son.”

In the days after publishing the post, her post began to go viral. Media from around the world came calling, as did the U.S. network morning shows. As things got bigger, Manley let her son’s preschool teacher and director know about the post.

It was then she first heard from the pastor, who said she came across as vindictive in the post and that she should stop talking about it. She disagreed and declined. She appeared on the Today show the next day.

The next week, the pastor requested a meeting where he told her elders in the church had met and decided she had broken the 8th commandment (Thou shalt not bear false witness), and Matthew18. Numerous members were concerned she was “promoting gayness.” (“I don’t even know what that means,” Manley wrote in a follow up post.)

The next three months passed with no mention of the post — not from the pastor, not from the preschool, not even from the three mothers themselves. Until the end of January, that is.

That’s when she got a call from her pastor asking her to come in to talk. Manley arrived having no idea what the pastor wanted to talk about; the blog post wasn’t even on her radar.

“I really had no idea what it was he wanted to talk about because at that point I really thought it was a moot point,” she explained.

But apparently, it wasn’t. The post was exactly what the pastor wanted to talk about. At the meeting, the pastor offered Manley four ways she could make things right: she could apologize to the women, take down the blog post, no longer write about them, or take her entire blog down.

“At that point it had turned into, ‘You really misunderstood them. They were really just making small talk and you misinterpreted it. You felt judged when you weren’t,’ ” Manley said. “It had definitely taken a twist.”

Manley said as far as she’s concerned she did not misinterpret the three mothers’ intentions. If she did misconstrue their comments, she reasoned, would they not have immediately tried to clear the air with her?

“I felt as if whatever sins they wanted to accuse me of had already been decided and no one ever spoke to me.”

After the latest meeting with the pastor, Manley and her husband decided to pull their son out of the church’s preschool.

“If I wasn’t comfortable walking through the doors, I could not in good conscience send my son through those doors, which is very heartbreaking for the both of us,” she explained.

She also will not be returning to the church, and will be more cautious as she looks for a new church to join.

“I might just start a journey and try out churches, test them a little. Do a little more research, I guess, before I commit to something.”

Manley has faced online criticism as well for her original blog post. Some people attacked her and her son on her blog’s comments, she even received criticism from Caroline Howard, a Forbes blogger, who expressed concern the post will be a part of her son’s digital footprint forever, without his knowledge. But it’s the criticism from her former church that has hurt Manley most.

“I do feel it a little more viscerally because it’s from a church, because it’s from Christian women; it’s from a Christian pastor,” Manley said.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“I truly thought that if the church had anything to say, that they would have been supportive of the voice I was using to talk about unconditional love and tolerance so it was very disheartening to see that it was the exact opposite.”

Manley, who has had her blog for nearly six years now, said the controversy and reaction to her post “is probably the craziest thing that has happened to me, period.” But, she said, it will not change the way she blogs.

“I’m always conscious about what I say because even though a million don’t read it, a million people could read it.”

Read more about: