“I don’t want to come home…!” That was the reaction I received from my son when I asked him how the weekend was going when I spoke to him after shabbat. His next words were, “I know you told me not to, but I REALLY want to ‘wear my rainbow shirt’ to school on Monday!” Meaning at that moment he felt like he wanted to come back to school and come out to everyone. I told him we would talk when he arrived home.

He came home last night tired, exhilerated and a little less ready to come out to the world. Which was ok. I reminded him that it is something he will do soon but that if he doesn’t feel ready yet that is perfectly ok. Luckily he quickly engaged in a flurry of facebook friending, group joining, and picture tagging so he was somewhat preoccupied. Not that I wanted to avoid it, but I knew that if he wasn’t pressing me right now then it wasn’t on the forefront of his mind.

I am so happy that he had a wonderful time. I continue to have such mixed emotions though. One of the advisors, an Orthodox gay social worker who works for JQY who has been incredibly supportive of our family and our son from the get go, posted something to Facebook yesterday that made me sad. He spoke about how the majority of the teens who came from non-orthodox homes this weekend said they found the most support for their LGBT life within Judaism. Of course, he was referring to reform, reconstructionist, and conservative Judaism. He countered with the fact that Orthodox LGBT kids get the opposite of support from their Judaism and he finished with a call to action to several different Orthodox Organizations to support our Orthodox LGBT kids. Here is a poignant statement he wrote:

LGBTQ youth who leave Orthodoxy are not going off the derech. There never was a derech for them in the first place. We must create that derech, we must create that space. And it is much easier than one might think. We can’t change the prohibitions in the Torah, but we don’t have to. In all my years working with LGBTQ individuals from Orthodox backgrounds, few people have left Orthodoxy or experienced thoughts of suicide due to two verses in Leviticus. People are leaving — spiritually and emotionally — because of how they are treated by the Orthodox community.

Originally I said that I was so happy that my son was going to something Jewish this past weekend. That I hoped he got something from it, whether or not it’s Orthodox. I don’t know if I was lying to myself or if I didn’t realize how much I’d come to resent the fact that he can get support from Jewish denominations other than the one he was raised in. I feel like a child when I say this but it isn’t fair. We are so willing to get up on our high horses about how we’re the best and we do the best and we’re the most “authentic” Jews, and here we are pushing a segment of our population away willingly because we refuse to acknowlege that they are part of us even though they may not fit into what we see as typical. Look, I don’t know what direction my son would have gone religiously if he hadn’t been gay. But he is. And I have zero recourse when it comes to any desire to try to instill in him any reason to embrace Orthodoxy because he won’t get the support he needs here. It makes me incredibly sad.

