Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6905051-20131203105732/@comment-24138799-20140609094249

Utter solitude wrote: Sometimes the best thing for you is tough love.

I had a friend who was gay. His parents were very tightly strung conservative Christians. He was raised this way as well. When he finally got the courage to tell his parents, when he was 16, they sent him out of the country to a "pray the gay away" camp. Why? They loved their son and thought it was best for him. They'd been taught that being gay is wrong, and they wanted to "save" and "fix" their son. I don't know what happened to him there, but it messed him up for years afterward. He struggled with his faith and his sexuality. When he finally, at age 22, accepted himself and told his parents, they disowned him. They told him he'd fallen off his path, and they could not accept it. I believe they loved him very much, but that kind of extreme faith... it can warp a parent's thinking. They felt they'd done all they could, and their faith taught them that, in that situation, love meant they had to let him go.

I don't agree with it, but I can understand it. You spend your time as a parent trying to get your child to believe something, to be something. And when they're not, you do what you think you have to steer them back in the right direction. Sometimes it's.... crazy. That really doesn't sound like they love him to me. I'm from Belgium (2nd country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage) and I was raised to be very open-minded. I really think that if you love someone truely, you accept them for who they are. And you DON'T try to make them believe what you think is right when there's no proof at all that his/her behaviour is wrong. To me, that sounds extremely outdated, like something my gran would say (though even she accepted my cousin being gay). I just get so fed up with people putting their belief in front of their own loved ones. They listen to something someone wrote down in the Middle Ages. Why should someone even want to do that? I really don't intend to offend your friend or his parents, this is just my opinion, but I just get really frustrated when gay rights come up in a conversation...