Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [60]
She went home to think his suggestion through and talk about it with Bob and the family. Could Larry be right? Could she move beyond her own tragic mistake to be a living example for others? Gay kids, their parents, straight people? Could she tell them “Don’t make the mistake I made. Cherish your children just as they are.”?
In the summer of 1986, three years after her son’s death, her thoughts took her once again to the typewriter. Bobby would have been twenty-three. Before she shared her story elsewhere she would have to square things with him. Over several weeks she composed a letter to Bobby from which she would shape the message she would take to the world.
Dearest Bobby,
It’s been almost three years since you moved in with God. As a religious hard-nosed Bible thumper for 21 years, I almost rested on the cliche “God’s will be done.” We were thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that as a homosexual person your way of life would be corrupt and sinful. As a result of these beliefs, a terrible injustice was done to you.
Since the Christian church came into being, it has continued to remain in its ignorance, homophobia, prejudice, and pride. I am sorry your family went along in blind agreement with the church’s views concerning the gay and lesbian community. I am happy to see a few churches are opening their hearts to God’s gay and lesbian children. It’s a start in the right direction. I have since learned the correct interpretations in the Bible where the issue of homosexuality is mentioned. It is obvious to me now that we have all been tragically misinformed. We have been listening to man’s interpretations of the Bible and not God’s!
I remember you said to me, “You just won’t bend, will you? You won’t listen to my side of the story.” You were right, Bobby. Like many parents I thought I knew it all. As this letter will testify, I am listening now, and I like what God is teaching me.
What I am about to say to you, Bobby, will be considered blatant heresy. However, as the late Thomas Huxley said, “It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies.” I believe the writer of the Old Testament (Moses) misinterpreted same-gender relationships, and in doing so excluded homosexuals from God’s plan of creation. Moses failed to interpret same-gender relationships as an indigenous part of God’s creation.
God’s gay and lesbian children have been robbed of their human decency, integrity, and dignity.
Well, Bobby, I am a firm believer it is never too late to make things right with you or anyone else I may have wronged unknowingly. I am trying to bind the wounds of God’s gay and lesbian children, hopefully strengthening them with the oil and wine of God’s love. I thank you, Bobby, and God, for bringing this family out of the dark ages.
We were not aware (at first) of the conflict that was slowly breaking your spirit and that this conflict would continue to torment you for the next seven years. So much so that living would become a daily victory. It is fact that there are an alarming number of teenage suicides happening, and no one knows why the teenager is choosing death instead of life. Could some of them be Bobbys and Janes? Our Church and society do not give the young person a realistic answer, much less a humane solution to their discovery of being a gay person.
You were the apple of God’s eye just as you were. If we had only known.
Out of the many discussions we had, the one phrase that comes back to me is the age-old chant, “You can change if you want to.” How that must have angered and hurt you. “You began to feel you did not fit into your family anymore. You wanted to believe that you were not the person the Bible had interpreted you to be. You were at the mercy, as we all are, of the false interpretations in the Bible concerning homosexuality. The social stigma and the stereotypes presented you as a menace to society.
I have done a lot of heart searching with God. I could not rely on the Bible as I had done in the past. I knew