144. And again...

Okay, it’s just getting bloody ridiculous now. Apparently, my dad has now told my mother about the ‘gay conference’ I went to (when I corrected my mother on that one – “It was a gay CHRISTIAN conference…” her response was “What’s a gay Christian conference? How does that work?”). He just can’t seem to help himself when it comes to telling her stuff. And the thing is, I hadn’t even told him about the conference, I told my sisters and apparently he read it in an email I’d sent them. One of two things is happening here –

1: He simply does not realize what he’s doing and how difficult he is making my life when he tells my mother things like this or

2: He is not okay with my being gay, but doesn’t want to admit it so he’s telling my mom so she can be the ‘bad guy’ in this.

So this conversation was… was… ugh. Well first, I admittedly did not really go into detail in explaining the conference to her – I said it was just a conference, with speakers and workshops and stuff. I don’t’ really know why I didn’t want to tell her about it, I just didn’t. The conversation went on from there to her fear that I’m being ‘given over to a reprobate mind’ and how ‘Scripture is so clear on this’… This part went on for a while, and I did try to bring up some of the Side A (pro-gay relationships) arguments, but once again, I didn’t put a lot of effort behind them because I knew she really wasn’t hearing me… I knew everything I was saying was being filtered through her “fear-my-daughter-is-being-deceived” glasses, so there really was no point.

But then the conversation just got unpleasant. It began with “Do you believe the body was designed with purpose?” I thought I knew what was coming, I thought it was going to be an argument based on procreation, but no… she started talking about 40 year old gay men who have to wear diapers and bowel cancer and ‘other diseases that it’s just not politically correct to talk about now’. I know she worked with a whole bunch of gay men when we lived in Winnipeg and apparently they were all in diapers (I only have her word to go on, which is not the most reliable, she’s constantly insisting that I have said or done things that I have absolutely no recollection of doing, but I don’t think she’s deliberately lying about this… maybe one of them was in diapers, or maybe they joked about it or something, I don’t know). Her exact words after this whole disgusting diatribe were “if this were within God’s design, why would our body rebel?” And the thing is, even if this is true (which I don’t believe, I know gay men in their 40s, their 50s… etc…, they aren’t in diapers, nor do they have unpleasant ass-cancers or whatever) I have an argument for it… Deaf people use their hands to talk… this is not what hands were designed for, we were designed to communicate using vocal speech, so deaf people communicate in a way that is contrary to God’s design… and occasionally their bodies 'rebel' (to use my mother's word). Some deaf people suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of using sign language. It’s a horrible thing, and yet, I don’t think anyone in their right mind would see that as God’s judgment on deaf people for using their hands to speak instead of their voices. Oh, and then there’s bladder infections. I have only recently learned about these insidious things… many straight women get bladder infections from sex… not sex with multiple partners, extra-marital sex or any other specifically sinful sex… but just sex in general. A married woman who waited until marriage and has only had sex with her husband can be susceptible to bladder infections as a result of her entirely moral sex. Is this the body rebelling against something that is universally accepted to be within God’s design? (My mother’s response to that one was “gay men get diseases, not infections… it’s a whole different scale…”, I didn’t bring up the deaf thing, which I should have, my mother spent a huge part of her working life as a sign language interpreter and knew several people who suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome, both deaf people and interpreters).

Anyway, the conversation ended with her reiterating her fear of my being deceived and how this battle is in my mind and the mind is a sacred thing and… I dunno, it turned into word salad by the end, she was making very little sense.

So, I’ve somehow got to crack down on my dad talking to my mom about this. I’ve just gotten off the phone with one of my sisters asking her to not tell dad everything I tell them and please get him to stop talking to her about this. It isn’t helping.