I've been thinking a lot about families of late, in part because I've been reading collections of the comic strip, "For Better Or For Worse," by Lynn Johnston. I love this comic strip because the kids fight, have messy rooms, talk back to their parents and break the rules. And likewise, the parents squabble, make mistakes, and lose track of the meaning of it all. Johnston never makes anyone the butt of a joke just to get a laugh or imposes any sort of morality. The strip and its characters speak for themselves. Her fictitious Patterson family really does seem to be the white, middle-class family next door.
It is perhaps because the Patterson family seems so normal that "For Better Or For Worse" caused such an uproar when Lawrence, the teenager that lived next door and who had been Michael Patterson's best friend from childhood, came out as gay. Although in the end seventy percent of the responses were positive, the initial response was mostly negative. Johnston received letters that "accused, threatened, cursed, and damned. Many, quoting elaborate passages from the Bible, included threatening and unprintable messages.*"
This negative, hate-based response highlights the dark side of families and family values. And of course, the scary thing is that like Lawrence, all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) people come from families. In the strip, as happens in far too many real families, Lawrence's family's initial response is to kick him out of the house. Johnston allows Lawrence's family to come to terms with his homosexuality and accept him. Not all families are this gracious. And, ironically, many families base their rejection of their children, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins on the same book that tells us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, judge not lest we be judged, and to only cast stones at sinners if we ourselves are without sin.
Many other families play a slightly less hateful "game" of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," similar to the U.S. military's policy on homosexuality. Like the military policy, families agree to pretend that everything is okay, to accept each other and to get along as long as no one brings up the gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered issue. While perhaps not as devastating as outright rejection, by forcing everyone to live a lie, this little game works to covertly fray the family bonds that it was introduced to protect. Think about it: how can a family be close if something as serious as who one loves is a taboo subject? The game also sends a message to GLBT people that they are not really worthy of love because it associates familial acceptance with pretending to be someone else.
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