“I need to vent because I feel like I’m going insane!” says a mother who shared on Reddit her story about the lengths her homophobic husband went through to “awaken the male instincts” of his gay son.
User Destroyedheart75 shared her story on the subreddit r/TrueOffMyChest, where, as you probably have already guessed by the name, people post confessions to get things off their chest.
She shared that since her son came out, her husband—who was “raised in an old-fashioned way” and who’s always had strong opinions on what a man should be—has always had a hard time.
Fueled by his belief that his son only chooses to be gay to spite him, he seriously considered sending their 17-year old kid to a conversion therapy camp.
In conversion therapy camps, individuals are subjected to harmful and discredited practices in an attempt to “cure” or “repair” their sexual orientation and gender identity. Not only are conversion therapies ineffective—a report by the American Psychological Association says they can also cause significant medical and psychological harm.
Destroyedheart75 opposed so fiercely that he gave up the idea. But then he also tried to have their son injected with testosterone shots by a shady doctor, in an attempt “to make him more manly.”
She also shared: “He is always berating our son, making snarky comments, homophobic jokes, and he has started to drink again.”
The final straw came in the form of a sex worker, whom her husband hired to “convert” their son. He said that maybe his son was gay because “he has never been with a woman or didn’t know what to do with one” and that the girl was going to teach him.
This, of course, left the son feeling humiliated. He called his mom and asked her to take him and throw the girl out. Disgusted by her husband, they flee from their home to stay with a friend. “I feel repulsed and I can’t stand him.”
“I’m going to divorce him,” she says, as the last few years have been hell with her husband at home.
“I think I can’t forgive him for what he did.”
In a world where pointless modern inventions like USB Pet Rocks and air conditioned shoes exist, there are still people who choose to live under a rock and be stuck with the inane, outdated belief that homosexuality is something one can snap out of if they wanted to.
You. Are. Enough. 💜
Art by the talented Dom & Ink. 🎨 #DragRaceUK @IAmMoniqueHeart pic.twitter.com/kwTGFWfvCC
— RuPaul's Drag Race UK (@dragraceukbbc) March 7, 2022
But being gay isn’t a choice. It isn’t a sin or a sickness you can cure. Conversion therapy won’t fix it. Meanness and violence won’t fix it. A night in bed with someone from the opposite sex won’t fix it. Because it’s not something that needs fixing. Live and let live.
I remember a letter singer-songwriter Fiona Apple wrote back in 2020 for Bill Magee, teenage a gay fan. An excerpt from the letter read: “If a good boy loves another good boy, good. And if a good girl loves the goodness in good boys and good girls, then all you have is more goodness, and goodness has nothing to do with sexual orientation.”
Back in 2000, a teenage Fiona Apple fan named Bill Magee wrote of his school's gay-straight alliance — of which he was a member — and asked if she could possibly reply with a sentence or two in its support.
The next week, the following handwritten letter was delivered. pic.twitter.com/bRRkVl84oP— Eric Alper 🎧 (@ThatEricAlper) January 17, 2019
Now, if more people thought this way, there would be far less lonely and traumatized people in the world.
The father is sick, it’s pedophilia to hire a prostitute for his 17yo gay son. His gay son is perfect the way he is. His father has mental illness, just sick.
Why don’t they hire a male prostitute for the father to cure his straightness, I’m being sarcastic but damn that dad is a sicko!