Prayers For Bobby

Reposted from mariedippenaar.tumblr.com

I’m so glad that this movie didn’t end up being so intensely anti-church, anti-religion, even anti-organized religion. I forget sometimes that despite whatever issues, I have found myself in the presence of such necessary, comforting community at church and church-related events in the past. 

But in aside, this particular clip was conflicting to me, because it was obviously a thesis type moment for the movie, almost as though it were the message of the story presented point blank. I’ve long had issues with the understanding of queerness as instilled at conception, as though sex and gender and sexuality were entirely genetic traits. And I know that for as many queer people that were obviously “different" from the time that they were young, there are many of us for whom that wasn’t quite as much the case and whose parents wouldn’t necessarily relate to this soliloquy… As much as I adore this scene, for a lot of reasons, I think that if I showed this movie to my parents, they would feel as though they were meant to be this character in this moment and couldn’t be - maybe it would feel like an attack on their parenting. 

I want so much to find something of this sort to show them at some point, so that they might be able to see things more from our perspective. It’s such a common experience for LGBT young people in today’s world. And as I’m trying to figure out how to go about living back home again for the summer, it’s certainly become a harsher reality for me - the hiding, the rephrasing, the strange you-know-I’m-not-telling-you-everything-but-you-don’t-want-me-to-anyways feel in the air. The prayer is reconciliation, that this kind of scene need never be necessary in the future. But more than a performance for the eyes of parents, I think this film is a moment for us, for all queer young people, to feel her, a religious woman of the parents’ generation, turn to acceptance and celebration. A moment of self-insertion that grants some hope for the future.

I’ve been blessed to have several moments like this IRL in the past few months, weeks, preparing to leave college, where my community, my professors and friends at Quaker Meeting and leaders have stepped in and looked me in the eye and become surrogate parents for me in moments where I felt lost. I love my two biological parents very dearly, but this is a place where I have found myself with several hundred parents that are all helping to guide me and my queer brothers and sisters into the world safely, in one piece. I am so thankful for these moments.