[dymoguy]

Kinda new to this system and I am looking to get to know any gay adoptees for support. I am most interested in finding out what the experience of coming out to your bfamily and in particular your bfather was. Any support/suggestions would be hyper cool. I am 31 and have been out to my adoptive family, colleagues and friends for over 10 years. This situation seems to be very different to me - especially when it comes to my bfather.

[KaseyHamnerM.S.]

I am straight but I want to say: I think you should be yourself and if they judge you that is their problem. Good luck being who you are.

[dymoguy]

Good advice.......thanks. I suppose my attachment to meeting him is bigger than I thought. Rejection based on sexual orientation seems so archaic but he lives in the deep south and works for the prison system.....ouch!!!! I am just covering my bases I suppose.

[tarossiter]

I hope that things go well with you....but i personally would not get my hopes up....you know how it is in the south.....and how it was "in the olden days". If he doesn't know how to except you then it will be him missing out. Tiffany

Hi,

I have also been looking for other gay adoptees. I am new to this forum as well. Over the years - I am now 36 - I have met a few gay adopted people and I am interested in meeting more. There are, it seems, many issues that being both bay and adopted have in common. Among them:

1 - HOW COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET IS SIMILAR TO SEARCHING FOR ONE'S BIRTH FAMILY;

2 - THAT GAY ACTIVISM (for example, in the case of same sex marriage) AND ADOPTEE ACTIVISM (especially activism to open up closed records) HAVE SOME THINGS IN COMMON;

3 - ISSUES ABOUT IDENTITY -- HOW BEING GAY AND BEING ADOPTED ARE REALLY NOT UNLIKE EACH OTHER (this is, I imagine, going to be the most challenging stuff for me to write as it touches on larger issues of human identity);

4 - SOME MATERIAL AROUND BEING A MEMBER OF MULTIPLE INVISIBLE MINORITIES (in this part I am going to try to introduce a new idea that neither adoptees or gay people are not always invisible though).


Now, as for your specific query regarding your birth father -- I suggest that you find some method of communicating with him -- people are constantly surprising with their respective responses of rejection or acceptance. HOWEVER, make sure that you are safe -- take along a friend or two if you want to meet face-to-face (?) Maybe get to know him a bit more before you disclose -- you CAN come out on the phone or through email after all. I found my 'putative' birth father - long story - and just as we were beginning to get to a mutual comfort zone, he died suddenly of a heart attack. I never came out to him (and I suppose I know now that coronary problems are something that should be vigilant about as well). Thing is, see, after his passing I was able to look at HIS therapist's files - turns out he had had a homosexual "experience" during the 1970's. In retrospect, it would have been cool to have been able to discuss that sorta stuff with him. But, however you decide to go about disclosing to your father - the most important thing is YOU [as a gay person and as an adoptee it is most likely that you have seen more than your fair share of your discrimination and outright 'mean people' during your lifetime...don't allow yourself to be wounded (and this is, indeed, a potentially wounding encounter)].

[radiodoll]

Hey Guy!

I am a lesbian, adopteed at birth and now just making contact with my birthmother.

I don't know if I believe that is any different YET. I may find out that my birthmother will break off reunion because I am gay, we'll have to see. But I don't intend on breaking the news to her until we have some sort of a "base" relationship going.

It was hard enough for my adoptive parents to go through that process!!! I too came out when I was 20. I am now 47, married to a wonderful woman. Although not "court legal" we were married in the Unitarian Church 10 years ago next month. We've been together a total of 13 years.

I have 3 step children aand 1 step grandson and both my family and my wife's family are very close with us.

My adoptive mother took my coming out VERY hard because of 2 things- 1. I can't bear my own children. 2. She adopted me and had expectations that I'd be somehow "the perfect child." She and my father have more issues with my adoption that I do! Ha! My poor parents! I always laugh and say that I was the science experiment that went wrong! Can't you imagine thinking that you went to the baby store and picked the worng one???@!!!!!

We've all spent many years learning to be a close loving family. My adopted brother and I don't speak. Oddly enough he married another adoptee and she's nuts. She decided that she should be the #1 daughter to my parents becasue she is "giving them grandkids to carry on the line..." it's been torturous. Oh well.

I have held off contact and reunion for years for many different reasons. But the time has come.

My court Investigator has called my birthmother. She is still in shock. I am giving her at least amonth before we will try contact again. She hasn't said much yet. I am waiting and trying to be patient.

PM me anytime. You are certainly not alone on these boards, although many won't tell you that.

Best wishes - Radiodoll

Thanks for sharing your story and for your encouraging words I am happy that you have found your birth mother! Your instincts are 'right on' though (I think) about not bringing up that very important part of yourself just yet. I have to refer an excellent book for you to read (I wish that I had had it in '88 before I began my active search). It is called "The Adoption Reunion Survival Guide." It was published in 2001 (so, I couldn't have had it in 1988 anyway...) and the authors are Julie Bailey and Lynn Giddens. The Dewey Decimal number is: 362.8298 0973 BAI. I know that everyone has a book these days to recommend, and I do not normally recommend reading material, but I think that you will find this to be a quick, yet highly relevant 'read'. I am sorry to hear about the situation with you and your brother. One of my greatest joys in my life is my sister (also adopted from a different birth family, though she has not yet searched). It is unfortunate that your brother's wife has insinuated herself into your family of origin, moreso that your mother would allow that to happen. I am certainly no psychologist - and that is good news perhaps, for those who might, at one time or another, need one - but I think that your adoptive mom might be upset because SHE HERSELF could not bear children. There is a certain amount of investment that adoptive mothers have in their daughters, much of which, I think includes the adopted daughter fulfilling the unspoken obligation to reproduce on the adoptive mothers' behalf. My sister has a daughter and is expecting another child this autumn. Strangely enough my adoptive mother began to 'pull away' from my sister at about the same time that my sister's first child was the same age that my sister was when my mother adopted her. Of course, as I mentioned above, I am beyond grateful to have an adult relationship with my sister -- we love to chat about 'the adoptive family' wherein we grew up (immediate, and extended). Just this past year I have developed an awareness that our adoptive family was but four lonely strangers living under one roof. Maybe this experience is not atypical - despite the facade of family, an adoptive family is quite different from the dominant 'nuclear' family form that has emerged as the North American norm during the latter half of the last century. One would - at the very least - expect one's adoptive parents and siblings to be cognizant of that very basic fact and therefore not implicitly judge other non-biological family arrangements. Indeed, I felt a vivacity and vitality shine through your words when you spoke of your current family - a ten year wedding anniversary these days is really rather rare indeed (whatever the sexual orientation(s) of the people involved). Congrats! Thank you again for your thoughtful and emotionally generous response to my posting. I look forward to seeing you online, or hearing from you through e-mail soon,
connor-

[radiodoll]

Hi again!

Connor - YES! Absolutley my mother was heartbroken about my child-bearing situation because she did not give birth. No question about it. I am heartbroken for HER as well as for myself.

I am just grateful that she has gotten 2 grandchildren who love her dearly.

Everyone hang in there!

Radiodoll

[dadfor2]

dymoguy,
i think you got some great suggestions from this forum. heres my two cents......i agree with some of the posts, i wouldnt say anything write off the bat. i would wait and see how the relationship with your birth father goes. there is so much more to you then being gay. i realize you might want him to accept the whole you, but i dont think you should be coming out to him before you get to know him.

the most important person here, is you, and your feelings. You obviously are worried about it becuase you posted it, so until your clear on what you want to do, i would wait.

larry, i think i remember you from here and you wrote a life story about yourself, i clicked on your website, are u the same larry? your reply just sounded familiar. I was deeply moved by your story, and as for your birth family, they really lost out on getting to know someone special.

As for the other gay/lesbians out there......if they dont accept you, *****em!!!!! You are who you are. for every one person that has an issue with gays/lesbians, there are much more that dont.

god bless
dadfor2

I would like to share this quote from Eve Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet (1990) pg. 75. Dr. Sedgwick is remarking on how homophobia is quite distinct from other oppressions. In doing so, though, she also touches upon - to me anyway - the dilemna of an adopted person (perhaps even especially one who was adopted under a 'sealed-records' policy). The quote reads:

"Vibrantly resonant as the image of the closet is for many modern oppressions, it is indicative for homophobia in a way that it cannot be for any other oppressions. Racism, for instance, is based on a stigma that is visible in all but exceptional cases...; so are the oppressions based on gender, age, size, physical handicap. Ethnic/cultural/religious oppressions such as anti-Semitism are more analogous in that the stigmatized individual has at least notionally some discretion -- although, importantly it is never to be taken for granted how much -- over other people's knowledge of her or his memebership in the group; one could "come out as" a Jew or Gypsy, in an heterogeneous urbanized society, much more intelligibly than one could typically "come out as" say, female, Black, old, a wheelchair user, or fat. A Jewish or Gypsy identity, and hence a Jewish or Gypsy secrecy or closet, would nonetheless differ again from the distinctive gay versions of these things in its clear ancestral linearity, in the roots (however tortuous and ambivalent) of cultural identification through each individuals originary culture of (at a minimum) the family.

Epistemology of the Closet (1990)
E. K. Sedgwick



Now, although you will most likely see the connections, I have added/suggested the word "adoptee" - along with some other stuff I thought relevanti - in square "[ ]' brackets. Dr. Sedgwick is specifically, however, referring to the plight of a homosexual person. Imagine being BOTH gay and adopted ?! I am...

My annotated version reads:

"Vibrantly resonant as the image of the closet is for many modern oppressions, it is indicative for homophobia [ or adoptees?] in a way that it cannot be for any other oppressions [(sic)]. Racism, for instance, is based on a stigma that is visible in all but exceptional cases...; so are the oppressions based on gender, age, size, physical handicap.
Ethnic/cultural/religious oppressions such as anti-Semitism are more analogous in that the stigmatized individual has at least notionally some discretion -- although, importantly it is never to be taken for granted how much -- over other people's knowledge of her or his memebership in the group [ and perhaps adoptees here too?].
One could "come out as" a Jew or Gypsy, in an heterogeneous urbanized society, much more intelligibly than one could typically "come out as" say, female, Black, old, a wheelchair user, or fat.
A Jewish or Gypsy identity, and hence a Jewish or Gypsy secrecy or closet, would nonetheless differ again from the distinctive gay [or adoptee?] versions of these things in its clear ancestral linearity [often adoptees too have no access to their ancestry, or birth parent lineage...], in the roots - however tortuous and ambivalent - of cultural identification [do adoptees necessarily feel a cultural identification with their adoptive families?] through each individuals originary culture of (at a minimum) the family [ again, are adoptees secure in their "originary culture of their adoptive families?].

[zekeri]

connor,

I agree with you about he similarities between tthe process of coming out as adopted and coming out as LGBT. I think both are concerned with the nature of invisibility and the desire of straight folk / biological families to reinscibe their dominance as "normal" in society and, in effect, render irrevelant those whose lives experience is different.

I'm an artist and I've started a project called the "biological father" which intends to explore the nature ofbiological relatioships between fathers and sons by exploring what it might be like for me to look in the face of someone to whom I'm biologically related. There's an element of eroticism in the work that i didn't anticipate when i started the project -- and I'm looking for other LGBT people with whom I ight discuss the experiecne they have thinking about these issues.

The work can be viewed at: http://clarkelane.tripod.com/paintings/id8.html

My main home page is http://clarkelane.com

Please feel free to contact me.

Pete

clarkelane@mac.com