Hello Everyone! First time poster here….
This subject resonates deeply with me because my relationship with my father is the cornerstone of the degree of wisdom I've gained in this lifetime. Well, that's because I've survived my relationship with him, and was able to gain some understanding of how forgiveness is essential to forming a healthy gay subjectivity.
My father passed away recently. He was a fundamentalist christian, and a very cruel man. Some of my first memories are of him molesting me as a child, and later on hating me for being gay. I recalll the beatings like they were yesterday. But I know now that you can forgive people because they don't know any better, but that does not mean that you have to let them continue to hurt you. To this day I don't tolerate religious fundamentalism in my life. My rule is that if you subscribe to a system of belief that discriminates and advocates violence toward me, you are out of my life.
I did not bother to see him before he died, nor did I attend his funeral, because not only was he viciously homophobic, but so was the rest of his family. So my "shocking and outrageous" decision not to participate in his funeral has had the added bonus of ensuring that the rest of his family will now stop trying to contact me.
I once heard Dan Savage say on his amazing podcast that we gay people need to start making the homophobes fear losing us by being prepared to delete them from our lives when they don't add anything positive to our lives. I totally agree with this. But the pre-requisite for this is for each of us to consciously recognise that what a precious gift being gay is. Once we free ourselves from the prison of buying into the idea that we lack something that heterosexuals have, then we can recognise how truly amazing being a gay man is.
So I grew up despising my father, and he really really deserved it, he died weeping in regret for what he'd done to me, but he was never man enough to ever seek to heal our relationship.
What I have also learned from this relationship is that in this life, nobody knows us more intimately than our victims. They are the ones who know the darkness in our souls. And nobody has more power over you than the one you have hurt the most.
What must it have been like for him to look at me as I grew up, knowing what he was doing to me every night and then seeing me as a grown man, never knowing when I would fight back? And, believe me, when I finally fought back in order to protect my younger sister from him, it was epic - as though I was possessed by an avenging angel or something. But the main lesson I learned from my relationship with him is not only how necessary (and difficult, though worth the effort) it is for us to learn to love ourselves enough to defend ourselves from weak bullying heterosexuals, but also how much more amazing we become as gay men when we love ourselves.
The scary question is - would I love and respect myself as much if I hadn't had such a difficult relationship with him??????