PRIDE GUIDE 1997 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE B-19
P-FLAG: The only place some parents can talk about it
by Bob Boone
Cleveland-Dressed in graduation cap and gown, Jane Daroff was awarded her masters degree from Case Western Reserve University in a ceremony at the start of summer in 1985. Her son Rob made his way through the crowd of graduates and asked her simply, "Now, Mom?"
With her degree in hand, it was time to fulfill a promise she had made to her son months ago, when they were both tired from a long drive home after a meeting of Akron's then sole Ohio chapter of P-FLAG. Cleveland needed to have its own group, they had decided, but Jane Daroff had wanted to earn her degree first.
Twelve years later, Daroff has rarely missed a meeting of that Cleveland chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays which she formed in July 1985. Nor has the group's co-founder, Jes Sellers, who was the advisor to CWRU's lesbian and gay student group of which Rob had been a member.
On the second Tuesday of each month, some 25 to 40 people meet at Trinity Cathedral at Euclid and East 22nd St. in downtown
"Then kids come out and they just told their parents and they have their greatest relief. We are always talking about kids coming out of the closet, and the parents go in the closet."
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Cleveland. A third of them are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered, anywhere from college-age to their sixties. Another third are their parents, whether supportive, frightened, angry, or a combination of these and more. The rest are friends and other relatives, and sometimes a minister or a student doing research. The meeting starts at 7:30 pm.
"It's very informal. We sit in a big circle and people share as much or as little about themselves as they feel they can reveal," Daroff described. "It's a very warm kind of setting. It's unbelievable, really, how contagious that setting seems to be. And it helps people move on with their lives more quickly than any other means I know."
Some of the people there have been coming to P-FLAG for years. Many of those faces can also be seen at the quarterly meetings of P-FLAG II: The Next Step. That year-old group has begun outreach into schools, churches, and community organizations to educate about gay people and their families.
But many of the long-time members still go to the original P-FLAG meetings to share their experiences with the five or six new people who show up each month. Among the new attendees there is often shock and hurt
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and anger. Not everyone is willing to open up at first.
"We sort of kid that if the center of the room were a swimming pool, it would be full of tears because most parents begin their journey with this that way," Daroff related.
"You'll find no shortage of anger out there," Sellers said. “Either toward others or even toward themselves about just the struggle, we hear it from all sides."
Daroff explained, “A parent very often intitially feels angry at their kid that, 'You're doing this to me.'”
One woman at a recent meeting was particularly upset over her son coming out.
Sellers remarked, "As difficult as this was for her last night, she really is turning toward healthy response, even if it is about anger. No matter where she begins, that's healthier than not talking about it, that's healthier than staying at home and never approaching a group like this."
He continued, "It takes some people five years to get to this group, even longer in some cases. But when they do, they start to get healthy."
"It's very similar to what gay and lesbian children go through, sort of the struggle and the denial and the wishing it would go away," Daroff said. "Then kids come out and they just told their parents and they have their
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greatest relief. We are always talking about kids coming out of the closet, and the parents go in the closet."
She remarked, "People feel guilty. 'If I had only done it differently. If I had played ball with him instead of letting him help me cook in the kitchen. Or if his father...'
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"A woman last night was laughing," Daroff went on. "She said, 'I was so sure it was my husband's fault.' And the husband was sitting right there. We have a lot of humor in this group."
Sellers agreed, "We laugh and we cry together. That's what is a neat characteristic of the group."
"This group is there to help people understand that it makes for better relationships," he said. "You can't have a pretend relationship. It's not a healthy relationship where you pretend that your son or daughter is straight. It rules out ever knowing who your son or daugh-
ter may come to love."
Daroff added, "It's sad, because parents never really know their children and their children never really share their lives with their parents. And that's what we're trying to undo."
Daroff knows first-hand what parents who come to P-FLAG are feeling. She remembers when her then 14-year-old son Rob came out to the family when they were living in Dade County, Florida in the era of anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant.
"There was no P-FLAG," she recalls. “I just remember driving around Miami in my blue station wagon, tears just rolling down my face."
In the years that followed, Daroff came down the long road to understanding and support for her son. It taught her the need for groups like P-FLAG.
"There's something about seeing this group of people who looks something like you do, who you can identify with in some way, and they've been able to go on with their lives," she said. "There's something that goes on in that process [of a child coming out to a parent] that makes you feel so alienated and alone, When a lot of parents hear this, they feel like they're the only ones in the world. They just do, even if they've seen Ellen or Geraldo. There's still something about it, if they don't know anybody personally, they just feel so alone. And that's what this group does. It gives people a forum to talk about this subject where it may be the only place they can talk about it." ♡
For additional information about Cleveland P-FLAG call 216-321-7413. About other Ohio chapters joining the over 410 PFLAG groups worldwide, call in Akron 330923-1883, in Ashtabula 216-964-3350; in Columbus 614-227-9355; in Cincinnati 513721-7900; in Dayton 513-767-1672; in Lorain/Elyria 216-988-8215. The Washington, DC headquarters can be reached at 202638-4200.
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