Pride Guide 1999

Journey

Continued from page B-1

touch my little locket that I wear with Robbie's picture in it, and I get through it. It's surreal because in order to do it, it's like Robbie's really not dead. It's like I'm just there giving the speech from my heart but I can't go to the

Leslie Sadasivan

part, to the reality that he is dead. Driving home in my car is when I cry. It's still very hard.

I know a lot of people in the gay and lesbian community particularly gay men since Robbie's story was so familiar to so many of them were personally touched by the story and your acceptance of your gay son. How do you feel when some people call you "Mom?"

I'm very, very touched by the outpouring of love and support from the gay community, and the heterosexual community-like P-FLAG. I'm overwhelmed. I'm most overwhelmed when I think of all the people since his death who have told me there's so many similarities between their life and Robbie's life.

I know that through your activism you have become acquainted with Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepard's mother. What is your friendship with her like, and how have you helped each other?

Well, I wouldn't really call it a friendship. I'd have to downplay that.

Basically what happened is that Judy Shephard called Kevin [Jennings, the execu tive director of GLSEN] asking what she could do for the organization. She said that she would do anything that she could but, like me, she was afraid of public speaking.

Kevin told her, 'Oh, no, you have to speak to this woman who lost her son and she felt the same way, but she goes out and she does it.' So he called me and thought that if I called her, I would help to show her the way. I e-mailed her and told her a little bit about myself and about Robbie's story and just how I had felt about public speaking and what I do to get through it.

She e-mailed back and she thanked me. And the beautiful thing that she wrote back was, "It's so hard to live with the 'what ifs.'"

The whole country focused its attention on Matthew Shepard's murder last October. I'm wondering—did it affect you in a different way, having also lost a son?

I felt very sad. I couldn't believe it happened, but then I knew it happens all the time. It's not just that they killed him, but the extreme way that they killed him and the message they sent by tying him to that fence. When I spoke at the vigil for Matthew Shepard, I thought that Matthew was killed by hate directed at him. Robbie, on the other

hand, took the hate that was directed at him and internalized it and hated himself for being gay. So it's a different spin on encountering the hate and homophobia.

So when I hear these children in the young grades start saying gay and faggot, I step in. Because it starts verbally and then it becomes the pushes and things that appear as accidents and the blatant stuff-those are all the precursors to hate crimes. I really believe that. Teasing can be an act of hate. When you

call someone gay as an insult, it's a hateful act. And I think it needs to be called that.

Did anyone respond negatively to your becoming an activist for GLBT civil rights?

Yeah, my dad and some of my family. My dad's a Southern Baptist from Georgia. He just couldn't deal with it. He knew Robbie was gay, but you just don't talk about it. He wouldn't read the articles [following Robbie's suicide]. It's something we didn't talk about. My mother was okay with it. My southern relatives in Georgia just didn't talk about it.

I lost a couple of friends. This one friend came to me after Robbie died he had been dead about four months and said. "Oh if only you could have gotten Robbie into one of those reparative therapy programs, he could have become heterosexual and he wouldn't have had to die." She just didn't get it.

There are other people, I know, that look upon me and wonder why I'm doing this. I worry for Alexandria, because

I have a rainbow sticker on my car, and I'm not ashamed to have that to celebrate diversity, but I wonder how many parents are afraid to let their children play  ́with Alexandria because they think “This mother is going to turn my child gay."

Peter's family in India, however, has been extremely supportive. His brother's wife is a principal at a school in India and she's just been wonderfully supportive about all of it. They think it's wonderful what I do. So that's the good news and the surprise. [Leslie says they plan to go to India when Peter retires and help poor people there.]

If there is one last message you could leave our readers with for this Pride season, what would it be?

Just to be out and proud, if you can. If you can't because it's not safe for you, or you're not there yet, or even if you're never there, then just do what you can to try to support organizations that help bring civil rights for GLBT youth. Be a voice to our politicians by writing letters.

Most importantly, write to your schools, even if you don't sign your name. Tell them what it was like for you as a gay youth going through school. Even if you personally weren't a victim of homophobia, tell them what you witnessed and what they can do for the students that are gay and suffering in their schools.

What do you think Robbie would say about his mom today?

I'm going to cry.. I think he would be very proud of me. I think that he'd tell me that he loved me, of course. I don't feel that I'm doing this alone though. I feel he's with me; I feel it's him doing this too.

I can't quite explain it, but you know how things fall into place? Since his death, the doors that have opened—like the piece in the Ladies Home Journal, and even the doors that have closed, like 60 Minutes deciding not to air their piece, have all been for a

reason.

CNN aired their piece on Robbie and so did In the Life. It's almost like the doors that bring light have opened. Maybe if 60 Minutes would have done Robbie's story, maybe they wouldn't have done it right. So I just put my trust in God.

I think Robbie would say that he's proud of me and to keep going, because this is my lifetime commitment.

♡

Standing up in the United States Congress in the fight to protect Human Rights!

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