gay or atheist?

[drfuzzy]

My brother and I told our parents were were gay.  They told us never to darken the door again . . . unless we got married and begged the church for forgiveness.  
I was told it would help if I also showed up pregnant.  This was 1988.  I spotted them briefly at my Grandfather's funeral.  They left before it was over.

My Father died.  I didn't learn about it until 4 months after it happened.  

But ATHEIST????   Oh, that's much worse.  Much, much worse. After all, true belief in SkyRapistDaddy is supposed to cure the nasty queers of their demon possession.  
(I wondered more than once what would happen if I showed up pregnant and told 'em I was still a virgin and god was the father.)

That must've been hell... and maybe still is It just makes me so angry, not to mention confused, how parents could do that. It reminds me of a storyline in the UK version of Queer As Folk where the extremely camp Alexander is completely ignored and blanked by his parents, and when they are forced to talk... when his father dies... all his mother wants to talk to him for is so that he can sign over his share of the will. It made my blood boil watching that and your story makes it positively molten I don't know how I'd ever deal with that situation without hating them back, it would tear me apart otherwise.

I'm not gonna lie and say that everything is perfectly fine.  I have a couple of . . . mild issues . . . (heh) that I have talked to therapists about.  But like just about anything Emjay . . . we learn to deal.  We even learn from the experience.  If I had not been gay, I might be still in that church today, married to a preacher, playing piano and organ for every service and never stopping to question anything.  So I'm actually grateful.  But yeah, what they did sucks.