Jun 9th, 2006
In Our Parents’ Footsteps
Continuing on yesterday’s theme of Second Generation…
Advocate has a lovely three page spread on activists in the LGBT community who also have gay or lesbian parents.
“In Our Parents’ Footsteps” by Fred Kuhr
(Pages 58-60 in the print edition, June 20, 2006.)
Queerspawn featured in the article: Brandon Ranson-Walsh, Kate Ranson-Walsh, Asha Leong, Meredith Fenton, Ryan Lalonde and Jesse Carr.
“With my dad being gay, he had a sense of me before I did,” says [Brandon] Ranson-Walsh, whose father lives in Washington, D.C., with his partner. “I felt pressure, but I didn’t want him to be right.” Also, after his sister came out, Brendan felt like he was “the last hope” to carry on the family name. “But I realize now that the pressure was all in my head.”
His sister is Kate Ranson-Walsh who is also queer.
Kate (”The force behind QueerSpawn.com” as Kuhr refers to her) reports an all-too-common experience when media seek queerspawn to interview:
When she was in high school, a local television station was going to do a news story on Kate as the child of a gay parent. But when the producers found out that Kate herself is a lesbian, they killed the piece, saying they didn’t want to promote negative stereotypes.
Unfortunately the article doesn’t include photos. Becky Neiman’s portrait of the Ranson-Walsh siblings is heart-breakingly gorgeous.
[Update 6/15/06: Kate has posted an image of the siblings' portrait on Flickr. ("although it does make it seem like my brother and i have a press kit," writes Kate.)]
COLAGE Program Director Meredith Fenton is queer and has a lesbian mom living in the closet until age 51. Fenton educates with humor:
“Was my mom ‘flaunting’ her lesbianism while I was growing up? If flaunting meant being a stay-at-home mom married to her doctor husband and going to synagogue together, then yes, she was flaunting her dormant lesbianism.”
Ryan LaLonde is gay, and so is his mother and brother. LaLonde says:
“When I’m talking about gay issues, I’m talking about every member of my family. I can speak as a gay man, as the son, as the sibling–from every perspective. We are the best advocates for our community, but we’re not always welcomed by the community.”
Regular readers of my writing know this is a very important issue for me, because queer family liberation should never be conditional upon the production of straight offspring. For more on this topic, read Chapter Seven, “Second Generation” in Families Like Mine.
That’s a great article. If only they’d put it further toward the front of the magazine, I might have gotten to it sooner! It’s still waiting for me there in the, ahem, “reading room.”
Seriously though, these are great perspectives.
Whlie I am glad that the article was written, I actually thought that most of the more interesting complexities of 2nd Gen identity were kind of breezed over. For example, rather then including more of what I said about why straight COLAGErs are more valued as spokespeople for the LGBT movement and why thats problematic, he went from that into the silly quote about my mom “flaunting” her lesbianism which obviously was an entirely different topic.