Director Feltri,
I am writing to you seeking advice or perhaps a word of comfort. My only son, who turned 22 a few weeks ago, confessed to me a few days ago that he is gay. His mother, from whom I divorced about ten years ago, knew, they had already talked about it, and it was she who advised the boy to talk to me about it, assuring him that I would understand and accept it. However, I can’t. Since I learned all this, I have stopped sleeping, I am nervous, I can’t concentrate.
at work, I have difficulty approaching my son, for whom I would have liked a normal existence, that he would have started a family, that he would have children. I would have imagined myself a grandfather in a few years, but I have to discard this hypothesis. I wonder if it is my fault, perhaps I have been too absent and perhaps my son has lacked a male role model, given that we have not lived under the same roof. I am assailed by doubts, feelings of guilt, regrets. I am a desperate man. If I dared to confide these feelings of mine to my friends, it is likely that I would receive
criticism, because now the whole society sees homophobia everywhere. But I am not a homophobe, I am just a father who would have liked to see his son take certain steps and be happy.
Pasquale I.
Dear Pasquale,
it’s news from a few hours ago: a father took and abandoned his son, a student at a scientific high school in Milan, in Africa, in Togo to be precise, where the mother lives, because the boy had revealed his homosexuality to him. The guy, hoping that in the African continent the young man could be straightened out, took him there by deception and then confiscated his passport and left for Italy alone. The one who reported these facts was a schoolmate of the boy together with her father. I find this story crazy and scandalous.
Children are not abandoned, even if and when it is difficult for us to share their choices, accept their orientation, embrace their lifestyle. A child is never a defective object to be repaired or thrown away if it does not work as we would have hoped. It is said that parents are not chosen, well, not even children. They happen to us. We can choose to bring them into the world or not to bring them into the world. But when we decide to become parents, we implicitly accept to include in our existence a creature, another living being, who will not correspond to our expectations, our desires and the requirements that we have in mind, who will not respond to our commands, but who will have his own autonomous life, his own identity, his own personality. If you are not willing to love a child for what he is and what he will be, you might as well not procreate.
Yours has not confessed to you that he is a murderer, a drug addict or that he has an incurable disease. In short, nothing tragic, although I understand your state of mind very well. Follow me, I am trying with you to put the fact into perspective, to make it appear and to show it to you for what it is: something unexpected yes, but not insurmountable.
I am surprised that you derive your son’s alleged inability to be happy from his homosexuality. Happiness is not connected to sexual orientation, but depends on the person’s ability to express his potential, to be true to the core, without pretending to be something he is not, to identify a purpose, an existential objective, drawing satisfaction from pursuing it daily. For me, the purpose, for example, was and is writing. Happiness is not something that resides in underwear or in the bedroom.
We don’t live in a society where gays are discriminated against, on the contrary, it seems that being homosexual can be an advantage in various areas. So what the hell are you worried about? We don’t even live in an Islamic country where gays are punished, persecuted, arrested, killed. Your son will be denied nothing because he is homosexual.
Your boyfriend has shown you trust and love by revealing his inclinations. I also believe that he needed to feel accepted by you, understood. Now, it is physiological that you feel disoriented, confused, terrified, however, once you have overcome this initial phase and rationalized the whole matter, I am sure that you will look at things with greater serenity and that this will be an opportunity to get closer to that son in whose childhood and adolescence you feel you have had little part.
As for guilt, you shouldn’t torment yourself with “ifs” and “buts.” It’s no one’s fault if your child is homosexual.
I’ll tell you the truth: I don’t know if you’re born gay or become gay. But I do know that the most foolish activity we can engage in is obsessing over hypotheses. There are things we can’t change. And we have no choice but to embrace these things.