Focusing on the Family: Sexual Literacy in Action

Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 04:28:11pm ►by Joy O'Donnell ►

When I came out to my very loving, supportive and well-intentioned parents during my youth, they were worried that I would have a harder life because of being gay. They had no clue where to turn for accurate, dependable information, resources and research that would help them in their journey to understand and support me. They were terrified and felt alone. They didn’t understand that how they reacted to me (with acceptance, tolerance, rejection) would have a direct impact on my future health and mental health. They couldn’t then realize that how they reacted would directly impact my ability to live, thrive, merely survive or even consider suicide. They were never trained in how to deal with my developmental needs. They couldn’t make recommendations about doctors and therapists appropriately trained to work both with me and with them. They never learned how to address the social/peer victimization I was facing and they never learned how to talk about my being gay with our ultra conservative family members. To this day, they still struggle with how to maintain loving relationships with their own friends and our family who reject me and their acceptance and support of me.

Sexual illiteracy has caused enormous, unnecessary devastation in their lives and mine.

At NSRC, we take a bold and some would say revolutionary stand that sexuality education and learning needs to be lifelong, not limited to high school biology class or the sex act alone, and that it should encompass the comprehensive interconnectedness of societal/cultural/psychological/religious and familial elements that create the people we are in life. When we say that America (and beyond) needs sexual literacy, we say it as a means to positive, responsible, happy, social healing and well being….and that also means familial healing and well being.

Thanks to San Francisco State University’s recently released research from The Family Acceptance Project, average families and young gay people all over the U.S. and in several other countries world-wide are about to become much more sexually literate….in other words, much less filled with terror and frustration at not knowing where to turn for information and support, for knowledge of how to proceed in life once everything has changed. Where there was shame and silence there will now be greater pride, healing, love and a new confidence in speaking openly about sexual orientation and sexuality. Where there was once the parental fear of their gay children having to live sad lives there will now be new hope and even, dare we say it, celebration….

At its core, sexual literacy crosses the divide between research and direct community action and intervention and the Family Acceptance Project is a perfect example of this—providing a new sense of agency to families currently living in great distress. I wish The Family Acceptance Project had existed when I was younger but am relieved to know that it now does. It’s up to all of us to ensure we get the word out about it.

RESOURCES FOR FAMILIES WITH LGB CHILDREN:

Family Acceptance Project

Research-based education and services for ethnically di-

verse families with LGB children in English, Spanish,

and Chinese; currently developing provider assessment

tools and interventions to help increase family support

for ethnically diverse LGB children and youth:

fap@sfsu.edu

http://familyproject.sfsu.edu

PFLAG

Education, information, and support for parents and

families with LGB family members; referrals to LGB