On Thursday of this past week I did a post about a new TV movie starring Sigorney Weaver that aired tonight on Lifetime based on the true story of Bobby Griffith and his mother, Mary Griffith (pictured at left), an evangelical Christian whose inability to accept her son's homosexuality perhaps helped drive Bobby to commit suicide in 1983. The boyfriend and I watched the movie and it was wonderfully done and extremely powerful. Prayers for Bobby should be mandatory viewing for all parents and pastors. I recommend that readers who missed it tonight watch for it when it is re-broadcast. Moreover, the feelings felt by Bobby in the movie are similar to those many of us have felt during our teen years (and later) as we have tried to reconcile who we are with the hate based message disseminated by so many churches.*
Ultimately, Mary Griffith got the message - but not in time to save her own son - and as the movie shows, she ultimately became a gay rights advocate striving to make sure other LGBT teens and adults do not suffer the shame and fate of her son. Moreover, her message to other parents is to make sure that they do not make the mistakes she made. The Advocate has an article on Mary Griffith that tells more about her activism activities. Here are some highlights from that article:
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Ex-evangelical Christian Mary Griffith overcame the suicide of her son Bobby and became an outspoken advocate for gay rights. . . . . You don’t see a lot of statues commemorating reformed homophobes, but Mary Griffith arguably merits one. An ex-evangelical Christian who, by her own admission, helped shame her gay son, Bobby, into suicide in 1983, she’s spent the rest of her life trying to save other kids from the hurtful lunacy she inflicted on him in the name of God. Her story, known to millions who’ve read Prayers for Bobby -- journalist Leroy Aaron’s unflinching 1995 account -- has inspired a Middle-America-friendly film starring Sigourney Weaver that airs on Lifetime Television January 24.
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“I think the movie comes very close to what happened,” says Griffith, now 74, a disarmingly straightforward woman who’s still atoning for the years she spent “trapped” in robotic bigotry, briskly insisting that Bobby resist Satan the way other moms urge their kids to brush their teeth, while willfully ignoring his collapsing self-esteem.
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“I don’t particularly like to look back. I don’t like who I was,” says Griffith, who still lives in the Walnut Creek, California home in which she raised her three surviving children. “It’s humiliating just to go through the Bible and see the fairy tales I believed. . . . Bobby tried to open her mind by giving her books about homosexuality, Griffith says: “But anything that would uplift Bobby and made me see him as a decent person…was viewed as evil [by her church].” It took his suicide, she says, to make her realize that she’d been using religion to avoid thinking through life’s complexities for herself.
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In a remarkable conversion, this shy and unworldly woman renounced her faith and went on to become the president of an East San Francisco Bay PFLAG chapter, and a nationally known gay activist and speaker, urging other parents to listen to their children, not the Christian Right’s theatrical scare tactics.
2 comments:
I am a Jungian. I was raised in a christian environment and I always knew through intuition and just a knowing there was more. I have spent years in therapy to learn about the being as a whole. Through the collective unconscious we are all connected through an energy. Christ I believe was ahead of his time and meant I am you and you are me but that meant we are all individuals even thogh the same in many ways. Love is unconditional through the synchronicity in life. It is what it is-meant to be. We all die and leave behind something for others to get and grow and learn. Bobby's life was a blessing to the world to become more aware and grow hopefully together. We all have pasts that molds our thoughts and beliefs. To see there is more world out there is hard to do. It takes work and going through the pain. They have done studies-in nature-we are all bisexual on the curve. We all tilt coming from our stronger orientation. Nothing is balck or white. Christ meant I am the Jew, Gay, Buddah etc- christianity is a way of life but it separates unless we see others too. Spiritual freedom allows for wholeness. Wholeness starts within the individual christ or spirit. The bible is one book written over and over in a time era. It is about our suff why we believe and do what we do. To Bobby's mother-thank you for just unconditionally being alive. I have a son and daughters who your Bobby's story could help. Your Bobby was suppose to be gay-perfectly made in christ. We don't even differentiate into one female or male at conception, We start out as one. These are only my beliefs. People can disagree and I respect that. I unconditionally accept that as where people are. I believe it takes education. I know you miss your son but the pain allows for growth. Thank God for Bobby or Christ.Please send this out there to all.
I thought the movie was formulaic and simplistic.
Obviously, the movie was created from Mary Griffith's perspective, so as someone who experiences often the evil side of religion, I have to question the integrity of those ex ex-gays and jesus freaks who promoted the film on their websites and blogs.
And that's the problem I have: How these people can be so forgiving and understanding of of those who thru their actions – in this case, a woman who subscribed in religion induced homophobia and ignorance caused a family member into suicide - while at the same time, they continue to blacklist and or demonize those who accept responsibility from the bad choices they make in life and try to recover from them.
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