Last summer, I attended a traditional Catholic wedding for my cousin. During the religious ceremony, the priest made it a point to mention that the marriage he was blessing was a true marriage because it involved one man and one woman. He began this sentiment with the phrase, "Let me be clear."
I didn't pay much attention to it. I didn't pay much attention to the entire service, actually. I'm not Catholic, so there's a lot of traditional aspects and church rituals that occur during Catholic wedding ceremonies that I don't understand. I'm more spiritual than religious, so besides the most exciting part where my cousin and her now husband said I do, I found myself pondering life and cracking silly jokes with my older brother.
In the car on the way back to the hotel before the reception, my father turned to me and said, "You know when the priest made that comment about one man and one woman?"
I nodded, smiling wryly to myself.
"I was wondering if you heard it," my father continued, "and I was worried it would make you feel less than."
"It didn't bother me," I said. "We were sitting in a Catholic church."
"Still..." my father said, pausing to make a face, as if to say how dare he. "It doesn't mean anything."
I marveled at the man driving the car beside me -- my father, bursting with pride and unconditional love for his gay daughter. To fully understand the gravity of this sentiment, you must first understand just how much he's evolved.
My father is a conservative republican. He listens to Rush Limbaugh on the regular. He bought a gun just because he wanted to exercise his right to do so. He sends me articles from right-winged websites and watches Fox News a lot. He can't stand Obama and he once said that if Hillary Clinton were ever elected president, then he would move to Canada.
I came out to my parents when I was 23. That's 14 years ago. I sat there at the dinner table and dropped a bomb right in the middle of the grilled chicken. My father and I had always had the kind of relationship where we could talk about almost anything and everything. But after I told him I was gay, we didn't talk much. Back then, he was incredibly staunch about his conservative beliefs, and I had basically taken his entire worldview and turned it on its head with one simple phrase: I'm gay.
For months, my father put on a brave face. But inside he was struggling to make sense of it, to bridge the gap between his conservative republican beliefs and having a gay daughter, and because we didn't talk about it or about his feelings, he struggled in silence. Then one day -- perhaps he couldn't take the silence anymore or perhaps he felt he needed to be heard -- he said something that made me feel so small and insignificant I thought I might disappear right then and there.
I had been watching a rerun of Friends, and it was the episode where Ross's ex-wife marries another woman. As the studio sitcom audience erupted in laughter on cue during the next quip, I cowered in horror as my father pointed at the screen and vehemently declared, "I will never support that. Ever!"
My mouth gaped. At first, I thought he was joking.
"You mean, if I decide to get married someday you won't be there?" I dared to ask.
"No," my father said, determined to stand his ground. In all my life, even to this day, it was the only time he had ever glaringly disapproved of me. I wasn't prepared for it. It was as if I had been sitting comfortably at a bar enjoying myself only to turn around and get sucker punched in the gut by a complete stranger. That's who my father was to me at that moment -- a stranger.
I ran out of the house and down the street to my best friend's place. I sobbed to her parents and told them what happened. I wasn't sure how my relationship with my father would go on from there. But little by little, he began to transform.
At first, he would refer to my girlfriends as "friends." Time passed. We still talked around the subject instead of actually talking about it. When I started seeing someone exclusively, he was bold enough to meet her parents. When my now wife and I got engaged, he wasn't sure what to make of it. We planned and paid for the wedding mostly by ourselves. One day he called me up and asked, "So what am I supposed to wear to this thing?" The comment stung, but I thought, at least he's coming.
On my wedding day, he was there. So were many of my close family members and friends. My father stood up and made a grand old speech that left everyone in the room looking for Kleenex.
When I first came out to my parents, I started the conversation by saying my worst fear was disappointing them. During his speech, my father said that I had only disappointed him twice in my life and he recounted two hilarious tales of adolescent delinquencies on my behalf. His point was this: my actions as a teenager may have caused him some grief, but me being gay, well, that wasn't a disappointment at all. That was simply who I am.
I've been married six years now. I have a 3-year-old daughter and nice spread in the country. My father and I have the kind of relationship I once wondered if we'd ever have again. We laugh. We talk. We share our viewpoints and political opinions. We listen. We hug. We tell each other how much we love one another. He loves my wife like a daughter and has told me so on more than one occasion. He adores his granddaughter to pieces.
My father is still a conservative republican. He still has his views and beliefs, many of which I disagree with. But his worldview has been forever changed. He's forever changed. As I sat there in the passenger seat of that rental car, I took a moment to reflect and let it sink in. I am so damn lucky to have this man as my father.
Even if he still listens to Rush Limbaugh. Of course, he says that these days he doesn't listen as often, if at all. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was happy about that.