Jeers of “Lara the Lezzie” accompanied me as I walked down the hallway. A girl at school had outed my family to the entire class. It wasn’t easy being the daughter of lesbians in the 1980s. Many of my friends’ parents had married right out of high school and started families shortly thereafter. LGBT families were just starting to become visible and my family was one of the first. This was before the first child was conceived through in vitro fertilisation in Manchester in 1978. Back then, children of LGBT parents were mostly the result of heterosexual unions, or occasional liaisons between lesbians and gay men with the intent of procreation.
In my case, my father and mother divorced when I was still in nappies, for reasons that had nothing to do with my mother’s sexuality. She went back to college and became active in the feminist movement of the 1970s, and once she found her voice she couldn’t imagine going back to a subservient role with a husband. She calls herself a “political lesbian” because for her, dating women was as much about finding her own feminist strength as it was about anything else. When I was three, my mother fell in love with Pat, a woman who had known she was gay since she was 12, if not earlier. In terms of the “born gay” versus “become gay” argument, I have one parent in each camp.
We all moved in together in 1977, when I was three. It was not a great time to be a lesbian in upstate New York. We had good reason to hide. One threat that was always hanging over our heads was that of custody – in the 1970s, courts routinely took children away from lesbian and gay parents. When my father fell behind on his child support, my mother didn’t dare take him to court. She had much more to lose than he did. So we tied our shoelaces back together and reused our lunch bags. Dad never complained about my mother’s sexuality, and for that we were grateful.
Pat once appeared in an interview on TV and was identified as a lesbian, though her face was blurred and her name wasn’t given. However, they didn’t disguise her voice and she was fired from her job the next day. My parents couldn’t risk that happening again. My brother and I had to lie to school friends and be very careful about who we invited over. It was a heavy weight for us to bear, and I for one didn’t do a very good job of it. I had told different stories to different people, and I couldn’t keep them all straight. Every time I confided in someone, I felt as if I was betraying my family.
But there are always two ways to look at a situation. Most people had never encountered lesbians before, or, if they had, they didn’t know it. Yet, both my mothers were welcomed at school concerts. No one ever told my mother’s partner that she wasn’t allowed to attend parent-teacher meetings. Most of the girls at school were allowed to play with me – and even spend the night at my house. I’m sure some, if not all, of the parents knew what was going on, but by and large people gave us the benefit of the doubt.
Children, however, seem prone to notice any differences or inconsistencies and to pounce on them. By the time I was eight, the holes in my cover story were showing, and by the time I was 12 everyone at school knew the truth. I was already an outcast for my unstylish clothes, braces, glasses and bad hair. My mothers’ sexuality just gave my tormenters a better way to harass me. This was a time when gay slurs weren’t even considered foul language by most people. So it wasn’t surprising that teachers didn’t get involved when the other kids called me a lezzie, lesbian, lesbo, or fag. To them, it wasn’t any different to calling someone an idiot.
To me, it was very different. I was a girly-girl: I played with dolls and loved the colour pink and wanted to be a princess or a ballerina. I wrote fan letters to Beau and Luke Duke of The Dukes of Hazzard, which I sprayed with perfume before mailing. Being called a lesbian seemed patently unfair, yet I had no defence against it. “Maybe you really are a lesbian, just like your mother.” These words were spat at me in the locker room after gym class by someone I considered one of my closest friends. Her words echoed the same questions my high school friends’ parents – mostly fathers – asked me, “Do you ever think you’re a lesbian like your mother?”
I always had a boyfriend to offer as proof of my heterosexuality. I didn’t tell anyone that I felt a tingle when I looked at female models on the cover of fashion magazines or that I secretly feared I was a latent lesbian or at least bisexual. I fought against any feelings that might mean I wasn’t entirely straight. In my young mind, being gay was about the worst thing that could happen to someone. All I knew was that I wanted to feel safe and just as good as everyone else. I wanted to blend in.
At 20, I married the most stereotypical male I could find – a bald biker who played hockey and watched football. I took his last name and tried to fit into his world. I was mainstream, just like everyone else, and I thought I had finally found someone who would protect me from the world. I didn’t realise that aspiring to be just like everyone else wasn’t my better self, and that while he protected me from other people, there was no one to protect me from him.
In 2000, I got divorced and moved to Key West, Florida, where my mothers and brother were then living. It was a welcoming community made up of gay and straight people. No one particularly cared about my parents’ sexuality or even found it very interesting. For the first time, I could be proud of my family. My mother wrote a column in the gay newspaper, and everyone knew they were a couple. We went to a gay church, attended weekly bingo at a gay bar. I told my boss and my friends at work about my parents’ sexual orientation. No one cared – gay or straight. It was only then that I allowed myself to even question if I liked girls or not. When there was no pressure to be straight, I was able to come to terms with being bisexual. I dated a few women, but in the end, married another man. At our wedding, both my mothers walked me down the aisle.
Now that I’m in my 40s, several childhood acquaintances have contacted me on Facebook. They want me to know how important it was to them to have known a queer family, and how it helped them be more open when members of their own family – sometimes their own children – came out to them. I like to think families like mine helped pave the way for the ones who came after. I do believe that the world is changing. I have two sons, and none of their friends or their friends’ parents have made any negative comment about the two grandmas at their birthday parties or school concerts. My kids don’t understand why anyone would even care. But they are growing up in a different time.
In 2000, the Netherlands became the first country to legalise same-sex unions. Belgium was next in 2003, then Canada and Spain in 2005. Soon Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, England, Wales and Scotland joined in. By 2017, Australia, Germany and Austria followed suit. As of December 2017, 29 countries have legalised same-sex marriage. As soon as Canada legalised same-sex marriage in 2005, my mothers drove across the border to legally marry in Niagara Falls, Canada. My eldest son, still in nappies, played with his trucks at my mothers’ feet during the ceremony. Ten years later, same-sex marriage was legalised in the United States as well.
Research is beginning to show that being raised by parents in same-sex marriages does not have the negative outcome that people feared. As the Washington Post reported in 2014, according to researchers at the University of Melbourne, “the quality of parenting and families’ economic wellbeing was more important than sexual orientation”.
The world isn’t perfect, and many children of LGBT parents still suffer from bullying. But as adults’ attitudes change, kindness is trickling down to the next generation. The change in attitude is best reflected in a conversation a lesbian friend overheard between her 12-year-old and his friend.
“So, I hear your mom’s a lesbian,” the friend said.
“My mom’s queen of the lesbians!” the son responded, and they went off to skateboard with no further conversation needed.
Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home by Lara Lillibridge is published by Skyhorse Publishing at £18.99