Millie: I just think we had a wonderful family life. We enjoyed our children. We loved our children. I think our family was very close. And Craig, being one of the oldest, was the one that the children particularly looked up to. He was a good student, you know, honor student, student body president, just your all-around good kid. And, of course, all our kids are that way. And then Lori has just always been a sweetheart, just a good friend to her friends and a good student, honor student again. And just kind, wonderful people.

Gary:  ... Craig came out to us near Christmas time in 1989.  I remember it very vividly. He spoke with me first. And, in fact, I remember it was in the next room, right in our family room. And he came to me and he says, "Dad," he says, "there's something we need to talk about." And it happened that my mother was visiting from Logan and there was quite a bit going on in the house. And I said, "Fine." And so we sat down to talk. And he started out by saying, he says, "Dad, I'm gay."

And I couldn't have been more surprised. In fact, I was incredulous. I had never even thought for a moment about that as a possibility. And I said to him, I said, "Well, are you sure?" Or, "How gay are you?" You know? I guess I knew enough about homosexuality to recognize that there's a spectrum of homosexual feelings and I think I immediately recognized that this would have some significant impact on our lives and on his life and wondered what that meant for sure. But I didn't ever have any real negative feelings about Craig as a person.

Part of my reaction to Craig's coming out, I think, was maybe tempered by my own respect for him as an 

And so when he said he was gay, in no way did it imply anything negative about him as a person, because I knew him intrinsically as a good person and I knew him as a man of integrity. And so I accepted it immediately and thought, Well, what does all this mean? And then it was a matter of probably going from there and just working through the discovery, the understanding, and then trying to learn all you could about homosexuality so that you could deal with it in your life in an appropriate and kind, humane, sensitive manner, which is the course we chose.

...And I saw Craig as being an outstanding person who had unlimited potential. And we saw him marrying and fathering some of our grandchildren. In fact, he had a girlfriend. He had a couple of girlfriends. But he had one girlfriend that I was particularly impressed with, and I anticipated that they would marry. And when he talked with me about his homosexuality, he indicated to me that he had already spoken with her and that that was not going to happen, that he didn't feel like that it would be right for him to pursue that relationship any more.

And I think every gay person must go through that, you know? Here they've got this perfect camouflage, if you will, people maybe don't know they're gay and it's very tempting for gay people to maybe pursue a relationship and marry and do the thing that's expected of them. And I guess that's another reason, another thing that increased my own respect for Craig, that he was able to recognize that that would not be an appropriate course for him to pursue. And so these dreams that you have, suddenly, you have to sort of reconsider. "Well, what does all this mean and how is this going to impact us as a family and impact his life?" And you know that things are going to change.

Millie: Well, and I think, you know, they're dreams of our children too. I mean, they're taught at a very early age, "You're going to grow up. You're going to marry," and you encouraged the little girlfriend and 

And I also feel badly that Craig in particular, because he was older when he told us that he was gay, that he hadn't felt like he could come and talk to us about it. When he was in high school, he said that he was having feelings and and beginning to wonder and felt like he was different from his friends. They'd be talking about, you know, the girls in the locker room at school and making out with girls and things. And to him, you know, he just had a hard time relating to that. And I guess, you know, we've always felt like we were a close family, but he did not feel like he could come and talk to us about it. And I feel badly that we didn't have that situation where we could have. And, you know, as I think about it, I might not have been very open to talking to him about it. Somehow I thought gay people were people that are chosen, that the people that you see in the gay pride parades and things like that, and, golly, our children were not like that at all.

...Gary: Lori's coming-out process was difficult and different in the sense that when Craig came out, and particularly when we affiliated with Family Fellowship and became quite public about being parents of a gay son, we were known as parents of a gay son. And then Lori was experiencing some of the same kinds of processes and trying to work through her feelings. And it was a little different, because we'd been through it before.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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