Laila Ibrahim's Blog

We talk about coming out as if it’s something you only do once.  In my experience it’s an ongoing part of life. Sometimes it’s easy, and other times it makes my stomach flutter.

I first came out as a lesbian 30 years ago when I was still in college.  Initially I was very careful about whom I shared this tender information with.  In 1985 being gay felt both like being part of a special club and living in a freak show.  Over time, I widened the circle of people that I told.  Sometimes I was praised for being courageous and other times I was treated with contempt or confusion.  One of the more memorable responses to my coming out was when my sister-in-law’s 60-year-old mother said, while we were cooking Thanksgiving dinner, “I’ve seen that on the Phil Donahue show, but never met one before.”

In 1991, my partner Rinda and I had a service of commitment in our Unitarian Universalist Church.  Most of our family members came, and as far as I was concerned I was out to the world. It was a done deal.

Little did I know that becoming a parent would force me to be out in whole new way.  It started at the birth in the hospital where I had to justify my relationship with my own child at every change of shift.  Some nurses were tickled pink to be working with an ‘alternative’ family.  But others were confused, offended, or outright hostile.  Looking back, I wonder how well I explained the situation--sleep deprived as I was.

At restaurants, waitresses would casually ask, “Who’s her mother?” Rinda and I would stare at each other, unprepared at first. Eventually we learned to say, “We both are. We’re a couple.”  

“Who’s her real mother?” often came next.

“We both are. But Rinda’s her birth mom, if that’s what you’re really asking.”

By the time we had two kids, with the same donor but two different birth moms, the story of our how our family came to be was often more than we wanted to convey to a casual inquiry before ordering drinks. And yet, we wanted our children to hear us talk easily about our family structure and learn how to explain it themselves.  Their experience of having two moms was nearly invisible in popular culture.  We wanted to make it a source of pride, and not shame.

So I learned to say enough without saying too much.   And I learned to uncover what I was really being asked. And I learned when to give a ten-second explanation and when to have a longer conversation. And I learned to let our children take the lead as they grew older. And I learned to say the word ‘wife.’  

I never expected to be a wife or have a wife, but now I am one and I have one.  It’s turned out to be the best thing ever, because that single word conveys so much, so clearly.  Without any further explanation, total strangers understand my relationship to Rinda. “Girlfriend,” “partner,” “life mate” require more sentences to be certain that I’m being understood.  But “wife” is completely clear.

The federal legal recognition that came last year brought more ease and clarity to my life than I had expected.  After all, we’d been married in our hearts and souls since 1991.  And our marriage was recognized in the state of California. What could a federal blessing of our marriage give us that we didn’t already have?

It turns out, a lot. Now that we were ‘out’ to the federal government, when we got a mortgage we knew how to hold title.  In the past we had long conversations with the title company; and all of us were just making a guess about the best way for us to hold title as a couple that was legally married in California, but not at the federal level.

We only have to fill out one joint federal tax return, which can be used for our state return.  For many years our accountant did a joint federal tax return so he could do a joint state return, and then he did an individual return for each of us.  We paid a lot of money for those extra returns.

When I fill out our Federal Financial Aid forms for college, I don’t have to leave out a parent.  In the past I felt like I was holding back information, but there was no way to represent our reality because federal tax returns (the basis for the form) did not recognize both parents.  I even called to make sure I was doing it right.  The woman on the phone was kind, but told me that the financial aid form simply did not include a way to represent the reality of our family.

Changing laws is important to creating the just, multicultural society the U.S. Constitution promises.  Changing hearts and minds is equally important in making that dream a reality.  As we make these changes, our coming out stories change as well.

I’m part of a Facebook group for queer moms.  Lately there has been a string of posts from women about their experiences with hospitals.  The common theme is that they start out ready to fight to have “our family” recognized in Utah, or a in Catholic hospital.  But instead they are met with respect, joy, and clarity about filling in birth certificates, NICU visitation privileges, or being called Mom.  Those stories bring tears to my eyes. Wow!  The pace of change of beautiful.  And yet the moral arc of the universe doesn’t easily bend toward justice.  There are always steps backwards:  see the new Jim Crow and North Carolina HB2.  We can’t let those who are afraid of widening the circle of love and justice decide the parameters of the conversation.

My favorite coming out moments are the ones that shine a light on my own prejudices.  The times I was met with love and respect from the very people I had been taught would hate me filled my heart with grace.  The military officer who told me that part of his duty was to stand with gay and lesbian service people who were being drummed out of the service because of their sexual orientation.  My 80-year-old, devoutly Catholic aunt who told me that God loves everyone and doesn’t make any mistakes.  The grandmother at my children’s elementary school, a Jehovah’s Witness, who apologized with tears in her eyes that her grandson had teased my daughter about having two moms.  Each of those encounters taught me to put away my assumptions and treat people as individuals.

The potential cost of coming out is rejection. But the cost of being hidden, of living in shame, is far greater.  And the opportunities that coming out affords are enormous. Coming out as a lesbian has given me the courage to come out as an artist, a writer, a Black Lives Matter activist, and a person of faith.  It’s allowed me to be more of my authentic self in so many ways, and hopefully gives others the courage to do the same.  And it’s given people permission to tell me their stories of spiritual and personal growth, connecting us across differences, but reminding us of our shared humanity.

The summer after 5th grade I was obsessed with watching reruns of The Twilight Zone.
The social and moral twists in the show profoundly expanded my mind and shaped my understanding of our world--and my place in it.  

One episode that stands out to this day is The Mirror. It follows a young, idealistic revolutionary who desperately wants to depose the current dictator in his country to create a just and peaceful society.  He and his comrades succeed in overthrowing the paranoid and violent dictator, and he becomes the leader of his nation.  He is hopeful and excited that his country will at last flourish in peace.  In a typical, yet clever, Twilight Zone twist, the young revolutionary quickly turns into the very thing he was working against:  a paranoid and violent dictator.

That episode planted the  seed in my mind that violent revolutions can’t succeed. Combine the influence of that show with the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and it’s easy to see why I’m a radical evolutionary.  As desperate as I am for real social change, I’m not convinced that lasting transformation, away from oppression and scarcity towards justice and abundance, happens through revolution.  Rather, changes made by peaceful means, while slow to bear fruit, have the strength to last.

Here are some examples of radical evolutionary changes:

Title IX

This 1972 federal law radically increased funding for sports for girls and women in all levels of education.  Forty-four years after its passage we have a wealth of amazing professional women athletes in basketball, soccer, tennis, and other sports.  

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

This federal legislation fundamentally changed U.S. immigration laws to allow more  people from Asia, Africa, and the Americas to become naturalized U.S. citizens.  The sponsors of that legislation knew it would change this country.  And it has.  For the better, as far as I’m concerned.  Fifty years later the people of our nation look more like the global population. Our deep ties to all nations make the U.S. a better country and a better world citizen.

Marriage Equality
I am legally married in Utah! Whenever I despair that real change is possible I remind myself of that amazing fact. Decades of individuals  coming out, of people demanding more and more rights, and of incremental changes in the laws led to the landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2015.  

    When my younger daughter was about six, her little voice asked me from the back seat of the car, “What’s the First Lady?”

    “The First Lady is married to the President of the United States,” I replied.  And then, because I didn’t want to limit her possibilities, I added, “Unless the President is a woman.  Then the person married to the President is the First Gentleman.”

    She replied,without missing a beat, “Unless she’s a lesbian. Then she’d be married to the First Lady.”

    It was hard not to laugh out loud.  She was right of course; but truly it had been beyond me to imagine a lesbian president of the United States. But to six-year old Maya it was just another option.  That was a radical evolutionary moment!

“Right.” I replied. “If the President of the United States is a lesbian, she’d be married to the First Lady.”

Since I published my second novel, Living Right, this month, many people have asked what it’s like to release my ‘baby’ into the world.  I’ve decided that is the wrong metaphor.  Babies don’t go into the world alone. Teenagers do.

When Living Right was in its infancy, I only trusted a few people with it. I tentatively asked, Should I keep going?  Is there anything worthwhile here? They loved it--perhaps only because they love me--and told me to keep coaxing this story into existence.

A few drafts later the book felt like a preschooler:  A little more resilient, but not ready to go out into the world without adult supervision. I gave it to a larger circle of trustworthy people for feedback and guidance.  It was strong enough to take their criticisms.  I listened carefully and made adjustments that felt right.  Living Right was taking on a life of its own.

Elementary school was a breeze.  Everyone I gave it to loved Living Right.  It made them cry.  Oh my! Wasn’t it just the best, most important and beautifully written story ever?! Those were the days.

The middle school years were the hardest.  That’s when I brought in the professionals.  Some professionals turned it down.  Their honest assessment was that no one wanted to read this story.  Others were brutal in their feedback, but had hope it could be ‘saved.’ They expected so much of Living Right.  And that was what I was paying them for. They had no patience for what I meant to convey.  No!  They insisted that the writing be precise in telling a story with great pacing, believable and interesting characters, and perfect grammar.

By the time I pressed the publish button, Living Right felt more like a high-schooler than a baby.  I was pretty confident that I had done my job well, and that this story could go out into the world without me. It could interact with complete strangers and hold its own. I was still nervous, though: perhaps it is “too gay for Christians and too Christian for gays”;  perhaps the readers who loved Mattie and Lisbeth will be disappointed in my second work.  

Only time will tell how this ‘teen’ is going to do in the big world.  I'll be a coach and a cheerleader as it makes its way in the world, but Living Right will be standing on its own merits. If I’ve done my job, it will take me places and teach me things I hadn't expected, like all teenagers do.

But I’m a Cheerleader was my introduction to conversion therapy.  It’s a ridiculous comedy that satirizes the movement to “cure” people with same sex attractions.  I thought it was an extreme exaggeration, and it left me believing conversion therapy is a joke.  Now I know that there is nothing funny about it. Conversion therapy destroys lives: emotionally, spiritually, and physically.  It’s an industry based on a lie that profits off of people’s deepest held convictions and their deepest held hopes for their children.

Before I learned more about conversion therapy I believed it was something that was done to teens and young adults by their parents.  In my mind the teens were the victims of ignorant and bigoted parents. As a Unitarian Universalist, a faith tradition that embraced LGBT equality for decades, I had a smug sense of superiority towards those parents.

I hadn’t considered the emotional and spiritual damage that was being done to parents by their very own churches, the institution they rely on for moral leadership.

Since then I’ve learned:

-Many of the leaders of the conversion therapy movement were and are LGBT people pretending they had been cured because they were so desperate for that to be true.

-In some religions parents are being told by their ministers--trusted authorities in their lives--that it’s their fault their children have same sex attractions.

-Many of the teens go to conversion therapy voluntarily, desperately believing in and praying for a cure.

The faulty premise of conversion therapy can be summarized:  The LGBT person has an insecure attachment with their same-gender parents; the LGBT person has been sexually abused; and the LGBT person has a weak spiritual connection to Jesus and God. Prior to  my research, I couldn’t understand how a parent could possibly send their child to conversion therapy, but now I see that the faulty premise of conversion therapy preyed on parental insecurities.  The parents feel guilty.  They are being told it’s their fault. They’re being promised a cure, so they invest in the snake oil being promised by their religion.

And the pay-off?  Salvation. Who wouldn’t invest time and money for their child’s eternal well-being?

Smug superiority is not a good look for anyone, but most especially for someone who aspires to plant seeds of love and justice in the world.  I’ve learned this lesson many times in my life.  When I look deeply at people I disagree with, I most often find a shared human impulse.  The parents who desperately want their children to be straight are scared for their kids.  That I can relate to.

I remind myself that my liberal parents had a less than stellar reaction to my coming out.  They tried.  Really they did. But as I look back at the time so long ago I realize they were afraid for me.  They didn’t believe I would have a good life if I partnered with a woman.  They were sure I’d have to live in secrecy or face rejection by society? No kids? Their fear was reasonable at the time. They couldn’t know that I would get married, have children, and be respected in the world. I’ve lived a life my parents couldn’t envision because it only existed in our imaginations in 1983.

About 10 years ago, I casually mentioned to a group of children, including my own, that I didn’t know anyone who had two Moms or two Dads when I was growing up.

“Not one?!?!” they asked incredulously.
“Not one,” I replied. “Ask the other adults around the table if they did.
Sure enough, person after person answered “No. No LGBT families in my life as a kid.”
LGBT rights have come so far, so quickly. Those of us who live in a world where it’s the norm can sometimes have a hard time remembering how far.

I’ve watched many documentaries about Conversion Therapy.  One of the most heartbreaking interviews was with a mother whose child had succeeded in committing suicide. The despair in her eyes as she spoke about the choices she made that had added to her child’s depression haunts me to this day.  I’m grateful to her for sharing her painful story. I pray that it, and so many other stories, will help parents to move past fear for and rejection of their LGBT children to a place of acceptance and support, secure in the knowledge that God’s love is that big.

I’ve been thinking about coming out recently.  Maybe it’s because I’m ready to have my second novel, Living Right, come out into the world.  Since that book deals with a Christian boy’s coming out, I’m thinking a lot about the movement for LGBT equality. I’m acutely aware that the LGBT movement has proceeded at a lightning pace compared to the struggle for equality for black people in America. The contrast is startling.

In the early days of Facebook, a group of my friends from high school were having a discussion about the n-word.  I’m not sure how we got on that topic, but a white person ventured to state that it wasn’t used as an insult anymore.  One of our black friends told the group that he had been called it, more than once, as a threat.  One of my white friends responded that she was shocked, saddened, and disgusted to know that her dear friend had faced that particular oppression.

I was surprised at the conversation because most, if not all, black men have been insulted and threatened using that word.  How did my 40-year-old friend not know that was the reality faced by every one of her black friends!? I think many black people keep that particular pain private.  I don’t blame them for wanting to keep shame-inducing experiences hidden, rather than ‘come out’ about them.  But their silence serves to keep white people in a bubble where they can maintain the belief that overt racism isn’t widely practiced. 

I know the initial shame of coming out.  And I know the enormous freedom that comes with it, too.  Letting the right people, at the right time, know what is true about the painful parts of your life is a gift to both the speaker and the listener.  May we learn to do both well.  And may our comings-out bind us together, that we may be agents of love and justice for one another.

I was on a subway train in New York last week when I saw a baby sign ‘more’ to his dad.  The father happily responded and gave his child another handful of food.  It took me right back to when our children were pre-verbal babies and communicated with us through sign (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_sign_language).

We taught our babies  lots of words, but I found that they really only needed five signs to convey their needs:  up, down, more, finished, and help.

These signs essentially communicated:  

Up:  I want to be closer to you.
Down:  I want to be more independent from you.
More:  Keep doing what you’re doing.
Finished:  Stop doing what you’re doing.
Help: I need you to help me.

Whether I’m the person doing the asking or the person being asked, it strikes me that in some core way those signs contain the essence of what I need to create stronger and more harmonious relationships. I wonder if every communication can be broken down to a request to:  be closer, have more space, do more, do less, or help. The signals I send and receive may not be as simple as that baby asking for more apples, but I have a feeling they could be boiled down to those five concepts.  I’m going to try these ideas on with my young adult daughters.  It might just be that the five signs that helped me communicate better with them as babies will give me a good framework for being in relationship with them now.

I’m starting to research a sequel to Yellow Crocus.  It’s quite sweet to see what Mattie, Lisbeth, and their families are up to. It's going to be set after the Civil War, so I’m reading and watching a lot about that time period.

I come away from each research session infuriated.  I rant and rave to everyone within ear-shot.  I’ve learned that written into the 13th amendment is the road map to continued forced unpaid labor.  It says: neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Once you are convicted of a crime, you can be put into involuntary service.  Legally. Vagrancy laws were passed after the civil war. If you couldn’t prove you had a job you could be leased out for labor. Ninety percent of leased convicts were of African descent and ninety percent were men.

Slavery by Another name is a book that documents the practice.  I thought the title must be hyperbole. But there is a good argument to be made that the forced labor that replaced legalized slavery was actually worse.  

In 1855 the cost to ‘purchase’ an unskilled young man was around $1,200.  That was a huge financial investment that gave the enslavers incentive to preserve the well-being of the enslaved. In contrast, leasing a convict cost as little as $8 per month.  There was no longer a financial reason to adequately feed, shelter, or protect the forced labor.  They  could be, and often were, literally worked to death, and their friends and family had no recourse.

This went on for decades.  And in some perverse ways it continues in our current system of mass incarceration.

I want the magic wand that will make all this be over.  I want the United States to actually be the just and fair country that I was taught it was in 5th grade U.S. history.  But it’s not.  We have so far to go before we reach the place Dr. King called the Beloved Community.  I still hold onto hope humans can get there someday.  Sadly I no longer believe it will be in my lifetime.  But I’m still going to work for the Star Trek future for my descendants.

March 26th

I woke up in the night a few days ago with this passage from the Christian Bible running through my mind.   This is from the New International Version.

“A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

I've loved this particular Bible story for years, though I didn't grow up reading the Bible.  It reminds me to do my best to be fertile soil for the seeds that I want to grow in my life.  It's tempting to become hard, shallow or distracted.  But living a life of intention takes attention.

This parable  also reminds me to cast seeds of love and justice, not knowing where they will land, if they will take root, if they will multiply.  However the act of scattering is worthy work for my soul regardless of the long term outcome.

May this Easter be a time of renewed hope and abundance for our world.

I’m of a class and at an age in which many of my beloved godchildren, nieces, and nephews are graduating from college.  I feel the urge to give each and every one of them some emphatic, unsolicited advice.  On Christmas Eve I pounced upon an unsuspecting college senior at church.  This is what I told her, and what I’d tell them all:

Give yourself a break:  In some core way your life has been planned for you up until now.  It’s huge to have so much choice opened up before you.  There are so many options before you, but you can’t do them all.  You will have to choose.  Give yourself time to figure out what you want your life to look like.  Studying a subject in school can be very, very different from working in that profession.  Just because you majored in something doesn’t mean that will be the right field for you.  Just because you’ve been saying you’re going to be a lawyer since you were ten years old doesn’t mean law school is your next best step in life.

Profession or location?: There are some professions that drive where you live and other that you can do just about anywhere.  Think carefully about which kind of career you’d prefer.

No graduate degree is better than the wrong graduate degree:  A Bachelor’s in anything is a good financial investment and will open doors for you.  There are many reasons to go to graduate school, but the wrong degree is expensive in time and money.  It’s better to delay getting a graduate degree than to get one because you’re not sure what else to do.

Be a fan club of one: Notice people whose lifestyles you admire.  Set up a time to have tea and ask them what choices they made to get there.  People generally love to talk about themselves and you’ll most likely see that what looks like a nice, neat, perfectly planned life was filled with detours, uncertainty, luck, and determination.

I live in a world where we often talk about privilege in various forms:  male privilege, white privilege, class privilege, thin privilege. I wholeheartedly believe that there are distinct advantages that come from simply being born as a member of a privileged group in our society.

However, I also believe that there are costs to being privileged. And I hope that understanding those costs will contribute to the conversation about the systems of oppression that harm well-being.

When I was in my mid-twenties I worked in an office at UC San Francisco.  One of my co-workers was a gay man living with AIDS who had been shunned by his father when he came out. As Paul told me some of his story, he talked about being proud of the life he made for himself--most especially for having finished college. He said it was something that no one could ever take from him and it clearly gave him a deep sense of dignity. His eyes shone as he spoke and I understood that he would die more peacefully because of this accomplishment.

I was stunned because, while I also had a college degree (actually by then I had two), I wasn’t the slightest bit proud of my education.  In my mind and heart college was a hoop that I jumped through, a baseline expectation no more worthy of pride than finishing 4th grade.  After some reflection I realized the cost of having college-educated parents (who assumed I would sail through higher education) was a lack of pride in my personal accomplishment.  It was seen as ordinary, though I had worked hard to achieve it.

Even as I share this story I question my entire premise that there is a cost to privilege.  Something still feels true about that idea but I can tell I’m still missing something. I’m going to keep wrestling with the question until I have more clarity about the answer.  I think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) might hold some insight.