An amazing story of a father's love

This story from the Chattanooga Times Free Press is one of the most inspiring, heart-wrenching stories I have ever read. It's about Matt Nevels, a lifelong Southern Baptist, and the changes that happened in his life after he found out his son was gay. My heart is with this man and his family in so many different ways. Nevels' love and respect for others is so evident and so powerful. This is an amazing man.

This is also an amazing profile. I'm also deeply impressed with the writing of author Joan Garrett and with the Times Free Press, for running a truly amazing piece of journalism that could not come from anywhere else.

Read it.

When he and Frances walked into the hospital room, Stephen was lying in the bed in a thin gown. His body white and weak. The same blue eyes, but hollow underneath.

Stephen looked at his father. The room felt tight with fear and embarrassment. Matt knew his son was waiting to hear his voice, listening for reassurance.

And Matt began to cry in front of his son. Frances held her hands over her mouth and cried, too.

"Son, it's OK," Matt said. "We are going to love you the way you are."

Stephen sobbed. He crawled out of bed and into Matt's lap and Matt held him like he did when he was just a boy. Stephen put his arms around his father's neck and kissed him on the cheek.

"Son, don't worry," Matt said softly. "Nothing between us is going to change."

The full story at the Chattanooga Times Free Press

Via The Slacktivist blog

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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http://twitter.com/msilverman Mike Silverman

This was awesome. In such dispiriting times, nice to see some true grace and goodness.
nixiebunny

I look forward to this becoming the norm rather than the exception. Unfortunately, there are many more haters than compassionates in the world of religion. It’s too easy to say, “God told me to hate you.”
- clarkie604
  
  In my experience, there are many more compassionates than haters — but you definitely notice the haters more.
That_Anonymous_Coward

Very powerful story that touches on something important.
All of the “leaders” who tell you homosexuals are evil, vile, etc. most of them have never met one.
It is easy to have hate for a “group” but when faced with the truth that these are just people it is much harder to hold onto the hate.
- faithnomore
  
  Well, they *think* they’ve never met one…
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    It doesn’t count as ‘meeting’ if there’s no eye contact or exchange of names.
    - http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
      
      That reminds me of the old joke that Southern Baptists recognize each other everywhere except the liquor store.
- Nicky G
  
  Of course they’ve “met one.” We all meet many hundreds, really thousands of people in our lives. Many thousands. It may be unknowing, but we’re all meeting people every day who may live lives quite different than our assumptions.
  - millie fink
    
    ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
  - That_Anonymous_Coward
    
    The problem is many of them never understand that they have met those same people who they spend their time demonizing.
    This story shows what can happen, one just hopes that it would take less than something this tragic for people to look into themselves for the answers rather than just accept what they are told.
- digi_owl
  
  “All of the “leaders” who tell you homosexuals are evil, vile, etc. most of them have never met one.”
  
  This can be applied to any haters of a easy to label group, leaders or not.
  - That_Anonymous_Coward
    
    And that is what is so terribly wrong with our world. Rather than make their own decisions from their own experiences, they listen to the hatemongers. Life is so much easier when you tell them what they are supposed to think and feel.
    
    You can’t tell me (well outside of Westboro) that rather than confronting someone protesting something, but instead asking if that was your child out there and someone was screaming what your screaming how would you feel? If you can get them past the idea it would “never” happen in their family, they might stop and think.
    
    I am reminded of the story I saw here –
    http://boingboing.net/2010/11/21/when-did-you-choose.html
    “Travis Nuckolls and Chris Baker walk the streets of Colorado Springs asking strangers whether being gay is a choice; to those who say it is a choice, they answer, “When did you choose to be straight?”"
    You could see some of the people actually start to “get it”.
    
    Some people refuse to listen to anything different than what they are taught.
    http://boingboing.net/2010/10/25/husband-confronts-ab.html
    
    I find it disturbing that people who have a religion founded on peace and love commit the most vile acts in its name, breaking core tenants they claim to hold so dear.
    
    But humans always seem to need someone to hate and blame for all of the ills around them, ignoring the simple truth if your treating others badly your a source of ill in society.
    - digi_owl
      
      There is also the authoritarian aspect.
      - That_Anonymous_Coward
        
        How sad it is people listen to the “authority” figure saying how Jesus is love, and then tells you to go out and hate… and no one says… hey wait a minute…
        But then it is how someone in charge can use fear to keep control, look at the TSA.
Nicky G

This story was exceptionally well-written, although I would say, I still for the life of me don’t understand organized religion for the most part, and why some people are so attached to something that seems to gravitate toward hatefulness on such a regular basis.

I mean, I understand it — people are afraid of death, crave meaning, religions answers those fears and needs, etc. — but it still doesn’t make any kind of logical sense to me.

I’ll add that I’m not an atheist, but have more or less constructed my own belief system out of a mix of eastern philosophy, physics and cosmology, and my own personal experiences and beliefs. I’m surprised more people aren’t able to construct their own “spiritual/cosmological” reality, without relying on ancient hocus-pocus.
- nixiebunny
  
  Many people are afraid to think for themselves, or they are brought up in an environment that doesn’t condone it.
- Sagodjur
  
  I’ve been thinking recently, in light of being raised as a Christian and departing that path at 19, that Christian culture in America (because it’s really a culture rather than a religion anymore) is approached in the opposite order than it should be.
  
  They indoctrinate children (“train up a child in the way he should go…”) at an early age and the critical thinking and “choice” about accepting the beliefs only comes into play later on when they’re actually mature enough to make such a decision, if it happens at all. For many, it seems as if this never happens.
  
  But it should work that the critical thinking comes before any commitment into a belief system. How can you choose when you only know the one belief system you’ve ever been taught? It’s not really a choice if you’re taught about God and Jesus in the same way you’re taught about the sun or gravity existing.
  - novium
    
    by ‘Christian’ and ‘Christian Culture’, you’re referring to the Evangelical movement, aren’t you?
  - Greg Miller
    
    I left “that path” at around the same age as well, and had much the same experience. Was raised to accept all that I was told, while learning in school to apply critical thinking to everything I saw. Needless to say, there was a bit of conflict.
    
    Oddly enough, one of the things that bugged me the most was how washed down some church tenets had become – I was raised Presbyterian, which was founded with the idea of predestination (you’re living out a plan that God, being omnipotent, already knows, and thus are predestined). Now, though, people are only predestined to heaven, but no one’s predestined to hell (because that’s just too mean). Which seems like a cop-out. (But I am totally in favor of churches supporting marriage equality – yes I recognize the inconsistency).
- http://profile.yahoo.com/64CIT5CSYHWWGUDAW337X7LHYA Abigail Trarbach
  
  I left the (lutheran, pretty accepting) church as a teen and recently got paid to work at some church services, and that experience really reminded of both the good and the bad that organized religion can provide.
  
  It is an opportunity to come together with your community, make music, etc, and it’s a place for kids to have some responsibility (there was a kid running the slide projector when I was working, and I remembered cooking Easter Breakfast when I was a kid)… all of that was great. There are not a lot of venues for that in modern life (Maker co-ops? community gardens? I don’t know what a real equivalent would be that’s as pervasive as the church is). On the other hand, the sermon was all about how *God* would tell you how much money you should donate so they could build a new church, and that was pretty appalling, especially since it was right after the economy exploded.
  
  I can imagine that if one were a person of religious faith and found a congregation that was a good fit for one’s values it would enrich one’s life to have that sense of community. One of my friends is a minister and she has campaigned heavily FOR marriage equality, so I know that they exist.
- Mantissa128
  
  I think it’s less about hocus-pocus or being unable to think for yourself as it is belonging to a community of people who appear to share your values. Just sayin’.
Random_Tangent

It’s so nice and so strange to feel proud of my old hometown. I wish there had been more people like him there. So many of my friends had a hard time growing up in that environment.
Grey Devil

Damn it, why must you make me cry today?

Very painful and sad story. I am not gay but their struggle i feel almost as my own. We all struggle for acceptance, and being catholic i am familiar with preaching love but condemning just as quickly. I feel sorry for their loss, in many ways, and hope that they find the answers that they seek. We’re all looking for the same answers.
noah django

Man, I teared up. Mr. Nevels, if you’re reading this, you are the future. If Southern Baptists can make the spiritual journey that was so sadly forced upon you, our best and brightest–our skeptics–will not feel forced to leave the South. I’m weary of my friends leaving home because of the grip that rigid faith holds on our region.
dawdler

Beautiful. What stays with me after reading this story, more than the sadness of suffering and alienation, is the grace and depth of a father’s love and the profound importance of writing and telling our stories in such a wonderfully meaningful way.
http://profile.yahoo.com/65CSAR3QATRNKJW4NYNB2BESZE JohnQPublic

This is an incredibly moving account. My story is superficial by comparison but it reminds me that a Christian church turned me away when I thought of the church as a safe place to be. I had gotten engaged and moved in with my fiancee. I asked the pastor of my church in Burbank California at the time, to officiate our wedding. In conversation, he learned that my fiancee and I were co-habitating (I was 37 at the time) and he told me that I was an unrepentant sinner until I moved out and stopped having an intimate relationship with my fiancee. Also, I wouldn’t be allowed to be a member of the church.
I could not argue scripture with the pastor so I simply left the church without making a fuss. I haven’t looked back. I didn’t lose my faith, but I lost my confidence in organized religion. I married my fiancee, we have a beautiful child, and I don’t really miss the kool-aid.
Xof

Thank you. That was lovely.

(And as a complete side-note, I have some business relationships with the newspaper in question. I nearly wrote an email to my client there saying, “Hey! I just saw an article from your paper mentioned on BoingBoing; isn’t that cool?” And then I realized we’ve reached a point where I honestly expected a newspaper to be excited about being mentioned in a blog, rather than vice versa.)
- http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker
  
  I think it’s more a mutual relationship thing. God knows, the few times my work here has been mentioned in newspapers, I’ve been damned excited.
shawkat

This incident is really saddest part of the life of anyone with religious value. I feel pity.
shawkat

Really this story has an emotional attachment.
Ice Lore

I commend this family’s reaction in the face of a terrible loss. All people, regardless of faith or beliefs, could learn from them; learn acceptance and love. Whatever power that people may believe in, let them sort it out in the end. While you are on this earth, love is all you need to do.
CH

I know this is supposed to be a hearth warming story… but… isn’t this what parents are supposed to do?

I can’t see how there even was some conflict there. The article said he had to choose between his faith and his son… but in my opinion the wrong is right there. Why did he even think he had to choose? I can see being really conflicted if your child has done something really, really bad (I’m thinking mass murder here)… but… he was his child, and we are talking sexual orientation, no matter what his religion says, how on earth can that be such a sin that you would disown your child??????

Yes, I know that that is what many do, especially coming from a religious-book thumping background, but I just don’t get it. I don’t get it how people can be convinced by religion, or family honor (honor killings… another thing I just don’t understand), or whatever, that the right thing is to turn their backs on their children.
- Scratcheee
  
  But he didn’t turn his back on his son. He turned his back on something else that had been important to him for his whole life.
  - Rhyme79
    
    The two aren’t mutually exclusive are they? This story shows that there is always some middle ground, where both can exist. But more people need to be prepared to change for the better and step foot upon the middle ground, instead of sending dirty looks to each other from opposite ends.
    
    However there will always remain groups of people who believe homosexuality is a choice and/or a sin because the bible is old knowledge and the truth about the nature of being gay is new knowledge. Proponents of either new or old aren’t likely to accept and believe in the other.
    
    I don’t think it’s necessarily religion or faith that needs to directly change, but the *people* of faith do. Not all, but many. I think things are slowly changing, there are gay church groups and services now, also several openly gay ministers. Even so, as a gay person myself if I were to attend church I would think twice before attending a service in a less understanding parish/church.
  - CH
    
    No, he did not turn his back on his son, even though on the evening before going to meet his son he said “God, this is beyond my imagination. This is beyond my ability to accept.”. But he did accept… and that is, I guess, the heart warming part… which was the reason for my rant, as I see it as something that should be the default, so it being something “special” and “heart warming” is just… wrong!!!! It should have been the normal thing to do, because that’s what parents do… even when you don’t accept what your children do, you do love your children and accept them for who they are (mine is only 9, but I don’t see any expiration date on unconditional love.)
    
    I just see this story as sad… incredibly sad. The son didn’t dare to call his parents until he was dying, and he didn’t even dare to tell his parents why he was dying… and I wonder if we would have seen the same “happy” ending of acceptance if the son had told his parent when he left for the “big city” (I would have left too… as an atheist I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been welcome there, either).
    - OoerictoO
      
      i agree. unfortunately the title is accurate: “Amazing story”. but it should not be. this poor man and his family had the truth removed from their relationships until the very end because of their grasp on writings and beliefs that have no place in modern society. imagine the pain this caused in their family, even before any illness. now multiply this pain times ~500000 other families in the US alone.
- http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson
  
  So many gay people have the opposite experience, of being cast out because the Bible says so. It’s almost a cliche. Almost every one of us have a family member that will not talk to us, because of the immoral lifestyle / sinning against God / whatever we represent in their minds. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, there will be at least one. If you’re lucky, it’s just icy silence. If you’re less lucky, it’s screaming, and histrionics, and keeping the kids away from you because you’re going to molest them.
  
  I don’t understand it, either. But for some people, maintaining their faith is more important than anything else… that casting someone out makes the rest of the community feel safer, and you don’t have to deal with things that challenge your preconceptions.
  - OoerictoO
    
    good comment. it’s not always the religious whom are prejudiced.
    
    it seems that those non-religious people who are bigoted (against gay people in this case) are burgeoned by Christianity (in the US) and those opinions stem from the churchs’ long traditions. It’s these types of tropes that make me feel that organized religion just isn’t worth it, even if they do supply a sense of community, morality, etc.
zeppo

I’m proud to be a member of a church that not only openly accepts LGTB members, but advocates strongly for their equal rights here in the States.

Articles like this also make me happy that my community has redefined the word “church.”

Mr. Nevels, I’m so sorry for your loss.
- OoerictoO
  
  how does your church handle the other so-called “sins”? the article brought up pre-marital sex, divorce, greed. Greed being very important to most people in the current economy. but it seems that pre-marital sex condemnation is broken by pretty much everyone (can’t legislate away human conditions). divorce is prominent, even popular. adultery?
  how does it handle its evangelism. i’m curious.
Cephalo

Organized religion is the product of mankind, therefore inherently flawed. Spirituality is the product of mankind’s relationship with the universe, therefore inherently perfect. “All you need is love”…..
- agreenster
  
  Mankind’s relationship with the universe is still physical, though. No compelling evidence exists of the spiritual. I think at the core, I agree with you, but maybe we need a new word besides “spirit.”
Patrick Elliott-Brennan

Some years ago a friend who had previously been in a relationship with a man, but had been single for some time, told me she was gay.

She brought it up at work, almost blurting it out. Then she looked at me expectantly.

I was completely blind-sided, had not suspected anything and was completely unaware that she was going to say this to me, here, in her office.

I asked if it changed anything between us, as from my perspective it didn’t, saying “We’re still friends aren’t we? We can still hang out?”

She went red in the face and said nothing had changed and we were still friends.

I replied that I was glad she told me, that she trusted me enough to do so and that as long as she was happy that was fine by me.

She was enormously relieved and let out a breath she’d been holding in.

I didn’t need a book to tell me how to treat my friend and I didn’t need some ‘authority’ to dictate that to me either.

I treated her as human being who was my friend, was harming no-one and required compassion and understanding…and an honest reply.

I know I’d be the same with my children.

The world needs to get a grip.
- That_Anonymous_Coward
  
  For GLBTQ people the fear of being rejected when we come out or are forced out is terrifying.
  We have all seen the stories of backs being turned, people thrown out of their homes, and a whole host of other terrible things.
  We carry that fear around and when we try to be true to ourselves and tell others in our minds we have already played out the most horrible way for it to go… and then we discover the friends we have more often than not are perfectly okay with it.
  
  It is good to hear stories like yours, it can give others hope that being who you are doesn’t mean everyone will flee from you.
- http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
  
  My experience doesn’t begin to compare to yours, but, once, in college, I got into a conversation about Faulkner with a young woman in one of my classes. After we’d talked for ten or fifteen minutes I asked, “Could we continue this over a cup of coffee?”
  
  She said, “You do know I’m a lesbian, right?”
  
  I knew, and felt a little embarrassed as I said that, sometimes, “coffee” means “coffee”. We became pretty good friends after that.
Terri St. Amant

That filled my heart right up. Maybe one day us gays won’t need to feel this burden of living a lifestyle that can challenge the ones we love so much. It’s so weird to feel responsible for something I had no choice in. But then it gave me a chance to see who really loved me for me.
RHK

So the son was sexually abused several times by an authority figure, and a pastor who is stridently anti-gay.

Jus’ wonderin’.
- CH
  
  Well… pedophilia (hebephilia…) with men abusing boys is… apparently… not being gay… so… um… it’s ok?
ChickieD

I grew up in Alabama, where this brand of Christianity is popular. I liked how the story showed Matt’s struggle to reconcile the different teachings of his church with the love of his son. I think people too often see members of these churches as caricatures, rather than complex humans.

Maybe not everyone can relate to why this man is so attached to his church, but in many rural places the church is the main way to connect with the community. I have known many people who went to church every Sunday and every Wednesday and attended Bible Study classes yet another day of the week, and then they send their kids to Vacation Bible School in the summer and volunteer for charitable activities. Most of these activities are reasonably priced; a few dollars in the donation basket, affordable camps with people you know and trust in charge. To turn against what the church is preaching is not easy; there are not always other places to go to make friends and feel like you are a part of something. Maybe you do have doubts about some of the teachings, but you risk a lot by going against it. What Matt lost for so many years by not associating with his church – how many people would be strong enough to endure that?I am amazed at how quickly the general population’s attitudes toward gays have changed in the past 20 years. People like Matt are changing the world. Thank God.
donniebnyc

I’m sorry but I don’t find this to be a heartwarming story. It is a tragedy, to be sure, but it is hardly a story about change or the nobility of this poor young man’s father. Again I want to say that what happened to this family is a terrible tragedy. There can be no greater loss than the death of a child and it pains me as a father to hear of anyone suffering that loss.

The two things that trouble me are first, the question of whether Matt’s change of heart concerning homosexuality would have happened if he hadn’t had a dying, gay son. I was happy to read that Matt accepted his son for who he was and that he stood by him through his sickness and death, but I wonder how long he would have stayed in that hateful church listening to his pastor’s vile anti-gay invective were it not for his own personal loss.

I’ve seen this kind of change of heart in conservatives before. Recently Megan McCain was on NPR and she said that she was against Arizona’s SB1070 (an example of why some conservatives don’t like her) because she had a close Mexican friend, a lawyer, and she couldn’t bear the thought of her friend being stopped by the police just because she was Mexican. I wanted to scream at the radio. As it happens, I don’t have a close personal friend who is Mexican and I don’t need one to know that SB1070 is a racist law just as my lack of a gay child doesn’t prevent me from realizing how awful this church’s teachings are.

The second thing I find troubling is that this family returned to the church that shunned them and it is written like that was a positive ending. That church and its homophobic pastor didn’t change. What could be more awful than a pastor who ignores a dying congregant because he is gay. Going back to that church is an endorsement of what is preached there, in this case anti-gay hate. I see nothing good about a return to a place like that.