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No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones QUOTES

No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones QUOTES

1 " There's an old Jewish saying: An enemy is someone whose story you do not know. (22) "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones

2 " When you have a child, you start to dream of how this kid will grow up and make you proud. The only thing you can predict with 100% certainty is that the reality will diverge somehow from that dream. Some of our children will disappoint us by not being the scholars we hoped they would be. Some children will disappoint us by not being the athletes we hoped they would be. Some will disappoint us by coming out and telling us they are gay and they won't give us grandchildren...the real question is not, what book can I read, what technique can I use to raise a perfect child? The real question is how will you handle that gap between the child you dreamt of having and the real child growing up in your home...What I have learned is that any religion, if you do it wrong, will leave people feeling condemned and dismissed and unworthy and any religion, if you do it right, will leave people feeling cleansed and firmed. (118) Rabbi Harold Kushner "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones

3 " Thank you, Carol Lynn Pearson, for reminding us that the task of any religion is to teach us whom we're required to love, not whom we're entitled to hate. - Rabbi Harold Kushner "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones

4 " Today's science should also relieve us of the fear that our children are at great risk to be recruited into homosexuality. I believe that if the gay community sent missionaries door to door like we Mormons do, spreading the good news of homosexuality, they would get pitifully few converts, probably only a small sliver of the terminally confused. "Join us and very possibly break your parents' hearts, throw the family into chaos, run the risk of intense self-loathing, especially if you are religious, invite the disgust of much of society, give up the warmth and benefits of marriage and probably of parenthood." (16) "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones

5 " Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term "we" or "us" and at the same time decreases those labeled "you" or "them" until that category has no one left in it. - Howard Winters (115) "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones

6 " In April of 2006, the Church-owned Desert Morning News, in a remarkable week-long series on suicide in Utah, reported: "A former surgeon general who recently spoke in Utah about suicide prevention said he was impressed with the state's warm and friendly people...But, he added, 'In New York, we kill each other. In Utah, you kill yourselves.'" The newspaper gave the shocking statistic that Utah leads the entire nation in suicides among men aged 15 to 24. Utah also has the 11th highest suicide rate over all age groups. (36) "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones

7 " I said, "Mary, tell me something. Why do you have that picture from The Wizard of Oz on your wall?" Mary chuckled at my question. "Oh, that's my favorite move. I saw it the first time when I was five. But it's more than that. The story is so relevant to my life. That big, wise Wizard, you know. He's nothing. You pull back the curtain, it's just a man. I went through my whole life looking at the men at church as the Wizard, practically as God. I believed every word they said, every way they interpreted the bible, every condemning judgment on my gay son. After Bobby died, I started to study on my own, and I see the Bible through my own eyes now, not through theirs. I pulled back the curtain, and it was not God, just men. The tin man, he had a heart all along. The lion had courage all along. I knew the truth about Bobby all along, but I didn't listen inside, I listened outside. Most of us go on dancing down that yellow brick road to find the izard and be told the secret. But the secret is, the kingdom of God is within, inside every one of us. That picture, I keep it there to remind me." (49) "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones

8 " Ah, the ocean. The movement of eternity right in front of us." (61) "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones

9 " Every time I have seen families embrace and accept their homosexual family members, nothing bad had happened! The association has always been positive and loving, caring "family" experience has only grown and flourished. They are available to each other for that family support that is so valued in our culture. Families are strengthened not weakened. When families have rejected their homosexual family members it has not turned out well, even when that rejection was done 'lovingly.' You know, love the sinner...hate the sin? I've known homosexuals rejected by their families who looked for acceptance in all the wrong places. Bright, promising lives lost to drugs, disease, and death. I've seen families who reject those they should love, depriving themselves of that valuable relationship. (120) "

― Carol Lynn Pearson , No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones