“Your Mom’s Gay!” and More Homophobic Classics
A straight man's guide to dissecting homophobia
Happy NFL Kickoff Week! Football has been one of my lifelong passions, especially the National Football League. I’ve been watching for as long as I can remember, and nothing is ever going to change that. Go Bills!
As the new season begins, I want to highlight one of my favorite players. He doesn’t get nearly enough attention, but he certainly deserves it: Arizona Cardinals Pro Bowl tight end Trey McBride.
Last season he finished fourth in the league in receptions, continuing the steady growth he has shown since being drafted in 2022. Before that, he starred at Colorado State University, and won the John Mackey Award in 2021, after he hauled in 90 catches for 1,121 yards, setting many CSU records.
But what makes McBride stand out to me goes beyond the football field. When he was drafted, he became the first NFL player raised by two moms. That hit differently for me, because I also have a lesbian mom. Though, most of my childhood was spent in the homophobic South, where even the word “gay” would be turned into an insult or a joke.
That’s why Trey McBride’s success matters so much. He represents a version of family that I rarely saw affirmed. What once felt like a punchline was now a source of pride, when seeing someone like him thrive on the biggest stage in the world.
But having same-sex parents wasn’t just about being on the receiving end of playground jokes. It also meant growing up surrounded by a deeper, more constant homophobia. And that’s the part of my story I want to share.
I grew up in a region of the state called the Bootheel or “the Boot.” On a map, Missouri doesn’t look like the South, but you’d have to see it to really understand. It’s flat farmland and small towns, with cotton fields that stretch for miles and highways dotted with fireworks stands and sex shops. People like to joke that it’s only good for two things: farming and serving as a crossroads for the drug trade between St. Louis and Memphis. Of course, that’s not all it is but the joke leans a little closer to truth than anyone cares to admit.
My dad and mom were high school sweethearts who had three boys before leaving their home state of New York, for Missouri (AKA misery). A few months after the move, things unraveled quickly. My newly-liberated mother was swooning over Ellen DeGeneres’ hips, while my dad had fallen for the love of his life… someone who couldn’t have been any more opposite. It wasn’t long before my mom left, realizing that the dating pool for a middle-aged lesbian with a middle-school-boy haircut was painfully limited.
So that’s how I was raised: by my dad and his new partner, along with her three children. Among family and friends we were known as “the Brady Bunch.” All eight of us lived together, often stacked right on top of each other.
When the school year ended, we all split off to our other parents for the summer. For me and my brothers, that meant going back to Upstate New York with our mom. I lived for those summers. They were my escape, my reset, the months that I looked forward to more than anything.
And, that was the beginning of a life filled with endless “your mom’s gay” jokes. Some of them were actually pretty good, I’ll admit. The wild thing is that, in a backwards way, those homophobic moments helped me make my friends less homophobic.
Huh…? I know. Just let me cook.
The more willing I was to be the butt of those jokes, the easier it became to talk with my friends about what it was like to have a queer parent. Over time, just knowing me and spending time with me chipped away at the stereotypes that they carried. Being popular in a small-town high school made a difference too. I could take the jokes and still keep my place, and that gave me trust from classmates who were closeted; people that I’m still close with today.
It doesn’t make the jokes any less homophobic, and it sure doesn’t make my mom any less gay. But it does show that there’s something to be learned from them.
I’d consider myself the black sheep of the family today. I’m disconnected from most of them, though that’s a conversation best saved for a therapist… some day. When people hear my loud political opinions, especially compared to my family or old friends, they always ask, “What went different with you?” And I remember one of the first times. It was June 2009.
Our mom used to call my older brother every night, and we’d each take turns talking to her before bed. One day she called earlier than usual, right after school. She broke the news: “I can finally marry.” At twelve years old, I didn’t fully understand the court ruling that had just come down, but I was happy for her. I also wanted to know more. Why was this news now? Why hadn’t she ever been allowed to marry before? She had been out for as long as I could remember. I had only ever known her to be with a woman. Why was this even a thing?
Questioning that, as a kid in the South, felt like asking for clarification after Sunday school. You’d get the same reaction every time, the sharp shh and a quick turn of the hips. Nobody wanted to talk about the queers.
Speaking of religion, every Wednesday and Sunday a local church bus would roll through our small town (Anniston, MO). My parents, like many others, saw that as the perfect opportunity to have an empty house for a few hours, so they put us on and never looked back. We spent years in that strict Pentecostal church. I was too young to remember if sexuality was ever discussed, but I do remember my first kiss in the ditch out front. I don’t think my parents ever attended a single service with us.
That pattern continued after we moved to a larger town (Sikeston, MO). A few of us still wanted to go to church, mostly for the social side of it, and we ended up at a local Baptist church. We called it home for years, until I was old enough to sit in with the adults. Week after week, the message circled back to the same thing: gay people will all rot in Hell. Those conversations would spill into lunch afterward, and often followed you home. Why did they care so much about that?
By my senior year, I found a local Methodist church. They were different. They were welcoming, and the fact that they didn’t obsess over sexuality meant a lot to me. But the truth is, I was only going to impress my girlfriend at the time. By then, I had already checked out of my faith.
There’s a story my stepmom always loved to retell. She was meticulous about when she brought it up, usually when family friends were around or the week after we came back from summer break, still buzzing from all the fun we had. It was the story about how she “beat my mom’s ass” over a candy necklace I was wearing, one she swore (to this day) was a rainbow pride necklace. She’d brag about how my mom was lucky she didn’t also smash out her back windshield for having a pride flag sticker in their driveway.
At one point in time, they were all co-workers (mom, dad, stepmom) before their lifelong rivalry. One of the stories that came out of that was about peach rings. My mom once told my stepmom that they reminded her of eating pussy. After that, my stepmom never touched them again. And to this day, I can’t eat peach rings without thinking of that story. Also, why the fuck did she tell me that?
I still don’t fully know if my parents’ bitterness was rooted in homophobia toward all gay people, or if they just really hated my mother. But given their politics, I can make a pretty safe assumption. Especially when you look at the loud opinions about the trans community coming from their party today. I just hope that if one of their many grandkids “ends up like” their other grandma, they’ll be more accepting the second time around.
After high school, I moved in with my gay best friend. We lived together for three years. There was no better wingman than him, and I mean that. Living together gave me the chance to really learn about the struggles of growing up closeted in the South, specifically as a gay man. I was curious about his life, and he was always willing to let me in (not literally… though if I asked, who knows).
Watching him scroll through our local Grindr was its own kind of game—trying not to come across even more closeted classmates. From him I learned what I’d already started to suspect: some of the loudest homophobes end up being the gayest, especially the country boys. Willie Nelson sure wasn’t lying about them cowboys.
Today, I try to be a loud advocate for LGBTQ+ people. I’ll always be the outspoken, “woke one.” When things feel wrong, I speak up.
So, how do I loop this back to homophobia and football?
Life is a lot like smear the queer. A game where you’re targeted for being different. A game where the whole point is to get hit, again and again. And that’s why it means so much when Trey McBride takes the field this weekend. Because the queer didn’t get smeared, they raised an NFL player to take those hits instead.
Great writing! I have awesome memories growing up with your mom. She would take her shirt off her back for anyone! Gay or straight doesn’t matter to me. I love her to pieces.
I always hated how your step Mom played with your emotions. It wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry.