The parent rap

My mom is queer—and so am I
Madeleine Lieberman, 25

My mom came out to me when I was ten. It was totally unexpected—she’d been married to two guys previously. I walked in and found her in bed with a woman in our Upper East Side apartment. She sat me down with her lover a couple of days later and said, “I thought you knew.” I was like, “No, I didn’t. I thought you were just best friends.”

I already knew I was gay and have since, like, age five, but I was trying to be as straight as possible. I had a lot of anger toward my mother because of her previous relationship with a guy. It was a bad relationship and we both put up with a lot from him. I felt angry that we’d gone through all of that for what felt like no reason.

At that time I was growing up with my mom, her partner and, like, 40 gay guys. They all called me the “token straight child.”

So I knew I was gay before my mom came out, but I tried to hide it. Before I even came out people would say, “Your mom’s gay. Doesn’t that mean you’re going to be gay?” I knew that was going to be other people’s reactions when I came out, that it was somehow my mom’s fault that I turned out gay. And that actually was people’s response quite often: “You’re gay ’cause your mom is.”

I came out to my mom when I was 13. I didn’t have the courage to tell her to her face that I was a lesbian. I wrote her a letter, threw it on her pillow and ran out of the house. I told her that I didn’t know what I was, but I knew I wasn’t straight. My mom and her partner told me it was fine that I wasn’t straight, but that I couldn’t date until I turned 16. A couple of other adults knew, but no one my age. I guess it was the opposite of most kids—I came out to my parents and their friends before coming out to my own friends at school.

At 17 I started dating an older girl whom my mom didn’t like. The girlfriend taught me to just say no to my mom. One night I got into a fight with my mom about school, and I left at 11 that night and moved in with the girlfriend, never to move back home. My mom and I didn’t have a good relationship after that for some years, until more recently.

Right now, it’s really good. We both know we have separate lives—I think that was very important to establish. We used to be very codependent. We’ll have conversations about girls and relationships. We have a much stronger relationship, and it’s based on the fact that we recognize one another as human beings now.

—As told to Allison Steinberg