08/11/2015
Proud and strong. You go!
When Erin Kennedy DeLong of Villas, New Jersey woke up last week to discover that her garage door had been vandalized with homophobic graffiti targeted at her daughters, she decided not just to paint it over but to send a message to 17-year-old Miranda and 14-year-old Emily that "they have nothing to be ashamed of." Together with her daughters, DeLong cleaned off the graffiti and repainted it with “the largest rainbow flag image for miles around." By doing so, DeLong explains, she aimed to "proudly and loudly say we're an LGBT household, and we're OK with that."
DeLong’s daughters both identify as bisexual, and it was Miranda who discovered the graffiti. She woke her mother, saying “You have to come downstairs. Someone spray-painted on the house and on our truck.” DeLong says that after she saw the words “I’m Gay” spray-painted across their garage door, “There was this moment where I just stopped and said, ‘I can’t believe this happened in 2015.'"
“We decided that some announcements deserve more than gray spray paint,” DeLong wrote when she posted a picture of her newly painted garage door on the STOP-Homophobia.com page. The photo and story quickly went viral, and while DeLong says the family has received plenty of praise for their bold response, they have also experienced some negative backlash and a few neighborhood kids have yelled anti-gay insults at them. In response, she says, “we just try to let it roll off our backs. What they do says more about their character than ours.”
DeLong says her family has learned a lot from the experience. “[T]here is a much longer road to travel on the way to LGBT acceptance,” she says. Her daughters, she points out, asked, “why is this newsworthy that our mom supports us?” because in their mind, that’s just what parents should do. “It's great to have people tell us we are being great parents, but it would be even better if what we did was considered just normal parenting, and not amazing.” As for parents who face similar acts of bullying and hate directed at their kids, her advice is simple: “Love your kids. Show people that what they say is more of a reflection on them than it is on you. If you support your kids and you love your kids, how you feel about them overshadows how other people do.”
You can read more about the DeLong family’s fantastic response to this hateful vandalism on NBC at http://bit.ly/1HBVlpW
For books for children and teens that promote acceptance and understanding of LGBTQ people, we shared our favorites in our blog post "True Colors: Mighty Girl Books for Pride Month" at http://www.amightygirl.com/blog/?p=3800
Among the featured resources is an excellent collection of essays to give hope to LGBTQ youth who might be living with bullying and intolerance that life will get better: "It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living" for ages 13 and up at http://www.amightygirl.com/it-gets-better
For Mighty Girl books that encourage acceptance of differences, be they due to gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, sexual orientation, appearance, or ability, visit our "Tolerance & Acceptance" book section at http://www.amightygirl.com/books/personal-development/values?cat=216
And, to learn about our favorite stories for children and teens about the special love between mothers and daughters, check out our post "Celebrating Mighty Moms & Their Daughters" at http://www.amightygirl.com/blog/?p=3145
