Meet the Mormon ‘Mama Dragons’ Speaking Out for Their Gay Kids
Don’t mess with these 15 Mama Dragons, just some of the members of a group devoted to helping families navigate being both gay and Mormon. Top far left: Wendy Montgomery; bottom far right: Meg Abhau. (Photo: Wendy Montgomery)
Three years ago, after Wendy Montgomery’s son Jordan, then 13, tearfully sat down with his parents and told them that he was gay, he expected to be kicked out out of their family home in Bakersfield, Calif.
STORY: A Transgender Man’s Touching Mother’s Day Tribute
“He had realized he was attracted to boys a year earlier, and he struggled with this idea that being gay was wrong and bad, and that we wouldn’t want him anymore,” Montgomery tells Yahoo Parenting.
Instead, Montgomery and her husband hugged Jordan and told him that they loved and supported him, and that being gay wouldn’t change that. But her son’s expectation left Montgomery deeply upset.
STORY: When Your 5-Year-Old Daughter Insists She’s a Boy
A devout Mormon who, along with her husband, was raising their five kids as Latter Day Saints, she realized that Jordan had absorbed the idea that he would be shunned for his sexuality from church teachings. The conservative LDS church viewed same-sex attraction as sinful and offered little room for gay people to be who they are openly.
“I knew nothing about what it meant to be gay, except what I’d grown up hearing: that being gay was awful and gross, and it was a choice,” says Montgomery. She hit the Internet and did as much research as possible, but information on how to navigate being gay and Mormon was lacking.
Determined to fill that gap, Montgomery became a founding member of the Mama Dragons, a group of fiercely protective Mormon moms devoted to the acceptance of LGBT teens and adult children. Primarily a support group whose home base is online, the Mama Dragons also hope to nudge the church to a more modern and welcoming stance toward gay people.
Three proud Mama Dragons after an LGBT conference. (Photo: Meg Abhau)
“We started a little over a year ago as a Facebook message thread of moms who had met at a Mormon LGBT conference,” says Montgomery. Offering a supportive shoulder and a place to vent and ask questions, the group soon abandoned the thread and launched a Facebook page. Since then, they’ve grown to 280 moms, with more joining every week.
Meg Abhau is also a Mama Dragon; she found her way to the Facebook thread a year ago, after her son Jon, now 15, came out. “We were playing hangman, and he spelled out the words G-A-Y and waited for my response,” Abhau tells Yahoo Parenting.
“As soon as I realized what he was saying, I reassured him that I loved him and supported him,” she says. “But I was an all-out Mormon and knew nothing about gay life. I was very worried about what his life would be like, afraid he’d be mistreated and forced out of church.” Finding few resources affiliated with the church, she discovered the Mama Dragons.
“Being part of then Mama Dragons reminds you that you aren’t isolated and alone dealing with this,” says Meg. “When Jon came out, many of my friends dropped out of my life. Our area church at the time wasn’t supportive, and my husband and I felt we couldn’t take Jon there safely.”
Montgomery’s family also received a cold shoulder after Jordan came out. “Some parents wouldn’t let their sons go on a Boy Scout camping trip with Jordan, and members of our church wouldn’t take sacrament after he did,” she says. “We changed to a different church ward, as local congregations are known, but it’s not much better.”
Some of the “Baby Dragons,” as Abhau calls group members’ kids. (Photo: Wendy Montgomery)
As the Mama Dragons have grown, they’ve developed a stronger offline presence. Mama Dragons take in gay kids who have been booted from their homes, and they support efforts to combat the high suicide rate among gay youth. They also helped open a shelter for homeless kids in Utah, many of whom are gay kids shunned by their families.
Some members have also challenged church leaders to welcome and accept their gay sons and daughters. The group supports a bill that would ban discrimination against LGBT people in Utah. The church may be listening: In March, church leaders announced that they support the bill, too.
“Up until a few years ago, the church wanted gays to undergo reparative therapy or marry to someone of the opposite sex and ignore their orientation,” says Montgomery. These options are no longer encouraged, and in 2012, the church set up a website, mormonsandgays.org. “The tone isn’t perfect, but for a conservative church, it’s a huge step forward,” she says. Mormon leaders also now accept the idea that being gay isn’t a choice, she adds.
“I do see a day when the Mormon church embraces gay people,” says Montgomery. “We believe in continuing revelation — that things are revealed to us that we didn’t know or believe. Acceptance of gay people might be the next revelation.”
Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.