Justin Batugal
Weseloh
GEW 101
6 February 2012
Ancillary Paper #1 Through my whole entire life, I was raised and taught by Catholic teachings. My parents were very Catholic and their parents were as well. Because of this, there were number of rules and principals that I had to live by. For example, I couldn’t listen to certain types of music etc. I thought this was unfair but that is just how my parents, especially my mother, were raised. My mother’s father was a military man and a lawyer so his principals were law when he raised my mom and her seven siblings. One day when I was about the age of 12, my parents and I were watching TV and there was a gay protest on the media in San Francisco. My mother then stated that a man and another man should not be together because that is not how God created us. I began to question the principals that my parents had me live by. This event made me think that my parents were not always right and I had to start forming my own beliefs. My favorite uncle, my Tito Nestor, was a gay man. All my youth, I was not aware of this because my parents thought that I would not understand what that actually meant because I was unable to comprehend the idea of love and other concepts just yet. If I knew that truth back then, I probably would not have minded because I knew I would love him all the same if he loved men or women. When I was about 13 years old, I was talking with my sister and my mother when they brought up something about my Tito Nestor in a conversation. I then heard the word “gay” and my sister confronted me and asked, “You didn’t know that he was gay?” I did not know how to react to that so I sat quietly then walked in the house and sat with my thoughts for a while. The idea began to disturb me because I felt that I did not know who this man was anymore. My mother always kind of resented my uncle, my father’s brother, because of the way that he lived. He had a big house in which he shared with another man. My uncle’s partner had a wife and kids before he decided to leave them to be with my uncle. This confused me in lots of ways because I could not understand how he could choose to be gay let alone leave his family because of it. My mother thought that this act was selfish and that God looked down upon it. My father, on the other hand, grew up with my uncle and was taken care by him all his life. My uncle was just another important man in my father’s life and did not mind if he was gay or straight. He only cared about him and his well-being because that is how their relationship always was. My dad did not care about what the bible had to say anymore because “family is family” as my dad would always say. My mother however, followed the rules of the bible and kept those rules at heart. My mom once told me that if I was gay, she would not know what to do with me. Thanksgivings, Christmas, and other holidays, where my Tito Nestor and his partner were there were always sort of awkward. You could feel the tension