A gay pride march in Calgary, Canada. Image: Unsplash/Toni Reed
A gay man is opposing a “Straight Pride” event to be held in California, United States — and one of the organizers is his own mother.
Matthew Mason, a 28-year-old kinesiology student, is estranged from his adoptive mother Mylinda Mason. “This isn’t ‘straight pride.’ This is hate pride,” he said of the event to Fox 40 on Sunday, Aug. 4.
The “Straight Pride” parade, organized by the California chapter of the National Straight Pride Coalition, will celebrate “heterosexuality”, “masculinity,” “femininity,” and “babies, born and unborn.” The coalition applied for a permit to hold the event in Modesto, California on Aug. 24.
Matthew respects the right to free speech but is concerned it can turn violent, he told the Modesto Bee on Saturday, Aug. 3.
He said that his mother would bring him to protests of an LGBTQ+ prom since he was young. Mylinda confirmed this, stating, “I could see the struggle on my son’s face at the very last prom.”
She said it was her son’s sexual orientation that caused their rift, rather than her disapproval of it. “Homosexuals, in general, pull away from family and friends at some point.”
Matthew is set to address the Modesto City Council on Wednesday about the event, even if it is city staff, rather than council members, that decide to approve the permit. According to Fox 40, one of the city council members happens to be Matthew’s birth mother.
‘I am in a unique place to call her out’
Matthew was homeschooled by Mylinda from kindergarten to grade 12. He said disagreeing with any of his mom’s ideologies warranted punishment. Now that he is an adult, he said, “I am in a unique place to call her out for where she’s coming from, which is white supremacy, and I did not feel like I had the right to stay silent.”
He said his mom’s teachings in her homeschooling program featured “revisionist history.”
“The genocide of the indigenous population of North America was not ever covered in our homeschooling,” he noted. “As I got older and I got a little more aware of history, I realized that these white men who built the world built it on the backs of people of color, of slaves, and through genocide.”
When asked about the history lessons she taught her son, Mylinda said, “Let’s get the quote correct — it’s Western civilization that was built by European males that came here to establish the greatest nation on earth.”
She did not mention that colonization involved conflict and violence against people living in a territory that was being invaded, such as in the case of explorers like Christopher Columbus against indigenous peoples.
Mylinda said that she noticed as a young Christian that America was “dumbing down,” based on what she saw in the educational system and in the media. She took action because she felt “concerned what was going on in our society.”
She noted that despite differences with her son, she does not hate him. “I do not hate my son, I do not like my son, I do not love my son, I adore my son — and I want my son in heaven ultimately with me one day. And so I will remain firm on standing what I believe are biblical family values.” Niña V. Guno/JB
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