AN ACTIVIST IS BORN

She’s the mom every gay person wishes they had. She’s marched in Gay Pride parades, lobbied for gay rights, and headed two chapters of PFLAG. But Carol Cadonic wasn’t always like this. In fact, if you saw her 12 years ago, you would never believe this was the same woman.

It was 1995. Carol, her husband Craig, and her sons Mike and Tom were living in Bloomington, Illinois. Tom was a senior in high school, and Carol and Craig knew something was wrong with him.

"Do you like guys?" she asked Tom one Sunday afternoon. Carol couldn’t even say the word gay or homosexual. Tom simply shook his head yes. Carol says the hardest part for her at the time was that Tom didn’t accept himself. "What really broke my heart is that he said, Mother I don’t want to be this way," Carol explains. "He said he was mad at God for making him a freak."

"I just thought I can’t have a gay son. I thought all gay people were perverts and evil people. I was very uneducated on the subject of homosexuality," she says.

"When I learned about him being gay it was like the Tom that I knew died," she says. "I turned into a complete zombie. I couldn’t function." She knew she needed help and embarked on a mission to find other parents of gays and lesbians to help her understand and cope.

Tom started to become more open and accepting of himself. His school and classmates, however, weren’t quite so accepting. He was being harassed at school and he never told his parents. When Carol found out through one of Tom’s friends what was happening, she confronted him about it. He responded, "Mother, this is what gay people have to put up with."

The situation at school went from bad to worse for Tom. Nobody would talk to him. He was getting into fights. The last straw for Carol was when three boys at school threatened to kill him. So at Carol’s request he was transferred to a school that ended up being even more dangerous. It was a high school for troubled kids. On registration day at the new school, Carol and Tom and were greeted by a police officer at the director’s door after some students were caught carrying guns.

"I’m thinking - Where am I bringing my son? We’re the victims here, and I’m signing my son up for classes in the hallway," she said. "I was so afraid somebody was going to hurt him." After Tom graduated, Carol was instrumental in getting sexual orientation added as a protected class in the student handbook of all the schools in the Normal, Illinois school system.

The traumatic events that Tom experienced through his senior year were what turned Carol into an activist. Through an Episcopal minister (also a parent of a gay son), Carol was introduced to PFLAG at one of their meetings in Chicago.

"I couldn’t speak. I just cried. Everyone came over to me after the meeting. They say pflag is family - that’s true. You become instantly connected. There’s no place else you can go and let people know where you are on your life journey and listen to stories like yours," she says.

"I walked out of there feeling like maybe I can get through this," she says. Carol and her husband would drive into Chicago for these meetings every Sunday. "Since I knew I was suicidal, it really saved me."

It was Tom who suggested she start a PFLAG chapter in Bloomington. A Methodist Church approached Carol offering the organization a place to meet, and PFLAG in Bloomington was established with Carol and Craig at the helm. The couple also started a drop-in center for gay youth.

When Carol and her family moved to Louisville in 2001, she joined the local PFLAG chapter and she serves as the current president, continuing the PFLAG mission to provide support, education and advocacy for parents, family and friends of the GLBT community.

She says she’s committed to the work that PFLAG does. "I will always do it. I don’t want any parent to go through the Hell that I went through, the pain, the suffering, and the ignorance of it all. If I can help anybody, I will always be there."

For more information about PFLAG Louisville go to pflaglouisville.org or call (502) 329-0229.

 by Chip Alfred

If you know an individual or group that’s making an inspirational contribution to the GLBT community, please send your ideas (and contact info) for future Inspirit articles to Chip at chipinlexky@insightbb.com.