OK Pride: An Unlikely Activist
Sometimes a person’s heart can’t unfurl to its fully-formed, glorious, magnanimous size until it’s been well and truly shattered first. And sometimes what starts as heartbreak quickly becomes an awakening and the realization that you’ve just discovered your life’s purpose.
That’s exactly what happened to Sara Cunningham when her son came out. She was shaken, shattered, panicked, beside herself, and certain that his revelation would doom him to hell for eternity. Literally. “It was a brutal awakening,” Cunningham says. “Our church was non-affirming. People I knew acted like something bad had happened to Parker. At first I thought I needed to do anything I could to save him. My mindset was that I was fighting to save his soul from eternal damnation, because that was the ideology of the church we went to at the time.”
Parker was young, 21, when he came out to his mother, and Cunningham freely admits that she would have tried anything to un-gay him back then, even the so-called conversion therapy now illegal in 20 states. “A better name for conversion therapy is shame-based ministry. It’s still legal in Oklahoma, and it’s dangerous. But I would have tried it for Parker. I couldn’t, though, because he was too young.” She sounds so deeply grateful, now, that that plan was thwarted, although at the time she felt it was a huge blow.
But then she met some of Parker’s friends. And she started thinking. “It was pivotal. I realized that my straight son had more rights and legal protection than my gay son.” She realized she was accountable for what she did – or didn’t do – next. So she tried to bring her church around, bless her heart.
“I tried to bridge the gap, to try to get them to the table,” she says of her now-former Baptist church. “The church wouldn’t budge.” Cunningham left that church but holds fast to her Christian faith. “I found faith-based resources and found my mission: to build people up in love, to empower the LGBTQIA+ community,” she says.
As she was getting her bearings, a friend of hers from the neighborhood (an atheist!) was among the first to celebrate her son and offer unconditional support. “She accepted my son when I didn’t know if I could. She walked through that with me.” From there, Cunningham found a private Facebook group for parents of LGBTQIA+ children. “I learned that I was not alone.”
Cunningham refocused her energies and started her work with the LGBTQIA+ community. She found her voice and began using it, and a movement was born. Now that she’s rolling, she’ll never stop. “I went to the Oklahoma City Pride Parade in 2015, with a button that said ‘Free Mom Hugs,’ and I offered a hug or a high five to every person who made eye contact with me. Certainly I wasn’t the first mom to offer free hugs, but it became a platform for me to start changing conversations.”
She also became ordained, so she could officiate same sex or LGBTQIA+ weddings. In an interview with CBS News she said, “Many of the weddings I officiate, I'll say, 'How are your parents? Are they accepting?' And they say, 'Well, I don't know if I'll invite them or not. They don't acknowledge my relationship.'” Their sad predicament rebroke her heart and prompted her to post something on Facebook.
It was a picture of herself, hand raised as though she wanted to be called on in class. She wrote “PSA. If you need a mom to attend your same sex wedding because your biological mom won’t, Call me. I’m there. I’ll be your biggest fan. I’ll even bring the bubbles.”
She went viral. Everything started moving really fast. She founded a nonprofit called Free Mom Hugs. Chapters started sprouting up across the country and now there’s a chapter in each state. Europe is next. “Scripture says ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love,’ and that’s what I believe,” Cunningham says.
She’s been interviewed by media from around the world, speaks and travels constantly, and now Free Mom Hugs is her full-time occupation. Her husband and both sons are fully supportive. In an interview with Buzzfeed, she explains: “I thought, ‘If my son is going to hell for being gay, I’m going to fight for him like my hair is on fire.’ Since then I’ve gotten educated and no longer believe that — so now I’ve [been] fighting for him and the LGBTQ community like my hair is on fire because I’ve seen the power of what fear and ignorance can do.”
Cunningham kept educating people, kept fighting. She wrote a book, “How We Sleep at Night: A Mother’s Memoir.” Jamie Lee Curtis messaged her, moved by her viral post, and told her how much she admired her work. They soon realized that they are kindred spirits (they could easily be sisters), and now Curtis is producing (and starring in) a movie based on the book.
“I was moved by her journey,” Curtis said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And I continue to be thrilled as her movement is catching on. I hope to do justice to her story and the story of so many marginalized people in the LGBTQ community.”
Curtis said she was drawn right away to Cunningham’s story and came to Oklahoma City about a year ago to spend time with Cunningham. “I saw the impact that her movement has already had in and around Oklahoma City,” Curtis says. “It’s exciting to watch something that was born out of such conflict develop into something of such deep compassion and expansive acceptance.”
If there’s one thing Cunningham wants people to understand, it’s this. “The problems facing the LQBTQIA+ community all stem from the non-affirming, Evangelical Christian Churches. And if one person affirms someone who identifies as LGBTQIA+, it lowers their suicide risk. Be an advocate. Wear a shirt, put a rainbow sticker on your car. And VOTE.”