Acceptance

One day in the month of May 300 miles apart, two families find out that their sons are gay. One family reacts with love and acceptance and the other with hate and disgust.



Alex is almost 22 years old, married, and the father of two small children when his father and wife discover him in bed with another man. He father immediately declares, "I have no son, my son is dead." Alex leaves home without being allowed to even speak to his wife, children, mother, or sister.



Fourteen-year-old Andrew's parents confront him with the stash of gay magazines his mother found under his bed. Their reaction is, "It is against all we believe in, but you are our son and we love you."



Four years later, the two meet and are attracted to one another. The two could not be more opposite in character. Alex is a quiet, conservative, closeted accountant. Andrew is a impish, teenage, artist and as openly gay as he can be. The weekend they meet, Andrew seems to delight in teasing this older man whom everyone tells him is straight.



At the end of the holiday weekend, Andrew finally goes to Alex privately and gets the courage to ask Alex if he is gay or "is my gaydar screwed up?" Alex tells Andrew that there is nothing wrong with his gaydar, but that Andrew is too young for him and needs to grow up. Three years after that, they accidentally meet again and become lovers. It is on Alex's birthday a few weeks later that he accepts himself for what he is. As he says to Andrew later, "when you got off the elevator; I knew that within a few minutes everyone in the office was going to know I was gay, and it didn't matter."



After eight years together, including an episode of infidelity, a tragic accident involving his ex-wife causes Alex's sister to contact him using a phone number in an old letter written to his ex-wife and ask him to come home. He returns to find he is the sole guardian of two teenaged children who hate him for what they have been taught was desertion of them. His father cannot forgive him for what he is and fights him for custody of the kids. As he strives to come to a relationship with his children, secrets that have been hidden from them come to light. They read a message from their dead mother, that exposes the fact that their father didn't run away from them and their mother, but was driven away by hatred and bigotry. This makes them start to look at things differently.



It is largely seeing how the two men act toward each other and Andrew's comments about what families mean that finally reconcile the children and Alex's sister to him. It will take another year before his father can accept that except for the fact that he is gay, Alex is a son to be proud of.