Always our children: Couple works to teach understanding

By Kristine Thomas

Mount Angel residents Steve and Florence Balog know some people won’t understand their mission. And that’s OK.

Their work is geared to address the questions and concerns of parents and family members of lesbian women and gay men, and hopefully enlighten people who have misconceptions about gay or lesbian people.

The Balogs are hosting a workshop called “Always Our Children,” April 24, at the Shalom Prayer Center in Mount Angel. The Balogs base much of their presentation on the American Catholic Bishops’ 1997 Pastoral Letter, Always Our Children. A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children.  Steve and Florence Balog are Catholic parents of twin, lesbian daughters who are now 40 years old.

“We adopted the girls when they were 5 years old,” Florence, 72, said.

Watching their daughters grow from little girls to young adults, they suspected they might be lesbian women. It was on the way to go shopping that Florence stopped one of her daughters and inquired if she might be lesbian.

“At first, she looked at me stoically,” Florence said, “then her eyes lit up and she was relieved to tell me. Her sister called the next day to share her news.”

Although they accepted their daughters for whom they were, they were worried about society’s reaction, including people in their church, friends and family members. They kept quiet about the girls’ announcement for five years.

“We knew when our daughters came out to us how wonderful they are and their sexual orientation didn’t change that,” Florence said. “They were our same daughters – vivacious, creative and alive. Their sexuality is part of the whole person but not entirely who they are.”

Keeping silent about her daughters’ sexuality wasn’t easy for Florence, who was searching for answers.
One day, Florence noticed a woman at St. Andrew’s in Portland wearing a button reading “Person of Faith Against Bigotry.”

Florence was preparing for a church auction when she decided to approach the woman.

“It felt like I was walking in a long tunnel,” she said. “I told Mary I had twin lesbian daughters. She looked at me with the utmost understanding and said to me, ‘you weren’t able to say that to anyone else.”

Believing there were other parents of homosexual children in their own parish and other parishes searching for support, the Balogs created a ministry at St. Andrew’s Parish to let gay and lesbian people know they were welcome.

Over the years, the Balogs have completed countless hours of research on homosexuality and focus their workshop on the positive message the bishops have in their pastoral letter. They emphasize the workshop is a safe, confidential environment that is positive and not argumentative in tone.

Their main goal is to provide support and love for parents who may be going through what they did.
They have studied the bishops’ message and point to a passage reading, “All in all, it is essential to recall one basic truth. God loves every person as a unique individual. Sexual identity helps to define the unique persons we are, and one component of our sexual identity is sexual orientation. Thus, our total personhood is more encompassing than sexual orientation.”

Steve said he has been Catholic all his life but he doesn’t think he understood the message of Christ until he became the father of these young women.

“Christ reached out to everybody,” Steve, 78, said. “It dawned on me that Christ came to give love to those whom society looked down upon.”

Besides the ministry at their church, the Balogs have spoken with students at Central Catholic and Jesuit High schools.

What helps Steve and Florence know their work is making a difference is when they hear from people like the high school senior at Central Catholic High School.

“He was a big guy built like a football player,” Steve said. “He told us before we talked to them he hated homosexual people and after listening to our story he made up his mind not to be hateful to other people.”

And that, they said, is the reason they share their story.

When they retired to Mount Angel, they thought they were finished with their work.

“There was such a silence and negative talk about gay and lesbian people in the world that we decided to come out of retirement and break the silence about the elephant in the room,” Steve said.

He added, “Florence and I have been Catholics all our life. This experience with our daughters has made us realize there is a place at the Lord’s Table of love for everybody. We don’t like people saying that there is no room for our daughters. We are just driven to tell people that this shouldn’t be a silent issue and people should speak up and support their family members. Christ’s message to us is to love one another.”