How One Mom Changed From Conservative Christian To Passionate LGBTQ+ Advocate

Learn more about Sara Cunningham and Free Mom Hugs at freemomhugs.org.

‘All In’

Sara Cunningham doesn’t do anything halfway.

When I give myself to something I'm all in. I've always been that way. when I commit to something I'm all in, to a fault.

Sara and her husband met as teenagers in Oklahoma. They married young after discovering she was pregnant.

It wasn't until I had children that I thought, I'm going to raise my children in a faith. And so it was that when I got really serious. Once I had children, that's when I just dove in head first and full steam. 

She decided the Southern Baptist church was going to be their community. 

It eventually became where I was helping out with the youth group there in the nursery with weddings and funerals, the women's Bible study. I just got plugged in. That's where our family was every Sunday and Wednesday and any other opportunity when the doors were open.  And it was my life. 

And she believed everything preached from the pulpit, even voted the way the minister told her to vote.

 I loved learning about scripture and what I believed to be the power of the Holy Spirit. But it was a very conservative church. I didn't realize how indoctrinated I was until after the fact.

She didn’t think to question it until her son came out as gay. This is a story about how Sara reexamined her religion and learned what it truly meant to be a woman of faith. 

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

Confident In Her Faith

For many years Sara Cunningham raised her kids based on the church teachings.

SARA: I'd been so confident in everything and every aspect of our faith, of where our family was, our home. You know, I was secure in knowing where we stood, I just had such confidence in our spiritual walk.

LAUREL: And as your kids were growing up, did you have any dreams for them? Like did you envision what their life might be like?

SARA: Yes, I certainly wished for them better than I had it at the time. Security, education, and I just had hopes that they would be happy, healthy adults. And just to have a home, a supportive family, but mostly in the traditional sense, you know, that they would grow up and meet someone, fall in love, have a family. You know, the usual.

LAUREL: Right, but in your mind it was in a heterosexual relationship.

SARA: Yes, yes.

Playing Dress Up

She had two sons, Travis and Parker, who Sara says couldn’t be more different.

They're completely different in personality. Travis is like a man's man, if you will, does construction and everything you think is a typical male role of a man. And Parker was always very feminine gravitated towards the more glittery, shiny things and soft spoken, not into sports. You know like at Halloween, he always wanted to be like the fairy godmother or, you know, the princess.

Sara recalls a time when Parker was five years old and they had another family over for dinner.

And he and they had a little girl and they were both around the same age and they were upstairs playing. The adults were down in the kitchen, you know, just having dinner and visiting. And Parker and their daughter came barreling down the stairs and he had on one of my dresses and a pair of my heels and he danced in our kitchen until his hair was wet with sweat. I had never seen that expression on his face before. He's five years old and I'm sitting there and that was my first kind of inclination. Like, oh my goodness. We were laughing. It was a moment. But I remember afterwards, because he did not want to take that dress off. And I remember thinking then something might be up. 

She didn’t say anything. She just hoped it was a phase and kept going to church.

I was just praying that church life would, you know, lead him on the right path. But he tried to have conversations at the kitchen sink or after dinner walk like, ‘mom, I'm feeling a certain way towards other boys in class.’ You know just expressing that but I didn't allow the conversation. I didn’t allow the vocabulary. I just manipulated the conversation every time and just thought it was a phase and that, you know, God would steer him in the right direction. 

Frozen In Fear

Ten years passed and Parker brought it up less and less until late one night when everyone else was in bed. Sara was folding laundry in front of the TV when Parker came into the room.

…and he came and sat down beside me and said, ‘Mom, I'm gay. I really think I'm gay.’ And I shamed him with the very best of intentions and I, you know, I just I treated him badly and I did everything but probably kick him out of the house. Of course I didn't, but in my mind, it crossed my mind, like, ‘you know, so much, you think you're gay you think you know so much, then go stay with your friends who think they're gay too.’ Or, you know, at that time I was angry, I was frustrated and I'll never forget that night.

Sara says looking back she was afraid.

I was fearful for him, but I was frozen in this fear and ignorance of his salvation. You know, was he going to burn in hell? What did this mean for him going forward? Would he be picked upon? You know, hate crimes, the Matthew Shepard story, all of those things. And then what would that mean to us as a family of faith? What would that mean for us in this congregation that somehow I had failed as a woman of faith, that somehow I had failed him as a mother, that he would be gay or turn out gay. I don't know how he got to sleep that night. I certainly didn't. 

After that night neither one of them brought it up for a long time.

He went into his closet, so to speak. He became very depressed, full of anxiety, emotional, and it was just a mess in our home. I made things difficult not just for him but for our family. It was really hard. Like he had to check himself at the door, I'm sure.

He had to check himself at the church door too. 

I just kept praying for some holy bolt of lightning to strike and make everything okay as far as him being gay.

‘He Came Out And I Went In’

Sara went into denial while Parker confided in a teacher and his dad. They went on like this avoiding the subject until Parker was 21. He and Sara met for lunch one day.

SARA: He sat across the table from me and I remember the restaurant. He told me he said, ‘mom I met someone and I need you to be okay about it.’ And I don't even remember who paid the bill. I felt like I was a napkin that was soaking up water slowly and it was just I was becoming absorbed with this news and facing the reality that I do have a gay son. And what does this mean going forward? Like there is no more denying it. He's a grown man. That was a pivotal moment. He came out of his closet and I went into mine. And I went into a depression. I spiraled I stayed in bed. I missed work. I just was frozen in this fear that he was going to burn for eternity. 

LAUREL: Did you consult with anyone at that time, like your pastor or did you talk to anyone at the church?

SARA: Yeah, I had women that I was very close to who were also mothers. And as I tried to talk with my peers within the church, just we didn't know how to minister to each other. You know, one of the things that that was said to me is that he was just trying to get attention, that it was a phase. Another friend said that he had given himself over to the wiles of the enemy and ‘love the sinner, hate the sin.’ 

Feeling alienated, Sara stopped going to church. Instead she turned to the Internet for answers.

I started seeing the oppression within the gay community. I started learning about laws and conversion therapy but by that time the harm being done. And so that just, but I didn't know any other mothers with gay kids. I just, thought I was the only mom with this fear of in burning in hell for eternity and if I accepted him that made me just as much of a sinner as he was. I wanted to put a banner up and say, ‘welcome to reality,’ because that's where we were then.

For three months Sara had trouble getting out of bed.

I was in my bed one afternoon and just he came and laid down beside me and he said, ‘Mom, are you going to be okay?’ And I said, ‘I just got to figure this out.’

She’d been so confident in her faith and now was uncertain about everything.

I truly was frozen. I didn't know where to look for resources. I thought I was the only mom with this insane thought in my mind. 

Rainbows

It was around this time that she read an article about Linda Mueller Robertson who lost her son. 

She had a son who was gay and came out and got caught up in drugs and alcohol and they would not accept him… He left the home, he became homeless. And then she, I guess, got educated and then accepted him and he came back home and got cleaned up and everything. And then he relapsed and overdosed. And they were just, well, you could imagine. And so she started a group saying, ‘just because they breathe, just because they breathe, love them.’

So Sara looked it up and found many other moms like her.

We all had the same story of having that fear, being stuck in that ignorance and the alienation that came from our church families. We all had the same story as our children came out to us. And so it was a wellspring of support. I found resources there that talked about scripture and how it had been misunderstood, misused, misinterpreted with the very best of intentions and that's where I began to really see that you can be gay and Christian.

She found another group called Mama Bears. With the help of these women she met online she started to educate herself. She learned about the Stonewall riots and the biology behind sexual orientation. 

I couldn't imagine my life without that group.

In 2014 Parker invited his parents to a pride festival in Oklahoma City. In the weeks leading up to it, a friend prayed over her.

She goes, ‘Lord, I pray that you would allow Sara to be Jesus to these people.’ I thought, I'm going to go in there. We're going to have praise and worship. We're going to have Bible study. I'm going to, you know, not save them by any means, but that was my only picture of community that I knew. 

The day arrived and Sara asked God for some kind of sign because she was still trying to figure out what her role was. 

And the experience there, I'll never forget, is that I saw such diversity and community and love and complete belonging and seeing my son happy, not just there, but once he came out, he was happy and seeing other people accept him when I was kind of on that fence. You see, it put me in check. 

Everywhere she looked she saw rainbows – on flags, on shirts, on banners. Then all at once it dawned on her the significance of the rainbow in scripture – in the bible after the great big flood and noah built his ark the rainbow was a sign of hope, protection and beauty after the storm to every living creature. 

I was reminded of that verse in a whole new perspective that the rainbow is for everyone and I looked to the heavens and I said, ‘God thank you that I have been changed.’ And at that moment, there was no going back. No going back. Oh my God the audacity of that prayer hit me when I was standing in that moment. And that's when I saw the rainbow and I thought the audacity of that prayer and the experience I was having at that moment I lost my breath had a brick size gulp in my mouth. I almost fell to my knees when I realized God, thank you that I am the one changed.

After that Sara decided she was all in. She got online and found PFLAG meetings for Parents Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

I went to what I thought was a PFLAG meeting for families like mine, and it turned out to be for the transgender adult community. I had never been in the same room with a transgender person that I know of until that day. And I stayed. and I listened to their stories and I cried hot tears in my car after that meeting. And I thought, these are beautiful, misunderstood people. And from then on, I became a fierce advocate for the transgender community. 

Free Mom Hugs Button

She came back and listened.

Hearing stories and how they had been alienated from their families and mostly from their mother. And that just broke my heart because I knew it was a very real, it could have happened to me. You know, on the night when Parker was 15, I didn't kick him out. But the thought crossed my mind… 

A year went by and as she became more involved in the LGBTQ+ community, the hurt and injustice became painfully clear. So on the night before her second gay pride festival Sara decided she needed to do something. She drove to Michaels and found a blank button and with black magic marker wrote three words: “free mom hugs.”

The next day she put on a sundress she normally wore to church and pinned the button over her heart.

I went to the pride festival and I stood there and with anyone who made eye contact with me, I would say, ‘could I offer you a free mom hug or a high five?’ Cause not everybody's a hugger. And the first hug went to a beautiful girl who said it had been four years since she had a hug from her mother because she's a lesbian. And I pulled her in tight and we hugged each other. And I said, ‘well, I'm a mom and here's a hug and I'm not letting go until you do.’

Word spread and soon Parker heard.

He was seeing people, hearing people saying, ‘there's this lady down here and she's offering,’ I mean, he knew I was going to do it, but he had no idea the ripple effect of it. They didn't know I was his mom…then he goes well she's really doing it you know and at the end of the day he goes, ‘you should have met her five years ago.’

Sara knew she was onto something. That was the day Free Mom Hugs was born.

I went home covered from head to toe with glitter and with my hair on fire.

‘I’ll Bring The Bubbles’

Sara reached out to the mothers she’d met on Facebook and brainstormed other ways of showing support – if someone needed help paying a phone bill they paid it, or needed a safe place to live they found a guest room for them.

Whether it was inside or outside of the church, that was community, that was serving the community. And I loved that part of the ministry. A few moms and I, would just say, ‘okay, I got $20 here, you got $30 there, let's give them a food card.’

Around this time Sara and her husband went on vacation and met another couple.

They were older couple that stayed in the same hotel we were at. And we met them and became friends. And it turned out that they were a same sex couple, two older women. And we just, you know, we just connected immediately, we had dinner together and we became friends. 

Not long after in June of 2015 the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. 

They had been together 28 years, Laurel. And when the Marriage Equality Act passed, they reached out to me and asked if I would officiate their wedding. 

So Sara got ordained and officiated on the big day . At the couple’s rehearsal dinner she heard that one set of parents refused to come.

…and they were just heartbroken. And so I went to bed, I went home frustrated. I felt so bad for this beautiful couple and knowing the next day they were going to get married with knowing that their mom wasn't going to come. And so that's when I made that post that said, ‘if your biological mom won't come to your same sex wedding, then you call me, I'll be there. I'll be your biggest fan. I'll bring the bubbles.’ Meaning that I was going to celebrate that moment with you and for you and to you. And so that post went viral and I had no idea what going viral meant.

Since that viral post Sara has attended dozens of weddings, graduations and births near and far all the while maintaining her job as a secretary at an architecture firm. She’s since inspired other moms and dads to show up too.

SARA: Just be available. I help, I can set a table, I can walk them down the aisle, I can give the toast. I mean, just as much as they want is what I'm gonna do.

LAUREL:   What does that feel like to be a part of such a big day for someone you barely know?

SARA: It's the highlight. I've had a lot of highlights in my life, but it's definitely at the top. Getting to celebrate love and these beautiful couples and it's one of my highest honors.

Free Mom Hugs Reach

LAUREL: I saw how you still feel awful for the way you treated Parker when he came out. And I'm wondering if giving these hugs and being a part of this community and supporting them, if you feel redemption in any way.

SARA: No, I know there's a lot of good that has come from this because I see families have authentic relationships. But what upsets me is that I missed an entire adolescence of Parker's life…I just have such shame over that and guilt and people say, well, you look at what you've done, but it doesn't take away the imagery and the memories and the words. And you know, I can't take that back. And even though Parker's forgiven me and yes, I forgive myself, but you still can't. I mean, I will never forget the way that I treated him. And I feel very badly about that. It's remorse, you know, more than anything. We have had lots of conversations and we've had to work through with a lot of therapy.

Today Free Mom Hugs is a national nonprofit that has chapters in all fifty states and its logo is recognized around the world. Sara says it’s not a religious organization but she says it’s important to talk about it.

We cannot leave out religion because that's how we got into this mess. I am still a woman of faith. We don't identify as a religious organization, though we will always speak to that. Our conference will always hold a religious aspect to it because we must educate on bad theology. I used to have a wooden cross hanging from my rear view mirror and it was something I displayed proudly. But as I began to deconstruct and reconstruct my spirituality and my religion, I felt guilty by association because of what the Christian church, the non-affirming evangelical conservative Christian church and the harm that's caused against the LGBTQ+ community. And I took that cross down because I felt guilty by association. And that's when I started identifying as a woman of faith.

When she made the post that went viral, thousands of people saw it including someone Sara never expected – actress Jamie Lee Curtis. 

When Free Mom Hug started taking off I just didn't have the bandwidth. And you'll be interested to know, and I'm very transparent about it, but Jamie Lee Curtis, she saw the post that went viral and long story short, but she made the donation to Free Mom Hugs so I could quit my job and work for Free Mom Hugs.

That made it possible for Free Mom Hugs to host an in-person conference in April. In 2014 Sara wrote a memoir about how a Christian mom came to terms with her son being gay called “How We Sleep At Night” and she is currently working on another book called “Beyond The Hug.”

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.