This week, we’re going to try something different. We thought it might be fun to take a question from one of Summer Camp’s column, and see how our moms might deal with it. So, here’s Rocky’s mom, Daisy, to tell how all about dealing with bad kissers!

Q: Dear Moms,

Are you a member of PFLAG or any other supportive groups for LGBTQ friends and family? If so, what are the benefits of organizations like this to you, and if not, why not?

Q: Dear Moms,

I came out to my parents last year and they mostly took it really well, but we haven’t really talked about it much since then, especially with my mom. I don’t want everything to be about my sexual orientation, but I also kind of feel like they’re ignoring it. Is there some way to bring it up subtly and naturally without making things uncomfortable?

-J

A: Dear J,

I’m glad your parents welcomed your coming out last year. It was an important milestone that marked, among other things, your family’s entry into a stage where you can relate to each other as mature adults.

Dear Moms,

I expect that you are very understanding of your sons, otherwise you wouldn’t have agreed to do a feature such as this for a blog like this one. Still, I wonder if you can speak to what you felt and how you think other moms feel when their son or daughter comes out of the closet.

My mom spent the better part of two years explaining my orientation away as “just a phase.” In the meantime, I was struggling to find who I was. I often felt that I did not have my parents’ full support even though I knew it was just their way of coping. I don’t know if my mom still thinks it’s a phase or not, but she’s at least figured out that it upsets me to hear that from her.

Introducing TNG’s new weekly advice column, “The Mother Lode”

“Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved

Do you ever feel this way? I am officially pushing 30 and yet every time I see my Mom, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is, “There’s my baaaaaby!” It’s maddening, yet supremely comforting at the same time. And, furthermore, don’t they just love to give you advice? Though it was something I used to resent as a teen, the more time I spend away from home the more I actually look forward to hearing my parents’ (sometimes tarnished) pearls of wisdom. From subjects as far reaching as family conflicts, romance issues and friendship splits, the more I actually let my parents give me advice the more I welcome it.

With this phenomenon in mind, TNG writers Rocky and Zack have harnessed the raw power of their own mothers to help you, our readers, make sense of your own lives. They are now at your service. No topic is too small, too personal or too nasty for our moms. (Well, within reason I guess. Maybe save your watersports questions for Summer Camp, ‘cuz dude that’s my mom!) Simply send your mother questions to submit@thenewgay.net and they will be answered with all the wisdom of your own honest-to-goodness mothers, and none of the nagging to have kids or come home and visit me, already.