West Seattle resident Anne Melle, 87, has been a gay activist for nearly 40 years, and wears her over-sized, bright yellow button a lot lately with the message “I’m a PFLAG Mom.” PFLAG is “Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays,” an international organization, with over 500 chapters in America.

Melle, a PFLAG past-president, and her late husband raised two gay sons, Raymond and Len Hilgermann. Raymond passed away three years ago and would be 63. Len, 64, also active in the organization, lives in an apartment just across the patio from his mother, near Endolyne Joe’s.

Gay rights are high on people’s radars now. October 11 was National Coming Out Day, which respects civil awareness of those disclosing their sexual orientation. Four young American students who recently committed suicide as a result of bullying for being gay never made it to see Oct. 11. On Oct. 12, Fort Worth City Councilmember Joel Burns gave an emotional, much-viewed 12-minute anti-bullying plea to colleagues, and gay youngsters and parents via YouTube.

It’s not just peers who bully, but parents, too. And while PFLAG set out in 1973 to offer support to moms and dads, (It became official eight years later) its Seattle chapter sees young teens in crisis coming through the door, at Seattle First Baptist Church on Capitol Hill. Some get kicked out of the house when their parents learn they are gay. According to Melle, most were expelled from home due to parents’ religious issues.

Len became an ordained Tibetan Buddhist teacher and leads meditation workshops in pain management from decades of counseling experience, and believes Buddhism is the most accepting world religion of homosexuality.

“Religion is one of the great oppressors,” said Melle. “It’s heartbreaking, not my idea of what religion should be. But churches can be a positive force as well. Now many Protestant churches are open and affirming. Episcopalians have the group ‘Integrity’ and Catholics have ‘Dignity’ though the Catholic Church won’t acknowledge them.”

“Integrity” and “Dignity” work toward full inclusion of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community.

Raymond and Len were raised in conservative Park Ridge, Illinois, the Chicago suburb where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also from and became a “Goldwater Girl.”

Len described Park Ridge 40 and 50 years ago as "not very tolerant of anyone who was not white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Our family was driven to survive and succeed like all immigrant families were, and sexuality of any kind was never discussed."

Surprisingly, Melle became a gay activist there before her sons shared their sexual orientation with their parents. She attended “Parents of Gays” meetings in Chicago with a close friend with a gay son. “Parents of Gays” was set up by the Mattachine Society. That organization started in the 1950’s and helped organize the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969, Melle said.

“I helped facilitate meetings before I knew my sons were gay,” she recalled. “I didn’t even know what ‘gay’ was. What’s difficult for me at support meetings for me is when I hear stories of parents disowning their kids as I have this unconditional love for my kids. I got it from my parents.

“I was always going to these ‘Baptist meetings’ with my friend. Well, that’s what I told my husband,” she said wryly, referring to her secretive trips to “Parents of Gays.”

“In defense of him, a lot of fathers would throw you out, disinherit you. He just didn’t want to hear about it, and was very unhappy.”

“His comment when I came out to him was we were the last of the family name,” recalled Hilgermann. “He had worked hard and was going to leave some money for future generations knowing his name was going to be carried on. I appreciated that honesty about him that he could say to me that his hopes were not going to happen. He said, ‘You’re still my son, I love you no matter what.’”

“In defense of your parents, once you come out you’ve had maybe five or ten years to work this situation out in your mind, body, friendships,” Melle said. “Then you drop this bomb. You need to realize you’ve jolted them into something that most haven’t even thought about. Do not expect in two weeks or two months that your parents will come to terms with this.”

“The parents first have to go through denial, grieving, and the other steps before integrating this new idea,” said Hilgermann. “People coming out, do not come out at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Come out in a diffused environment when there aren’t high expectations.”

Raymond taught at Northwestern University near Chicago, developed speed-reading and learning methods, and consulted for several national corporations. He moved to Boston where Len had moved. Len taught school and counseled in the late 1970’s, and participated in some of the earliest gay rights "ragtag" marches in America there, as he described them. Then Raymond bought a farm in rural Maine. Anne divorced in 1977 and moved to Maine, too.

Melle’s gay activism traveled with her, and she recalled that in Maine some were hostile to PFLAG meetings – she was frequently getting threatening messages left on the PFLAG phone line.

“I lived 15 miles from the church where we held meetings,” she said. “On one occasion our group received threats that all of us were going to be killed as we exited the church after our meeting, so the county sheriff sent several squad cars to be present while the meeting was going on. After the meeting one squad car drove with me all the way home.

"I lived in Waldoboro. Raymond lived about eight miles away, near Bremen. He insisted I use my maiden name so there wouldn’t be any association. He was paranoid that word would get around that I attended the meetings and rednecks would hurt him. I decided to keep my maiden name when I moved to Seattle.”

“Supportive parents are essential for everybody, and when someone’s son or daughter comes out to them it changes what they might have expected for their child’s future,” said State Senator Joe McDermott, who is openly gay, and serves West Seattle’s 34th District.

“When you expect your child to grow up and marry a person of the opposite sex and raise children, the parents may have just one image,” McDermott added. “The initial reaction isn’t the long-term response, which is really important. Today we know that coming out still means you can marry, raise children and be everything your parents, and even you, might have expected growing up.

“The more work PFLAG can do to support fellow parents and families, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, the stronger community we have across our city and state,” he said.

Melle said that even with the loss of Raymond she still says she has two gay sons, and that they have made her very proud.

“Where did I go wrong? I didn’t. I went right,” she said with defiant delight.

Check out: www.seattle-pflag.org