LGBTQ Issue: Uncle Offers to Walk Niece Down the Aisle After Her Father Refuses

LGBTQ Issue lesbian daughter brothers feud family feud LGBTQ community gay lesbian bisexual people Reddit Parent-Adult Child Estrangement bigotry conservative religion conservative Christian church LGBTQ wedding safe space

By Jo Anne Hubert , Parent Herald Jan 30, 10:01 pm

Parents, who asked their daughter to postpone her wedding until they were ready, received backlash from netizens.

An uncle took to social media to discuss the current situation of their family regarding his lesbian niece, who will be getting married in six months but is having the problem of not having her mom and dad on her wedding day.

User u/ConcernEquivalent744 narrated on Reddit how he stepped up and volunteered to walk his 25-year-old niece down the aisle instead of his brother, who is not yet ready to see his daughter get married in an LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) wedding.

The uncle claimed that his willingness to support his niece came from his position as a father of a son who came out as gay when he was 16. He does not want to let his son down. However, his decision caused an uproar in the family, with his parents and siblings taking his brother's side.

Feud between brothers

The niece's uncle explained that his brother and wife are members of a conservative Christian church. When her niece came out as a lesbian at 17 years old, her parents kicked her out of the house. She has lived with her grandparents since and even paid for her college education.

He tried to be a "safe space" for her knowing that she is a great kid and because he understood her since he has a gay son, whom he and his wife immediately accepted and assured that their lives are better because he is a part of them.

Her niece and her parents have started to reconnect for the past two years. They have been attending family therapy to heal the wounds and make the family whole again. However, when the parents found out about the wedding, they thought it was too far, Newsweek reported.

"They, however, still say that this is a 'mental block' for them. They've actually asked her to move the wedding back so they have more time to adjust to the idea of her being married to another woman," User u/ConcernEquivalent744 stated. Thus, he immediately offered to walk his niece down the aisle.

His brother got furious when he found out about his offer, reminding him that he, as the father, had the right to give away his daughter. The uncle told him that he was standing firm with his offer as he needed to make sure that his gay son knew that he was safe with the family, unlike his brother, who still needs "to see a therapist to teach him how to love his own daughter."

Safe space

User u/ConcernEquivalent744's family is taking the side of his brother on the matter.

Their parents are angry with him for not seeing the need to understand his brother and sister-in-law as they have to process things in the family and "unlearn" a lot. His sister also told him that he needed to listen more and judge less. Even his wife informed him that he could have handled the situation better.

The uncle might have been on the wrong side of the family, but he was praised, while his brother received some serious backlash from the netizens. Reddit users are backing him up, as reflected by their 12,300 upvotes and over 1,700 comments.

Some comments questioned why the daughter needed to wait for her parents to be okay with her choice and accept her before getting married. Others also stressed that "conservative religion" is "no excuse" for being "cruel and bigoted" parents. Another commenter stated that the father is "fully capable" of walking his father down the aisle; it's just that he has decided that "his own acquired bigotry" is much more important to him than his relationship with his daughter.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual adults are more likely to be estranged from their fathers than heterosexual adults, according to a 2022 study, "Parent-Adult Child Estrangement in the United States by Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Sexuality."

Researchers followed 12,686 Americans between 1979 and 2018 and discovered that 32.1 and 35.3 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual participants, respectively, were estranged from their fathers as compared to 21.7 percent of heterosexual individuals.

Tristan Martin, assistant teaching professor for the Department of Marriage and Family Therapy at Syracuse University, New York, confirmed the study's results stating that it is prevalent for members of the LGBTQ community to be estranged from their families. However, that is not how it should end if parents and people around them can create a "safe space" for them.