Mommie Dearest: 28-Year-Old Gay Man Discovers Homophobic Mom Seeking to Ban LGBTQ Books

Twenty-eight-year-old San Diego resident Weston Brown felt his heart tighten as he looked at a Twitter post. On a video was a West Texas woman telling a local school board that a local minister should determine what titles be allowed in the school library. Her rant was part of her attempt to remove dozens of books that contained descriptions of sex or LGBTQ themes – books that she believed could be damaging to the hearts and minds of students.

When the school district, NBC News reports, only removed a handful of titles, "the woman filed a police report in May accusing school employees of providing pornography to children, triggering a criminal investigation by Hood County."

About the minister, Monica said that "he would never steer you wrong," while proposing that he censor the titles.

What was making Brown anxious wasn't just what she was saying, but who she was: it was his mother Monica Brown, who had thrown him out of the house in 2018 when he came out as gay.

"The same woman, he said, who'd removed pages from science books when he was a child to keep him and his siblings from seeing illustrations of male and female anatomy," reports NBC News. "The woman who'd always warned that reading the wrong books or watching the wrong movies could open the door to sinful temptation. And the one, he said, who'd effectively cut him off from his family four years ago after he came out as gay."

"You are not invited to our house for Thanksgiving or any other meal," his mother had texted to him in November 2018, eight months after he revealed his sexual orientation to his parents.

Weston told NBC News that he has long come to terms with the estrangement, though he loves his parents and misses his younger siblings. He has also decided not to attempt to convince them any longer that his being gay was neither a choice or a sin. But upon seeing the video, he thought he needed to go public against his mother's hateful message.

"It was one thing when my parents' beliefs were causing this rift between us and it was just a family matter," Weston said. "But seeing now that she's applying those same views to public activism, at a time when so many basic rights are being challenged, I couldn't stay quiet about that."

"In public, Monica has denied targeting LGBTQ books," NBC News adds. "At a recent school board meeting, she said her only objective has been to protect children from sexually explicit content – gay or otherwise."

"There's nothing about LGBTQ involved in this," she said. "There are LGBTQ books that are sexually explicit, yes. They are wrong, too. If they are between men and men, women and women, cats and women, dogs and women, whatever, that is not appropriate educational content."

After watching the video and skimming the proposed banned titles, Weston said his mother and her supporters were pushing public schools to adhere to some of the same strict religious ideologies that he says he suffered under as a child.

"This is my mom," he typed on Twitter, with a link to the school board meeting video. "Seeing her advocate for the erasure of queer representation is crushing. Coming up on the 5-year anniversary of being effectively cut off from my family and siblings after coming out in 2018."

He added, "Much love to those standing up and pushing back for representation," along with a rainbow flag emoji.

He also recalled to NBC News an incident he had while living at home in 2015. He had just watched "Avengers: Age of Ultron," a PG-13 superhero movie that his mother disapproved of. "When he walked into his kitchen, he said, he found two pans of brownies waiting for him, along with a stack of articles printed off the internet about the corrosive influence of Marvel comics and films.

One pan of brownies was normal. The other had a label that warned it had been baked with a small amount of dog poop mixed in.

"Poo anyone? Just a little?" Monica wrote later, when she posted an image of the brownies on Facebook. "How much yuck is too much?"

Weston thought she made her point and they never discussed it again.

Also, after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Monica frequently shared social media posts warning of the "dangerous" gay agenda she believed to be proliferating in the U.S.

According to her, Disney was secretly pushing an LGBTQ lifestyle on children in movies such as "Toy Story 4." She also posted a link to a video claiming that "pop star Katy Perry was conspiring with satanic forces to convince teens to embrace homosexuality," NBC News reports.

Weston said that he spent years attempting to reconcile the religious beliefs instilled in him as a child when he grew up, but at the age of 23 in 2018, he felt confident to tell them he was gay in a note that ended, "I pray that you receive this with an open mind." The note went unanswered, and in the following month, Weston received a deluge of links from his parents suggesting he seek counseling to change. "But after Weston made clear that there was no prayer or summer camp that would change who he is, he said his parents made clear that he was not welcome at their home, even on holidays or birthdays," reports NBC News.

"You are not rejected, not at all, and never will be," his father, James Brown, texted to him in October 2019, more than a year after he came out. "The lifestyle you have chosen goes against God and therefore that is the rejection you have chosen." Adding: "Have you ever considered the pain you have put your mother and I through?"�

Monica (Brown), 51, has homeschooled all nine of her children and serves as the director of a private Christian education cooperative. NBC News adds that she declined to be interviewed or answer written questions. In a series of email exchanges, she initially invited a reporter to discuss the article over dinner at her home in Granbury, but in a subsequent message, she said her husband would not allow the meeting, adding, "I have been advised to not speak with you at all." Her husband also declined to be interviewed.