← Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us #075 | Bobby Lopez: A Child’s Journey Through Divorce, Identity, and Redemption
00:25:57
Loading summary
Transcript17 lines
- [00:00]
Jen Friesen
Foreign. Welcome back to the Them Before Us podcast. I'm your host, Jen Friesen. And today we are joined by someone who has actually shared his story with us on them before us.com Bobby Lopez. Hi Bobby. Thanks for joining us.
- [00:18]
Bobby Lopez
Thank you. I'm excited to be on. I have not done one of these in a very long time, so might be a little bit rusty.
- [00:26]
Jen Friesen
Yeah, you've, you've, I know you've been a little more active in sort of public life and writing and sharing and now you're, you know, you got family and you've got other things going on and so we really appreciate you taking some time to help inform our, our audience for sure. You know, one of the things Them before us is unique in is that we want to help tell the stories of kids though now adults, you know, that have been impacted by some of the, the things our culture has said, hey, this doesn't really matter if we kind of switch dad and mom in and out or div. Or same sex parenting or whatever it is. Kids don't really care. Love makes a family. And you know, a lot of our stories are just people sharing, hey, this is, it did impact me. Here's some negative ways that impacted me. Maybe here's some positive things or you know, resilience of the folks who have shared, of course, is, is a part of what we want people to share, but that was a reason you got in contact with Katie a long time ago. And we're willing to share your story with us. So, yeah, as much as you'd love to maybe just start out and share, you know, kind of who was in your life as early as you can remember and kind of walk us through your early years.
- [01:35]
Bobby Lopez
Well, I mean, I was a child of divorce. That was really kind of the central thing. You know, I think since I came out with my story, it was, would have been 14 years ago now. A lot of conversations with my brothers and sisters, you know, have complicated my memories of every, everything because for a lot of them, they didn't really have the same memories that I did and I had to deal with that and I had to kind of figure out where I was wrong and where they might have been wrong about it. But my parents were essentially divorced really before I was born. I mean, they didn't actually legally get divorced until I was 8 or 9 or something like that. But they're, they were separated and they were both in relationships with women, with other women by the time I was old enough to be aware of the world around me. So the World that I grew up in was one where, you know, I had two parents that lived in separate places. I was living with my mom. She had a lot of health issues, and I think that she had a lot of struggles in her life, and there was just a lot of burdens on her, and I was kind of like an added burden. So it was hard. I think that she was a loving mother, but she definitely, you know, I. I felt like there was a lack of connection with her, and so I kind of gravitated more towards the woman that she was in a relationship with. So my mother's partner was really my main parental figure. She was racially totally different from me, you know, because my dad is Asian, my mom is Hispanic, and the partner was white. So it was, you know, there were a lot of things about it that were alienating and kind of hard to process. As a kid, my dad I was very distant from. You know, I just didn't have a close relationship with him. He was very involved with a series of women. Definitely when I was a child. He was mostly involved with one particular woman who he actually got back together with many years later. So he's with her again. Like, they were an item in the 1970s, and now they got back together, I think, like, three or four years ago. So it's kind of this funny thing where they were not together for 30 years, then they got back together. But during those 30 years, he was involved with. With different women. And so I didn't really feel like I could compete with my brothers and sisters and these other women and their kids, because a lot of them had kids. So that was how I was growing up.
- [04:21]
Jen Friesen
How much time would you say you spent at your dad's house versus your mom's house on a given, like, week or month?
- [04:26]
Bobby Lopez
Or month. My dad's house, maybe once a month. I really did not see him. Yeah, I didn't. I did not really have a relationship with him when I was there. Typically, from what I remember, I mean, I didn't really speak to him. Um, he was usually busy doing other things, and I was usually just in some other room. Um, it was very much like a pro forma thing. You know, we didn't do it. It was mostly because my mom needed a break. Yeah.
- [04:56]
Jen Friesen
Yeah. Right. Well. And, you know, like, we want to be really intentional at them before us that we're not condemning adults that desire to partner with the other, you know, with same sex. It's not against our. Our take on same sex. Parenting is not that a person who's attracted someone of the same gender is like particularly evil and wrong. And you're saying your mom just had struggles. You know, it's hard to be a single parent. It's hard to have to get divorced and split in time. And there's lots of dynamics. Right. And it's interesting you're sharing that. You know, you did feel a connection to your mom's partner. So we're not saying that two women can't be good parental figures. They can be good mother figures to you, but you are still kind of, it sounds like split between. I still desire connection with my dad, and he's sort of distant and he's focused on other relationships. And then my mom's struggling, so she doesn't really have time for me either. So there's another caring adult around. But it's not your mom or your dad, it sounds like.
- [05:58]
Bobby Lopez
Yeah, I, you know, this is one of the reasons why I kind of evolved. And, you know, I'm not really active in the social conservative movement so much anymore because I got really caught up in the heat of it. And it was really, at the time of Obergefell and, you know, 10 years ago we published this book. Katie was part of it, I was part of it. We, a whole bunch of us called Jeff those daughters. And it was really kind of dissecting all of the different angles of same sex relationships. And then, you know, because of the fact that I got canceled over this, all of a sudden I was confronted with a lot of struggles that weren't real to me before, but that were real to me. And then I realized how hard my mother had it. You know, I lost jobs. I still had all of the pressure on me of being married and having two kids, didn't have health insurance. It was really hard to stay in our house. And so I look back at my life and my mother's life, and I think that the same sex relationship thing, it was part of it. And I definitely still stand by my views that I think if you can build homes where there's a mom and a dad and they have a relationship with each other and an exclusive relationship with each other, that's better for the kids. But I think that a lot of these other economic issues were also a big part of it. You know, my parents were. They were living in a time, particularly my mother, where racial discrimination was very, very severe. She had a very thick accent. You know, she was a doctor, so it wasn't like she was poor. But, you know, she, it's not like she was raking in the kind of money that you think of when you think of a doctor. You know, she was really struggling to provide for our kids and her partner had made a much lower income. And as my mom got sick, you know, her partner had to move in and take care of her. And, you know, the, the struggle with the health care and all of that, that, that really kind of overshadows in my mind what that is. And I didn't really realize that until I went through the cancel, you know, being canceled, because basically I got canceled by a left wing university and then I got canceled by a conservative Baptist seminary and I just was abandoned kind of by both sides. So I realized, wow, this is what it's like when nobody really is in your camp except for a handful of people and you have to pay the bills and you, you know, as the father of the house, I can't just break down and, you know, curl up in a ball and start crying. That's just not something that's acceptable for fathers in this society. So you just, you know, I got sick because of all the stress. And so I realized how bad the healthcare was. But at the core of it, you know, I. The culture of divorce really is what produced the same sex parenting scenario. That was almost when, when Katie and I were going and we were looking and talking to all of these different adults who had grown up in same sex parenting situations. All of them had the same story. It was a divorce. And, you know, and, and it's this. There's this younger generation of people who came from sperm banking or from adoption, and they kind of would clash with us sometimes when we would have this debate because they would feel like we weren't really authentically children of gay parents, because obviously our parents were involved in heterosexual relationships. That's where we came from. And we grew up in a time. I grew up in the 70s and 80s. That was a time when the gay community did not, did not want to acknowledge us. They didn't want to talk about gay couples raising children. That was an embarrassment. It was a shame because it showed that a lot of people had gotten involved in relationships and then broken up. And I think that in the 70s and 80s there was just a much more immediate reaction when you would tell people, yeah, my mom, you know, my dad broke up and they got involved with same sex. People would immediately think, oh my gosh, that must have been so hard. The confusion, the disruption, all of that being dragged back and forth. I think the younger generation of people who raised, were raised with gay parents, they just haven't grown up with that being the reaction that people have. Their first. Their first reaction people have now is, wow, that must have been really cool, you know, because it's, like, so innovative, you know, And I think that's what so much of the work of Jeff, this daughter, was. Was. It was trying to just give a V to what the experience really was. It was really hard. And I. You know, I think it's gotten better. But 10 years ago, 12 years ago, you could not talk about these things. You couldn't admit that it was hard because everybody attacked you. And I still think that the LGBT community really mishandled that whole debate, because I think they're the only community I can think of that actively went against their own children. I mean, they really went after me. Brittany, who wrote with me, Denise, all of us, you know, and it's hard to think about that, but I think the landscape has changed. And so I still stand by what I did, but I think other issues are so much more important for keeping families strong. Me.
- [11:33]
Jen Friesen
Oh, yeah. Well. And we talk about it then. Before us, the first redefinition of marriage was no fault divorce. It was saying you don't need a. And that was a Republican president, or he wasn't president yet, but I think Governor of California, Ronald Reagan is the one. I think kind of to justify that he wanted to get divorced. And it was this idea that marriage doesn't need to be permanent. And there can be other, because we believe there are legitimate reasons to get divorced. You know, abuse, abandonment, adultery, these kinds of things. If the other. If one of the partners doesn't want to do it, you know, you can't stay married in a lot of ways, is kind of an organizational view. I know the Catholics have different view of that, but. Yeah, so no fault dwarf started the issues, not people who identified as gay. And to your point, a lot of folks who, you know, so your mom. I don't know what her family structure looked like or. But, you know, a lot of people are coming out of divorced homes where you didn't see a good picture of masculinity and femininity and how those complimented each other and work together. And so folks are looking for something different when they're entering into romantic relationships. Can you talk a little bit about what was it like for you? So you're a man, and you're maybe primarily kind of spending time with your mom and your mom's partner, and there's all the. All the issues that are swimming around, and, you know, you're Hitting puberty, and you're. Maybe you're thinking about dating. Like, what was, what was it like for you in terms of just identity of like, being a man? How do I relate to women? What were, what were things like with that?
- [13:06]
Bobby Lopez
I was a sickly child. My mother was sick during a lot of it. She died when I was a teenager. I was abused, to be frank with you, starting at the age of 13. So. And it wasn't my mom, you know, but it was. It happened while I was living in her house. And I was kind of. I threw myself into that world, you know, the gay world, to kind of try to cope with, with all of that. So I think the identity was very hard. It was very hard to figure out who I was. It was very, very painful. And one of the things that I think men have to struggle with is when you come out of an experience like that, the society is just not very sympathetic to men who have mental health issues. You know, they, they. They don't really want to give you leeway or help or, you know, they. Instead they feel like they revert to tough love, and they like letting you learn lessons by consequences. And so that definitely happened to me. It took me a long time to realize that. It's like, okay, the society is looking at me as a male. So I grew up around a lot of women because I had sisters and then aunts that were living in the house, cousins that were living in the house. Like, there was just a lot of women around. And it took a while for me to realize that, you know, just the reality is that society's not going to react to you as a man by saying, oh, you're, you're hurt. Oh, that's why you did this strange thing. Let me kind of give you an ear and listen. That's just. They don't. People don't care. They really, really don't care. I remember when I first came forward and told my story, I was not trying to be aggressive or confrontational with the community at all. In fact, I kind of very much identified with it. But, I mean, people were just so savage. And I remember trying to engage with some of these people and being like, you know, it was. It was hard. I mean, the mental toll it took on me just from the abuse alone and then with everything else added on top of it and being in that environment where I think if you are a male and you experience abuse like that, the tendency of people is to give your abuser the right to define you. They don't say, oh, you were a victim of abuse. They say whatever you're experiencing, that's a reflection of who you really are. And the abuser must have noticed that. You know, that was kind of the underlying response to people, to that story during that early period. And I just remember people out there in the public, you know, just, they were like, well, why don't you just go kill yourself? You know, they were just very savage and brutal. But I think that that's partly, I had to realize that that's just kind of what life is like when you're a man. You know, I think I didn't realize that for a very long time. I, I kind of expected the world to react to me the way they reacted to my mother, her partner, my sisters and everything like that, which is, oh, you're hurting. Let me, let me, you know, you know, let's. Why don't you talk to someone and stuff like that? So, or, or try to give you comfort. So.
- [16:30]
Jen Friesen
Well, and you know, we talk about the gender difference the way it's supposed to be done. Yes, men and dads are supposed to challenge and push and, but it's supposed to be age appropriate. It's supposed to be, it's not that you go physically hurt or do other kinds of abuse to like toughen up kids. That's not the right way to go about it. So a healthy situation would have a male and a female complement to those things. There's dad pushing, but there's mom that comforts, that tempers dad. Right? They're tempering each other. And when we have two of the same gender, you probably got an amplified version of empathy and comfort and it's all going to be okay without the balance. But two, you know, there's a, there's kids now being raised by two men. And so what's that going to look like? Is it going to be all tough love, all pushing, all challenge and no comfort or empathy? You know, so it was designed to be a balance and you deserve that. And we're not getting that. But that's a really interesting perspective too, that you're saying even people outside of your home and that mom, dad dynamic are still looking at you as like, well, you're a man, therefore you should have to act or deal with the hard things in your life in this certain way. And not people. I think maybe people don't have or haven't had language to help support, to help support kids who were raised in same sex parenting homes.
- [17:59]
Bobby Lopez
There were all of these really shallow platitudes that went back and forth. That didn't really address all the complexities of it. But I also think that part of it is. I realized that, you know, my mother's struggles were. There were a lot of things. She came out of poverty, you know, very. She was. Came from a very, very poor background in Puerto Rico. And you know, it was the world that she was thrown into because she was very bright and she was very, very intelligent. And so they catapulted her into this. You know, she got the scholarship to become a doctor and all that. And she, you know, she wasn't really ready for all that. And so this other part of her life that she was struggling with, she didn't really ever. She didn't have time or space to think about all that. She was just trying to throw everything together. And she started having kids kind of early on. I'm the youngest of four. And then there are other, you know, half, whatever step kids, you know, that are related to us through the, through the intervening marriages and stuff like that. So there were a lot of kids around. So it's very hard. I guess that's why now I really try to focus on family politics in a way that kind of bridges the left and the right. Because I think that the right definitely, they understand the importance of just, you know, the Christian home where, you know, mother and a father, a man shall leave his parents and cleave to his wife and then have a family. Like, you need that stability, you need that. That's how we evolved as people. You know, that's the right really gets that the importance of just putting the family first over your own desires. And then the left understands the whole thing that it's like, you can't have stable families if workers don't have livable wages. And if, you know, like, like the situation that I was in after I lost all of my jobs and I totally out there could not get any kind of assistance from Texas. So I mean, I just was literally, I had. My wife was a stay at home wife, so we had no income coming in. My family was very alienated for me, my biological family. So, you know, I realized when you're in that situation to try to get healthcare for your. For your kids, to be able to keep your car upkeep and then keep a roof over your head as prices are going up, you know. And you saw during COVID how like all of a sudden everyone, they had to rely on their family. It wasn't a choice, you know what I mean? So I think that to try to rebuild the family and to get them before us, the psychology of it in the right place. I try to, you know, be. I try to involve myself in political activism that respects both sides of that. You know, Whereas I think 10 years ago, I just thought of myself as a conservative because I didn't really get what the Democrats were talking about. I was like, well, I have health care, so what are people complaining about? You know, I have this, that, and the other thing, you know, but then you see it and you're like, oh, okay. So I think a lot of these marriages, it is really hard when there's all that pressure on you, when the social fabric has come apart and, you know, there's not the expectation that you're going to stay during hard times. But then on top of it, times are harder. You know, you can't grab. You can't move out of your house at the age of 18 and buy a house today that's not going to, you know, you can't get an apartment, you can't build a life. It's really hard. You know, people are not having kids, they're not getting married, their student loan debts are drowning them. So I just. I think that to address all of it at once is the most important thing and the best way that I can honor my mother, you know, because I understand that there, her same sex relationship was a complication for me. But I think, you know, I also want to honor all the other things that she was dealing with and that people were dealing with. Yeah. And I think the lgbt. Yeah, I think the LGBT community, there's the community and the movement are two different things. So I think the movement made a lot of mistakes. I think that they had done a lot of damage to the Democratic Party because they took all of this political attention to these really boutique issues that they cared about, like banning reparative therapy or, you know, trans rights and things like that that were so specific and that most people couldn't agree with. Right. But I think the community has evolved where now I don't feel this immediate clash when I talk to someone in the LGBT community. You know, I feel like things have. Tempers have kind of cooled. And I think that's one good thing about the work that we did.
- [22:58]
Jen Friesen
I think it's a really good, healthy perspective, too, for just you as a son. I mean, this happens, I think, to most of us when we become adults. You have a perspective of your parents now and you start to see, like, oh, they had to work a job and pay taxes and take care of me and figure it out and in light of medical challenges and all these things that our parents are often trying to do the best they can. And that is, it seems like that's a protective feature from us getting bitter or hating them for something versus being able to see your mom like she's a flawed person but loved you and was doing her best in some ways and made mistakes in other ways. How would you just kind of, for a final thought for our listeners, how, how did you get from the struggles you had in childhood and those, those issues with identity and those sorts of things to now married to a woman with kids and functioning as a member of society, you know, and you've had challenges with profession, your professional work and stuff you said. But you know, you were, you were able to, I guess when we think about society, you were able then to sort of hit those markers of, well, I want something different for, for my life and for my kids life.
- [24:07]
Bobby Lopez
Well, I mean, my faith was always really important. You know, the, the church has always been my anchor. You know, when I have been in a good church like I am and now things go well. Other than that, I think the most important thing was I just looked at the life that I had up until that point and I just, I didn't want that same life for, you know, I didn't want my kids to grow up like that. So that was the main thing. Like, I just, I knew that I was going to have kids. I just always had that feeling that I was going to have kids and I didn't want them to have to grow up the way that I grew up. That just, that's, it's that simple. So everything I did, I was like, okay, I'm sounding like the adults that were around me when I was a kid, so let me just stop and not try not to be like that.
- [24:57]
Jen Friesen
So that's awesome. I mean, you really are the picture of sort of that the them before us ideal is that, you know, adults have to do hard things. Like you're saying, hey, I'm struggling and I have all this stuff in my past, but, oh, I'm recognizing, I sound like what the excuses that maybe some adults were making. So I'm going to make different choices going forward. That's awesome. I don't know if you've ever read Brad Wilcox's book called Get Married, but he talks about, you know, the people whose marriages are lasting. One of those groups is the people who's had parents whose marriage didn't last and they decide I'm doing something different and their marriages work, you know, so it's really encouraging.
- [25:38]
Bobby Lopez
I'm glad we got a chance to speak, and I hope you guys continue to thrive and do well. So stay in touch.
- [25:45]
Jen Friesen
Yeah. Thanks. We appreciate you sharing your story so much. Wish you the best.