A Dallas Mom Started a Facebook Group To Protect LGBTQ+ Youth. It Blew Up.

In 2006, Liz Dyer's son came out as gay. The news was at odds with her conservative Christianity, and Dyer, a Dallas resident, looked to a broader community — online. After some research and soul-searching, she took over a Facebook group for moms looking to affirm their queer children. Her online community started small but now has over 40,000 members, and Mama Bears also hosts eight private subgroups and has raised $170,000 in grants for nonprofits that support the LGBTQ+ community.

The Facebook group, and the shared stories of its members, are now the subject of a PBS documentary called Mama Bears.

The Dyer family once centered their lives around their conservative faith community, a local Baptist church. They spent up to four days each week at their church, with Dyer leading the women's ministry, her husband in the men's ministry and her son going on mission trips and singing in the youth choir.

When their son came out as gay at 19 years old, their faith was called into question.

“At that time [the church wasn’t] even really talking about the subject that much,” she says. “You just kind of absorbed the idea that it was wrong, that it was not the way God intended, so at first it was difficult.”

A Christian family disapproving of a gay child is a familiar story — many times, one that makes headlines filled with conversion therapy and mental health crises, estranged loved ones and everything that falls tragically in between. Thankfully, this case breaks that mold.

“We had always been under the impression that it wasn’t right, it wasn’t healthy,” Dyer says. “And so it really kind of threw us for a loop, but we knew our son and we wanted to make sure that what we believed was right. We wanted to be good parents.”

Dyer describes herself as a researcher at heart — all of those days at church weren’t for nothing. She knew how to read the Bible, understand original language and dig out historical context. She read the Bible for herself and raised certain unwelcomed questions among her church community (which her family ultimately left). She took to the blogosphere so characteristic of the early aughts to fill in other gaps. One day, she read a church blog about being kinder to gay people and scrolled through the comment section, as she normally did.

“There was a guy who was a gay guy [in the comments] … And he said, ‘You know, I don't need anybody to be nice to me. I don't want to be a part of a community that is just nice to me. If you think that my relationship is wrong, if you think it's wrong for me to be gay’ — he used an expletive — ‘then just F off out of my life’,’' Dyer remembers.

She saw herself in his perspective.

“That was a really big turning point for me because I realized in that moment that if I was a member of the LGBTQ community, that would be my attitude,” she says. “Because that’s the kind of person I am. If you were to dismiss a relationship that I was in, that was important to me, that was sacred to me, then I wouldn't want you in my life.”

She realized that she was not embodying the deeds of the "good Christian" that she valued so highly — loving her son while disapproving of him.

“What that moment made me realize was that my son was being the bigger person, the better person, because he was willing to stay connected to me when I didn’t approve of him,” she says.

She started to get in touch with other LGBTQ+ people and with Emergent Christians (now called Progressive Christians), connecting with other moms on Facebook. By 2014, Dyer started hosting and managing the Mama Bears Facebook group, providing support and resources for people who had similar experiences with their children coming out.

From its early days, the group had some ground rules: for one, no trying to change people.

“We don't discuss in the group whether someone can change,” she says. “The group starts at the point that being LGBTQ is how a person is created …  If somebody wants to discuss it outside of the group, I will be glad to discuss it outside of the group.”

Today, as same-sex marriage is legalized and visibility has increased significantly, Dyer says there are fewer parents coming to the group wholly disapproving of their child’s sexuality. Instead, more parents are interested in learning how to keep their kids safe.

In starting the Facebook group, Dyer realized that her gay son did not have the same rights as her straight son.

“As a loving parent, you want your kid to live in a world where there's justice and inclusion,” she says. “You don't want your kid oppressed or marginalized or put in harm's way because of who they are at their core or who they love. I wanted to change the world, but I knew I couldn't do it by myself.”

The Facebook group has grown and taken on its own life in the hands of Mama Bears from all over. The PBS documentary about the group premiered during Pride Month in June.
“My secret desire when I started the group was not only would I help these moms find support and connections and resources, but that they would get inspired by being in community with one another and want to change the world and make it a kinder, safer place for LGBTQ people [as well],” Dyer says.

She saw the Mama Bears doing this right from the beginning. Now, there are 60 Mama Bear chapters in the U.S., and chapters in Canada, the U.K. and Australia. There are eight subgroups as well, including a group for MTKs (moms of trans kids) and Mama Bears of Color.

One subgroup, Mama Bears to the Rescue, coordinates small acts of kindness by Mama Bears for LGBTQ+ people. These acts can look like standing in at a wedding, making hospital visits or writing a letter of encouragement.

“We know from studies that one supportive adult can make all the difference in the life of a person,” she says.

Dyer says the fact that her son supports her work is the cherry on top of this experience. In fact, he nominated her to be a Grand Marshal for Dallas Pride this year. Dyer received this honor alongside three others, Klyee O’hara Fatale, Ashton Hammer and Ronnie Shue.

Dyer says the recent encroachments on LGBTQ+ rights gives her cause a particular urgency.

“Historically …  any time you work to set people free who have historically been oppressed and marginalized, you’re going to get some pushback,” she says. “If you have other people that you are in community with, that are on your side, that share your values, it just makes all the difference in the world about how you manage and cope.”