When I hear the phrase "family values" these days, I am apt to think of people protesting against homosexuality outside of Matthew Shepard’s funeral, or antigay marriage initiatives, or the Florida legislator who recently told a group of high school kids lobbying for protection from discrimination that they are doomed. I tend to think of hate. Then something brings me back to the idea that real family values have nothing to do with those things.

My parents divorced when I was seven and my sister was two. Mom had no job, no money, not even a driver’s license. We had nowhere to live. This was a time before rigorous enforcement of child-support laws; the prospects for our young family were not very good. So my grandparents took us in. We never had much money, but we were rich.

As a young boy, I was afraid of the dark. To get me to sleep, Grandma used to tie one end of a string to my arm, and run the string all the way into her bedroom, where she tied the other end to her arm. If I got scared, she said, I could pull on the string and she would pull back. That way I’d know she was there and I wouldn’t be afraid.

We attended church Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, and Wednesday nights, as every good Southern Baptist does. The Southern Baptist church, in official proclamations, has been especially virulent in its condemnations of homosexuality. But somehow I didn’t see that side of the religion very often. I was taught God exists, but if I got sleepy during the long sermons I could lay my head on Grandma’s lap and leave the adults to tend to the religion. Every time I get angry at all religion, I remind myself of my grandparents’ faith.

One morning, when I was perhaps 12 years old, Grandma was driving me to school. Out of the blue, she said, "I feel like there’s something inside you trying to come out. I’m not sure what, but one day it will." Grandma seemed to know things about me before even I knew them. She had no formal education, but I haven’t met anyone smarter.

The subject of homosexuality never came up in family discussions, as far as I can remember. In the 1970s and early 1980s, when I lived in Grandma’s house, there may well have been lots of gay organizing in places like San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. But there was none of that in southern Texas, where we lived. It’s not that gays were actively sought out and harassed there. They just didn’t seem to exist.

Grandma would not have said anything about gays, or even known anything about them. It would have been like commenting on people from Kamchatka. What would she say?

For a while after I stopped dating women, Grandma would ask me why I didn’t have a girlfriend. It wasn’t a mean question, or a needling one; it was just her way of being concerned about me. I gave evasive answers and she stopped asking.

My grandparents were the last people in my immediate family to whom I came out. It was a full five years after I had come out to Mom. It was after I’d been to a March on Washington and a year after I’d started writing publicly about gay issues.

Why did I wait so long? It wasn’t because I thought they would reject me or tell me I was going to burn in Hell. I knew instinctively they would never reject me because of some dogma. Family always mattered more than abstractions. I suppose I waited because I didn’t want them to worry about me. And I didn’t want them to think they didn’t really know the boy they’d raised.

They had already met my partner, whom they had known as the "friend" who accompanied me to holiday family gatherings. I came out to my grandparents by telling them he was more to me than a friend, that I loved him. Grandma didn’t say much about my being gay at the time and never did.

I don’t think she understood homosexuality, but she knew all about devotion, having lived with the same man for almost 58 years. My partner was more than tolerated by Grandma, he was expected. He was part of us, the same as if he’d been my spouse. It wasn’t a matter of gay rights. It was a matter of family.

I have never in my life felt more at ease and more content than when we were all together at Grandma’s house. Love, there, was unconditional.

On April 19, Grandma died. The hands that raised three generations of children were so distorted by crippling arthritis at the end that I could barely look at them. The kind blue eyes that could see into your core were closed.

Grandma is not there anymore to pull at the end of the string. I have to face the dark without her. But because she raised an independent and self-confident boy, one who knew he had a family behind him, I can. She taught me family values.

Some of these preachers and politicians who talk so much about family values wouldn’t have been worthy to stand in her presence.

You’re lucky to get one good mom in life. I had two.

My love to you, Grandma.

Writing from the conservative end of the spectrum, former Houston resident and law professor Dale Carpenter began his column for OutSmart in 1994. Now living in Minneapolis, he can be reached at OutRight@aol.com.