Two parents from Oklahoma City, both raised in red-dirt faith, sit down to reckon with how fear once disguised itself as love. In this episode of Love Without Asterisks, Jeff Click and Free Mom Hugs founder Sara Cunningham revisit the moments when their instincts to protect caused harm—the silence, the scripture-quoting, the waiting for the “right time.” Through the imagery of wild rescues and circling hyenas, they begin to ask who the real predators ever were, and discover that fear, left unchecked, can wound the very person it meant to defend. What follows is a story of unlearning, new instincts, and a faith rebuilt on courage...the courage to stay close when fear says to step back.
In Oklahoma, conversations have a way of hanging in the air. Dust and truth both take their time to settle.
This month’s episode of Love Without Asterisks features Sara Cunningham, the affirming mother who founded Free Mom Hugs. This worldwide movement began the day she joined her gay son at a Pride Parade wearing a homemade button that said “Free Mom Hugs.”
But before that moment of redemption, there was a reckoning.
In this conversation, two parents from Oklahoma City, shaped by the same red dirt and the same red-state religion, trace how fear can wound the very love it meant to defend. Different homes, different kids…but the same blueprint for what “good Christian parents” were supposed to do. When her son Parker came out at fifteen, Sara did what I once would have done too: reached for Scripture, for certainty, for the illusion of control, all with the best of intentions.
“I shamed him with the very best of intentions,” she told me. “He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, and he just suddenly seemed to get so small. And I saw that — but I was too wrapped up in my idea of homosexuality. And I can’t forget that.”
That’s the part that stops you cold as a parent. Because some of us have lived it, while the rest of us have feared what it would feel like if we ever did.
The instinct to protect
In our conversation, I shared a story about an Instagram account I follow, called NatureIsMetal. It posts clips that give followers an unfiltered look at wildlife in all its beauty and brutality.
Occasionally, a video will start with a newborn animal in view. It’s adorable at first until you notice hyenas or jackals are surrounding it. The offspring trembles, cornered and vulnerable. And then, out of nowhere, the parent charges in. Stomping. Kicking. Ramming with horns. Doing everything possible to drive the threat away.
It’s instinct. It’s love in motion.
That same instinct, holy in its origin, can turn harmful when it mistakes what’s different for what’s dangerous.
When I referred to this story in my conversation with Sara, asking her if she saw any parallels, she didn’t hesitate:
“Absolutely,” she said. “I did some real damage. I said things and acted in ways I regret even today.”
I remember that feeling. The panic of realizing my reaction to my daughter’s truth had more to do with me than with her. The fear of what others would think. The reflex to protect my reputation instead of her heart.
My wife and I did what so many parents from red-state faith backgrounds do: we hesitated. We waited for clarity, for certainty, for the “right” time to talk. We told ourselves we were praying, processing, protecting.
But the truth is, we were stalling.
By the time we came to the table, the hyenas were already circling. The statistics about LGBTQ+ mental health...the ones we’d once brushed past as distant or exaggerated...were now close enough to have names and faces. We were late to the work of understanding, late to the work of undoing what fear had built.
And that’s when it hit me: our silence hadn’t protected anyone. It had only given fear the first move.
And it makes me wonder:
Who are the hyenas?
Naming the real threat
We were taught to spot threats outside the circle...culture, media, influence, “the world.”
But some dangers speak in familiar voices. Some of them even speak our language, wear our smiles, and quote our scriptures.
And so we start to ask harder questions about who we were told to fear, and who we should have been protecting all along.
Are the jackals the world…the one we were warned would corrupt our children? Because if we’re honest, the world looks a lot friendlier to LGBTQ+ people today than most of the churches we came from.
Are they the friends or the other adults we quietly resented…the other LGBTQ+ people who saw our children when we couldn’t? The ones who offered safety when we offered silence?
Or maybe, the predators were never outside the circle at all. Maybe they were our fears. Our shame. Our friends’ and family’s opinions.
When fear leads the rescue, it almost always does harm.
Learning a new instinct
Fear may lead the first rescue, but love holds hope that it can learn a new instinct over time.
New instincts aren’t inherited; they’re formed.
They take humility, exposure, and practice, the kind that comes from staying close to what we once misunderstood and letting compassion recondition our reflexes.
Sara spent six years in that wilderness praying the gay away, scouring bookstores for answers, and watching her relationship with Parker fracture under the weight of silence and shame. That reconditioning finally began the day he told her, “Mom, I’ve sucked it up for 21 years being your son. I need you to suck it up now and be my mom.”
That moment changed everything.
Today, Sara leads Free Mom Hugs, traveling the country officiating weddings for LGBTQ+ couples whose parents still can’t show up. Legions of moms (and dads) of LGBTQ+ kids march in Pride Parades worldwide, offering hugs to those who can’t count on one from their own parents. She’s turned her regret into restoration, her fear into fuel, her faith into a global embrace.
And in the next episode’s Part 2, The Redemption, we’ll explore what that embrace looks like, how Sara went from silence to standing in the front row.
For years, I thought faith meant control. Now I see it’s courage…the courage to stay close when fear tells you to step back.
Love deserves better than fear
I’ve come to see that our instinct to protect can only take us so far.
Love requires something deeper: presence, humility, curiosity. The willingness to learn even when the lesson costs us our comfort.
As Sara said,
“To not seek understanding leaves only one choice: to remain in fear and ignorance.”
And love…real love…deserves better than that.
Love doesn’t charge and trample; it stays near, steady and still, until safety returns.
