Consenting adult

Set in the pre-AIDS era, this made for television film focuses on the story of a family torn apart when their son announces he is a “homosexual”. All American college student Jeff Lynd (Barry Tubb) is the only son of an ill and emotionally inept father (Martin Sheen) and well intentioned home-maker mother (Marlo Thomas). Fearing his father’s reaction, Jeff comes out to his mother and asks her for help, she misinterprets this as believing he wants to be “cured” and sends her son to a psychiatrist. When her husband finds out Jeff is gay and does not want to be “cured”, he disowns him, fracturing the family further. Jeff finds a sympathetic ear with his married sister Margie (Talia Balsam), but remains estranged from his father until death finally brings them tenuously and posthumously together. Jeff comes out in the first fifteen minutes of the film, consequently the remainder of the film is about how the family react to the news; shock, disbelief, anger and confused acceptance. The representation of Jeff’s sexual awakening is chastely portrayed off screen; presumably it’s the content matter that has prescribed the M rating. Based on the novel by Laura Z. Hobson.