So, you’re seventeen and you’re gay. You’re an accomplished musician attending a dedicated arts school. You’re also quite the burgeoning activist, having been appointed to the Boca Raton Community Relations board. But unfortunately, your mother really isn’t providing a safe environment in which to live, so you end up having to leave. You’re homeless — but considering the circumstances, you’re doing really, really well! — and you reach out to the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council and end up finding really, really nice people who are willing to help you out until you go to college next year. Oh, and you already have a scholarship! Yeah, basically, you’re the kind of kid any sane mother wouldn’t just be proud of, but would be over the moon proud of.
Instead, it seems that your mother doesn’t really understand what motherhood entails, and your mother rats you out to the Community Relations Board (that you got appointed to at seventeen!) because, due to the fact that you didn’t feel safe at home, you no longer technically live in the city limits of Boca Raton. So quote-unquote “Mom” (we use the term very, very loosely) feels the need to be a whistle-blower.
This is why Andrea Riggin gets Mother Of The Year. Seriously, check this out:
A gay teenage activist who made news last year when he was appointed at 17 to the Boca Raton Community Relations Board resigned suddenly last week after his mother made the city aware that the boy, Tyler Morisson, isn’t eligible to serve.
Morrison, who turned 18 in February, is estranged from his mother, Andrea Riggin.
But Riggin wrote the city to warn officials that Morisson is not a resident of Boca Raton, and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to serve on the advisory board.
So, where does he live?
Riggin claims her son is living in West Palm Beach with 58-year-old gay rights crusader Rand Hoch, although Hoch would not confirm the living arrangements.
“Tyler became homeless and he reached out to the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council for help,” said Hoch, the founder the politically powerful anti-discrimination Council. “When a young man with a bright future asks for housing help for a few months until he graduates from high school and enters college on a scholarship, it’s anyone’s duty to help.”
[…]
“I didn’t want this lie to be perpetuated for my son’s own good,” Riggin told Gossip Extra. “That’s why I blew the whistle on him.”
Doesn’t sound like Andrea is in a position to judge what’s good for anyone, much less her son. Here’s a little more background on “Mom”:
On April 5, 2001, Riggin was arrested for pushing down her 71-year-old mother, briefly incarcerated, and charged with a felony of domestic battery of a person over the age of 65.
According to the arrest report, the elderly woman said Riggin spilled coffee on her and pushed her into a glass table, and she showed police a “large red mark” on her right knee. Riggin’s daughter, Danielle, told police she heard an argument between the women, and when she tried to break up the melee, Riggin “knocked her back, causing her to hit her right arm.”
Sounds like a nice lady.
It’s unclear whether there is any “pro-family” animus involved here or whether this is just a stellar gay kid making the best of a bad situation, but whatever the situation is, we’re proud of you, Tyler. And luckily, he’s 18 now, so he can officially start to move on from all of this.
(h/t South Florida Gay News)
