And she's a former Mormon...
From today's Mercury News (link at end of post)
Snip...Seven years on, she still wakes up with a shock in the night, startled to remember that her only son is dead.
Inside the bungalow in the mountains above Los Gatos where Alice Hoagland lives, the house with the "No on Proposition 8" sign and the American flag outside, glass bowls from "Good Morning America" and USA Rugby memorialize one of the heroes of 9/11 — Hoagland's son, Mark Bingham. There are DVDs of "United Flight 93," the movie about the hijacked flight that Bingham helped stop from completing its murderous mission.
Hoagland isn't the same woman she was before Sept. 11. Nor is she the same woman, baptized a Mormon, she was before Mark came out to her as gay in 1991
Snip...As a woman baptized a Mormon at the age of 15, who attended Brigham Young University and had Mark baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hoagland is an unlikely advocate for gay rights. She still admires some LDS teachings, although she left the church in the late '70s when leaders opposed the Equal Rights Amendment.
She spoke to the crowd at Saturday's rally against Proposition 8 in downtown San Jose. Monday, as about 100 people met at the Billy DeFrank Gay and Lesbian Center to plan next steps, someone volunteered to report on the rally and said, "Mark Bingham's mother was there!"
In fact, she was at the meeting, too, the woman sitting quietly in the first row, her hair in a bun. After the meeting, people crowded around to thank Hoagland for being there.
"I wish I could tell you how many times young men and women have come up to me and said, 'Thank you for telling Mark's story,' " she said.
Hoagland said she plans to be active in coming protests for same-sex marriage. "Its time has come," she said.
Full article---> http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11035956?nclick_check=1