We live in a society where everyone is judged for their race, sexual orientation, personality, etc. Many people are judged for being gay. Especially when they come out as gay, its a very scary and brave thing to do. And today, I had the pleasure and privilege to interview my uncle about his coming out story, and here it is.

He starts off by saying, ¨I was 16 years old in high school, and I’ve always been fairly innocent I guess. My family traditionally has been pretty religious as we go to church every Sunday and pray at family meals in the evening. I went to youth group on Wednesday. I’ve known for a while that I like guys, but I always pretended to like girls. I’d knew I would be shamed if I came out. I mean isn’t that just what religious parents do? Plus I’d seen all of these people talk about horror stories about how religious parents persecute their children and make life miserable. I lived in fear.”

When he said this, I immediately felt empathy for his fear.

He continues his story by saying, ¨Anyhow my best friend came over and I don’t really know what happened. One minute we were just talking and laughing and the next minute he kissed me and I kissed him back…So of course my mom walked in and saw us, just in just a mess, keep in mind, my bedroom has the laundry room attached to it and I’ve always given my mom permission just to walk down whenever she wants, so I can’t blame her for invasion of privacy. My dad always asks before coming down though, but my mom never really does. Anyhow my mother apologizes profusely, drops the laundry off in the laundry room and leaves rather quickly. I was so scared I didn’t even know what to do. The moment was obviously ruined but I didn’t know if I should come upstairs and talk to her right then, or if I should just stay down and try to hide and pretend nothing happened. I opted for the second. I’m not good with confrontation. We hid for a while, both giggling, but with butterflies in my stomach and nausea I felt was kind of ruining everything.¨

When my uncle told me that I felt so nervous for him. I immediately wanted to know what happened next. Would my grandmother, his mom, be mad or calm?

He proceeds by saying, ¨My best friend laughs it off but says that maybe he should go, and when he went upstairs my mother gave him a big hug and apologized again for invading our privacy and said it won’t happen again, she just didn’t realize that anything like that was going on. That seemed weird. My friend left and my mom apologized again!”

My uncle then decided to talk to his mom, and here was his point of view. He said, ¨Um…. Are we going to talk about this?” She said “Talk about what?” He replied, “Mom. You just found out I was gay.” She says, “Yes… So?” He then says, “So???” She then replies with “Honey, you are who you are. Maybe you’re gay. Maybe you’re experimenting. Maybe you’ll marry this guy someday.  The point is that you get to decide that, and frankly it’s none of my business. I love you no matter what and this is not even remotely a blip on my big deal radar.”

I felt so wonderful to hear that. Its a very brave and scary thing to come out, so he was lucky to have a supportive parent.

I asked him on what his dad felt and he said, ¨My dad was even cooler about it than my mom. I don’t know where my insecurities and fears came from. I think I look at the horror stories from other people and never remember the good ones.¨

So that was my uncle’s coming out story.

I hope anyone who’s in the closet and reading this can understand and know that they are loved, and that love is love. Don’t ever feel ashamed of who you truly are.