If you were queer, I’d still be here

While my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) are no secret to my parents, they haven’t really taken an interest in following the blog, reading any of the articles and papers I’ve written, etc. They chose to take a leaf out of the army’s book (“Don’t ask, don’t tell”). Recently, I fell asleep on the couch after making a blog post from the shared family computer, and left the blog homepage up and running. Upon finding it, my stepmother informed my father that I had been visiting “gay sites” on their computer, which prompted me to show the blog to dad, explain the situation behind the title, including my own heterosecular straigtheism. After a long, drawn out argument ranging from living arrangements, financial situations, god, recreational drug usage, (a frequently recurring argument in my family, we talk about one of the four at least once a week), the topic came back to the “gay site”. I took my father to the computer, showed him the blog, let him read a few of the posts, and after all of it, the discussion culiminated in this:

“Are you gay?”

“No”

“If you were gay, that would be okay. I’m not saying anything about it, you can tell me, it’s okay.”

“I promise dad, if I ever started swinging the other way I’d let you know before I brought any boyfriends home.”

I felt strangely inspired to share this instructional video on the topic of how to talk to someone about their sexuality.

- CJ