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Good morning parents

I'm gay. I've wanted to tell you for a long time. I thought doing it this way would be a piece of cake. I hope you still love me. I mean, it's hard not to love someone who baked you a cake.

Last week I spoke to a beautiful amazingly-built woman with a perfect figure, who was complaining about how fat she was. This puzzled me, and I responded by pointing out that I also take my diet very seriously - people have no idea how hard I have to work to maintain my figure. In fact, I need to eat chocolate every day just to ensure that I maintain my curves. This was met by a somewhat critical look. But, does it really seem that absurd that I would rather eat chocolate and have (beautiful) curves than starve myself to look like a skeleton?

We all have our own personal coming out story. Here is mine…

I can’t say exactly which date I came out, as I see it as a long process. One that I am still busy following.

I think I first started becoming curious about guys when I was at university at the age of 19. In hindsight, this seems to be a lot later than many guys, but it is an individual thing, so it doesn’t matter. I started becoming interested in the idea of masturbating with other guys, and wished that I had opportunities in my teenager years that I have read about other people having. I didn’t think that I was gay at this stage… just curious. I mean, why would I be gay?

Around this time, I had started getting back in contact with an old friend of mine, and while texting it sort of came out that he was not straight. And I thought to myself “I have similar feelings as my friend, maybe I am also not straight.” So I told him that I might be bisexual.

At that stage, I think it was more about the idea of being physical with guys rather than being in love. Until I met my current boyfriend…

When we come out as gay, we say that it is a deeply personal experience. And it is. I think everybody’s story is unique. But we can also relate to almost everyone else’s coming out story in some way or another. We might have experienced similar reactions by parents or friends. Or we may relate to that initial fear before we let those difficult words escape our mouths: “I am gay.”

Fearing the “I am gay”

I think most of us have had (and maybe still have) this immense fear of saying the words “I am gay” to someone who is important to us when we can’t predict their response. It is this crushing fear of complete rejection. Maybe we fear abuse, physical or verbal. Or maybe we fear we will lose them. We fear they will take it badly, and suddenly our whole world will cave in.

How much of that fear is the fear of their reaction, and how much is the fear we have of ourselves?

Recently, I’ve been contemplating life. Not just my life, but also the lives of others. Some things that I thought I had put to rest had to be dusted off and re-examined again, touched up with a little glazing of the wisdom that experience brings.

Like so many others, my upbringing was suburban - unremarkable by anyone’s standards. My parents loved me (still do) and did what they thought was best for me. The only feeling that pervaded was that I lived in a world that did not resonate with my emotional, intellectual and spiritual being. It was a narrow world, a world filled with demons and angels, sin and evil and hatred, but very little love and very little regard to the truth, the two things I hold in highest regard. To me it seemed an unjust world. Through painful processes of denial, self-deception and efforts to conform to the norms of society, I had to realize that I could not change who I was meant to be. Painful as the realization might have been, as strongly as I had felt like a disappointment to my parents, I could not walk away from my responsibility to LIVE. This did not happen instantaneously or indeed spontaneously. Rather it was a cascade of events that ran its course through many painful years of hiding and fearing the outcomes of my secret being uncovered. My big, shameful secret. In fact, I tried very hard to live the life others wanted for me, but something was always missing. I could not feel fulfilled.

When you’re harbouring a shameful secret, everything takes on ominous tones. Sometimes it feels like other people can see straight through your skull. In fact, the secret becomes the melodramatic centerpiece of your life. You cannot see the wood for the trees. You feel like you’re the only one and that you are so abnormal and shameful that nobody will love you once they find out your secret. Yet you cannot see the simple truth that you cannot live in darkness and not also live in despair.

You may fear some religious people, but you will find they are ignorant of God’s extent if they do not realize that we are all in God’s plan - and God does not make mistakes.

This is the most deeply touching thing that I have come across lately. Out with Dad is a sweet, genuinely heartfelt, heartwarmingly real web series about the coming of age and coming out of a 15 year old girl named Rose. Watch it. And share this with anyone that might be struggling with embracing their own sexuality.

Here's the first episode. But you can find the rest on their channel.

To find out more about the series, visit outwithdad.com

I wish everyone had the privilege of having a father who is TOO overly accepting.

Coming to terms with your own sexual identity can be difficult, but made even more so when you know your parents will react badly. If your parents have demonstrated homophobic attitudes in the past, it may make you want to hide from sharing that part of your life with them - and some people choose to do that. If that's not you, though, and you want to come out, here are some tips for dealing with your homophobic parents.

Understand the consequences of your honesty.

If you are a minor, living under the same roof with homophobic parents may become far more difficult than you imagine.. Homophobic parents tend to react quite dramatically to the news that their child is gay, so be prepared for any or all of the following:

I want to be a stand-up comedian but where do I start?

Besides Trevor, Kurt and what’s his name took all the good jokes already about politics, racism and poverty; they left me with only one choice gay jokes – hell!

Do you even know how many people I might offend? But look at our other comedians, making fun of our President bra Jake, so a little homo humour can’t be that bad…. can it? Ag I’m sure I have nothing to be afraid of, it’s not like if I ask by show of hands who is gay in the house tonight that a couple of hands would go… no our people are very conservative or as we like to call it, “still in the closet”