by Benjamin Golden

In the small eastern Pennsylvania town where I grew up, homophobic bullying was like the noisy freight trains that thundered daily along the tracks at the edge of town:  just part of life.  Everyone ignored the trains, I tried to ignore the bullying, and my politically conservative evangelical Christian parents seemed happy to ignore both.

My father was like the trains, sometimes loud and fast, others rumbling and plodding, always mercurial, unswervingly single-minded.  He and I were too much alike to get along and too different to understand each other, “strangers who knew each other very well,” quick tempered perfectionists with infuriatingly different ideals.  He spoke little.  I talked constantly.  He could fix anything.  I hated dirt under my fingernails.  We were both complicated and neither knew what to make of the other.  But when, after gathering courage for years, I finally came out to him in my mid-twenties, he betrayed neither surprise nor disappointment, only peaceful acceptance.

A few months later he slid into a coma during a Sunday afternoon nap.  Hospital tests that evening showed brain tumors.  He survived emergency brain surgery, gradually regained consciousness, and returned home late that week with a death sentence:  aggressive stage four brain cancer.  Another brain surgery followed four months later, then weeks of crippling chemotherapy and radiation.

The father I’d always feared and never understood became bedridden, confused, and slept around the clock.  He died shortly after 1:00AM one frigid February morning, three months before his fiftieth birthday.  Over three hundred mourners attended his funeral.  Only two were there just for him, another two just for me.  The last guy I’d dated had died suddenly a few months before, so I faced Dad’s funeral alone, mourning a paradoxical man I barely knew.

At the burial, a tent shaded the grave and cold wind whipped across the cemetery.  A family friend slowly played Ashokan Farewell on his violin.  Mom sat quietly on a folding chair near the grave, surrounded by my four younger siblings.  I leaned alone against the windward tent wall and hesitantly trusted the wind like I’d trusted dad.  The wind would have supported me if I’d let it.  Maybe dad would have, too.

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by Karo

I have always been gay. I knew actresses were gay before I knew I was and before I even knew what gay was. So coming to terms with it was quite easy for me, especially considering I was growing up in the 90s, a time when lesbian relationships weren’t constantly featured on TV. But I do think, even without lots of LGBT storylines it was a good thing I had the opportunity to watch a lot of TV to make me become the open-minded person I am today.

Don’t get me wrong, my parents are not overly religious, racist, or sexist (how could they be–my father raised me as he would have raised a boy so I know how to change a flat tire and stuff, but when it came to same-sex relationships they were a chip off the old block.

You can probably imagine the horror I thought coming out would be when I was 17 and finally was able put a label to my sexuality. Because of that, I just didn’t come out to my parents at all. But when I was 20 I fell deeply and madly in love with a girl from London on the Internet and when I came back from visiting her for the first time, my father came to pick me up from the airport. I figured it had to be now or never, I just had to come out to him, but I was more afraid than I had ever been in my entire life, especially since my father had ranted about “those people” just a couple of weeks earlier.

While we were waiting for our train and I didn’t know what else to talk about, I got really brave and said to him: “You know, the girl I was visiting – we’re more than friends. I love her.” I was expecting silence, anger, denial, a sermon… But for the first time, my father really surprised me. I mean, I could have known that he would just tell a story instead of really conversing with me, because that’s just the person he is, but I didn’t expect the story to go like this. He said: “You know my one colleague from the fire fighters? She came to me two weeks ago complaining about the others. They were bullying her because she was gay. Since I was the only one who went to university, she thought I would be open-minded. So before I could tell her that I think it’s wrong and sinful, she was crying on my shoulder. All I could do was take her in my arms and tell her that everything is going to be alright. And at that point I understood that “those people” (he literally still said that) just want to be happy like everyone else. Who am I to take that away from someone?”

And that was it. We never talked about it again. More than a decade later I am still together with that girl from London and whenever I talk to my father he asks me: “Are you happy?” I answer yes and he says: “That’s all I ever wanted for you, my child.”

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by Dave Mittlefehldt

I’m not gay, but my younger son is. You may have read his story; he’s from Clear Lake, TX.

I was clueless of my son’s sexual orientation until he revealed it. Rafi came out to his mother and me his freshman year in college. It was an awkward moment. Not because it was unpleasant news, rather because I had not anticipated it and didn’t know what to say. I tend to be flippant, but for serious issues I want to have serious discussions. In this case, Rafi floored me. I didn’t have any comforting or supportive words to say. I honestly don’t even remember what I said at the time. Do you remember, Rafi?

Afterwards, I had lots of time to think about what Rafi said. It made me realize a couple of things.

One was that I had partially failed Rafi. As a father, my number one job is to prepare my children for life. But how could I do this for Rafi? I have had no gay experiences that I can draw upon. There is a whole part of his life that I cannot help him with. I fret about this. How can I help my son with relationship issues? Are they the same as heterosexual relationships? I simply don’t know. Neither can I help him with his interactions with society at large. I do not know how he might be treated at the corner store, by the car mechanic, a police officer. I know how he ought to be treated, but that’s not the same. I still struggle with this issue.

The second realization is the more important one. When our son came out, he mentioned that he had known since he was in seventh grade, some six years earlier. Why didn’t he tell us sooner? I presume it was because he was uncertain of our reaction. I mentioned that I tend to be flippant. Did some of my flippant remarks make him feel uncomfortable as a gay man? I hope not. That would never be my intent. But I do not hear my remarks with the same ears a gay man does.

The bottom line is that I could not love Rafi more, or be more proud of him, if he was straight. I take delight in his triumphs, and I share his pain when things don’t go as planned. I don’t have a straight son and a gay son. I have two of the most wonderful human beings who call me dad.

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