Tomorrow is the National Coming Out Day.
"The National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is an internationally observed civil awareness day for coming out and discussion about people that are gay, lesbian, bisexual,transgender (LGBT), etc. It is observed by members of the LGBT communities and their supporters (often referred to as "allies") on October 11 every year (or October 12 in the United Kingdom).
Despite its name, National Coming Out Day (so called because it originated as an event in the United States) is in fact observed in many countries, including Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Croatia, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (in the UK it is celebrated on October 12)."
All the above is excerpts from an article about the event on
Wikipedia.
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I am one of the few fortunate - or perhaps unfortunate - gay men I know who never had to deal with a coming out process. Both my parents and my older sibling actually seemed to be aware of the fact before I even knew what the word meant.
There was a short period in Kindergarten that I sometimes would fall in love with women also, other than that I have almost exclusively had boys or men as objects of my affection or desire. To be quite honest there was a period between the ages of 12 to 17 that I sometimes could get sexually aroused by women also, but hell I was turned on by just about anything with a temperature and a pulse then so I am not sure that really counts.
The last phase was cured when I saw the movie "Amacord" by Federico Fellini at a film club. Do any of you remember the scene where the young Federico meets an older woman in a blue or green Angora sweater with humongous bouncing boobs that she presses against his face? Well, that scene permanently turned me off boobs forever and crushed any hopes my father my have had for my inclinations changing at puberty.
So as I was accepted and loved for what I was by my immediate family there was never anything dramatic about it, much the same as it is for most heterosexuals I believe. Of course I have also encountered bigotry but never in a way that made me question my self-worth.
The only thing that I was sad about when I accepted my own sexuality was that I would never have children, but even that has changed nowadays.
