dnorwood Wrote:
FT® Wrote:
I liked Chris before I found out he is gay, and I still like Chris since finding out he is gay.
The only person about who my opinion changed upon learning of their homosexuality was my Dad, for obvious reasons. He's dead now, and I still love him, but it's still a very confusing and difficult to process situation. It would be a lot different to have been raised by openly gay parents, because I'd have known from the very beginning. But to not find out until well into my 30s, and for my Mom to have gone through more than three decades of marriage wthout knowing...that's really difficult. And he never really "came out," either. It started with us finding his stash of gay porn, then finding out about his trips to academic "conventions" to "collaborate" with "colleagues." It wasn't until his death that we finally managed to put all the pieces together, so I never had a chance to even really talk to him about it. I guess it doesn't change his relationship with me over the years, it just makes things a bit more ponderous in retrospect.
You know, this sounds less like you having a problem with your dad being gay, and more like you having a problem with your dad lying and manipulating.
Yeah, that's just about entirely the problem I have with it. Really, the only place gay enters into it is with respect to the fact that it's almost like I realistically should never have been born (if he had never been with a woman, etc.) and wondering how heredity factors into everything. I've always believed homosexuals are born that way, so what bearing (if any) might that have on me? I've never experienced any attraction to males or anything along those lines (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course), but it's just one of those things that makes you think.
My Mom thinks a lot of it has to do with the hormones he was put on for many years (he was a lifelong alcoholic who lived 20 years longer than the doctors originally expected his liver to last).
But yeah, it's the deception I have a problem with...mainly how it affected/affects my Mom. She's really the "victim" in all this, if there is one.