What Happened When My Dad Came Out as Gay | POPSUGAR Fay

Contents:

• GROWG UP WH A GAY FATHER – CONFSNS OM A STRAIGHT SON
• HOW I ACCINTALLY FOUND OUT MY DAD IS GAY
• MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER THE DAY I FOUND OUT MY FATHER WAS GAY
• SGLE GAY DADS GIVE TIPS FOR FIRST-TIME PARENTS: ‘I CREATED THE VILLAGE AROUND MYSELF’
• AFTER 20 YEARS OF MARRIAGE, MY DAD CAME OUT AS GAY
• MY GAY DAD, MY QUEER FAY, HAPPILY EVER AFTER
• EXPLORG WHO IS AND WHAT MAK A GAY “DADDY”
• 'DAD, I'M GAY': BOOK EXPLOR THE OFTEN CHALLENGG RELATNSHIP OF GAY MEN AND THEIR FATHERS
• MY DAD COMG OUT AS GAY CHANGED OUR LIV — AND GAVE ME THE COURAGE TO BE MYSELF
• I'M 57 YEARS OLD AND MY FATHER JT DISOWNED ME FOR BEG GAY
• IS YOUR DAD GAY—OR ARE YOU A GAY DAD?

GROWG UP WH A GAY FATHER – CONFSNS OM A STRAIGHT SON

But I knew he was gay by the time I was 7 or 8. So this is my story of growg up wh a gay father.

HOW I ACCINTALLY FOUND OUT MY DAD IS GAY

Growg up wh a gay father, particularly one who was aaid to e out, prented challeng our abily to get emotnally close. I don’t rell a time when I didn’t know my Dad was gay.

From my earlit memori of my Dad around age 5, I thk I always knew my dad was gay. Th I never had that aha moment of realizg “I have a gay father”! To hear both of them tell , my Dad beg gay wasn’t a factor the spl.

How my Dad me to terms wh beg gay. I don’t thk anyone knew yet that my Dad was gay.

MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER THE DAY I FOUND OUT MY FATHER WAS GAY

After all, he was the son of a Baptist Preacher and there would not have been much tolerance the 1940’s or 50’s for him to e out as gay. In talkg to both of them over the years, they both claim they had no ia my Dad was gay. In retrospect, the fact that he was a cheerlear his bt iend was a male hairdrser (who was openly gay) that my Uncle Buddy nicknamed him “Percy” (which my Dad hated) and that my Dad went on to open a home furnishgs store might have been a clue.

Realizg his sexualy and beg a gay father the late 1960s, pecially wh me a long way away, mt have been really transformative for my Dad. He lived and around the Oak Lawn area of Dallas (long a predomantly gay or at least gay-iendly neighborhood). He was meetg lots of openly gay people & gog to clubs where was OK to be openly gay.

SGLE GAY DADS GIVE TIPS FOR FIRST-TIME PARENTS: ‘I CREATED THE VILLAGE AROUND MYSELF’

Beg a gay father the 1960s. My Dad never actually me out as gay to me or to most people. I’d known my Dad is gay for some time, but we’d never discsed .

My Dad, of urse, was sistent that no one would obvly know he was gay (which also ma Tom and I lgh).

Are you a gay father stgglg to e out?

AFTER 20 YEARS OF MARRIAGE, MY DAD CAME OUT AS GAY

In Loren’s se, he didn’t e to terms wh beg gay until the age of 40 and was married wh children at the time.

MY GAY DAD, MY QUEER FAY, HAPPILY EVER AFTER

How growg up wh a gay father affected me. The one benef to always knowg I had a gay father is that there was never I time I rell thkg was wrong. I first realized my Dad was gay when I was around 7 or 8, and I have no rellectn of him beg wh my Mom.

Almost all his iends were gay as were most of his employe (those 2 groups pretty much beg the same people). That beg said, I was probably spared a lot of bullyg at school sce no one there knew I had a gay father. I feel que sure I got lucky this regard and that many kids wh a gay father were picked on for their parent’s sexualy.

How knowg their grandfathers are gay affects my kids. I’m proud of the fact that I and their mother have raised our dghters to not qutn or judge my Dad or Tom beg gay. They don’t see him as my “gay father”; jt my father.

EXPLORG WHO IS AND WHAT MAK A GAY “DADDY”

Our girls simply accept them for who they are, jt as they do all their other fay members who happen to not be gay.

I always knew he was gay and never had that “my Dad is gay” aha moment of realizg I had a gay father. Together we learned how to be a father and son a day and age where beg a gay father was most certaly owned upon.

If you are a gay father or the child of a gay father (or mother), and your relatnship isn’t all that uld be, don’t wa until ’s too late to fix .

'DAD, I'M GAY': BOOK EXPLOR THE OFTEN CHALLENGG RELATNSHIP OF GAY MEN AND THEIR FATHERS

[Gay Pri Para Rally Dallas] – This photograph is part of the llectn entled: LGBT Collectns and one other and was provid by UNT Librari Special Collectns to Digal Library. What is wh you gays? J tells to love everyone, even the whor and the homosexuals.

MY DAD COMG OUT AS GAY CHANGED OUR LIV — AND GAVE ME THE COURAGE TO BE MYSELF

He seemed a ltle credibly gay... Olive: Dyed the wool homosexual, that boy is. Rosemary: You know, I dated a homosexual once.

It sounds like you're havg sex n't be te due to the fact that you have a homosexual boyiend. I was gay a while.

My brother picked up the word for "gay" – a word my dad repeated several tim durg that that pot, my parents had told they had problems their marriage, but a few months later, when I was around ne years old, we still went on our annual fay summer holiday to France. Until, out of nowhere, my brother sudnly asked, "Dad, are you gay? "There aren't a lot of gay people out there wh a wife and children, " he told me.

I'M 57 YEARS OLD AND MY FATHER JT DISOWNED ME FOR BEG GAY

I once tagged along wh him to his favoure gay bar, where I met all the iends he's ma there over the years. "Your dad is gay! "Heather said Dad is gay.

I remember wonrg how my dad uld have done this to me, and — more importantly — what was I gog to tell my iends about my gay dad? It was the '70s and there weren't ol TV characters wh two gay dads like Rachel Barry on Glee. Even though I grew up New York Cy surround by artists (my mother was an opera sger and my dad a ncert pianist) and knew people who were gay, I had already absorbed the msage that was not OK.

At the time, homosexualy was still nsired a disease and was classified as a mental disorr the Diagnostic and Statistil Manual of Mental Disorrs.

IS YOUR DAD GAY—OR ARE YOU A GAY DAD?

I loved some of the gay men I'd met through my parents, but those men weren't my father. After he divorced my mother and me out of the closet, he ma a public display of his gayns, wearg asts and p and even announcg one night while wearg a purse, "This is the new me! "RELATED: The Inter Stans This Mom's Unyieldg Support For Her Son Who Came Out As GayInstead of acceptg him, I got good at lyg.

When we found The Joy Of Gay Sex on their bookshelf, I lghed and vented some story about the man he shared the hoe wh (why they also shared a bedroom was a ltle more difficult to expla). Though he had been diagnosed wh manic-prsn, I believe that his stggle to fd acceptance as a gay man ntributed to his sufferg, and ultimately, his suici.

Then, my twenti, I met John who happened to be a gay pianist who also shared my dad's birthday.