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I'm 57 Years Old And My Father Just Disowned Me For Being Gay

The author in 2019
The author in 2019

There is a moment burned into my memory.

It’s the 1970s and I am a teenager. The TV is on in the living room, my parents are in their recliners, and I’m sitting on our brown plaid sofa. We are watching Barbara Walters interview Anita Bryant, a prominent anti-gay activist.

Walters asks Bryant what she would do if her child came out as gay. Bryant’s response is immediate and harsh: She says she would disown her child.

I don’t remember exactly how Walters responded, but it must have been with something like disbelief, because my father, referring to the news anchor, said, “She just can’t understand that, can she?”

But I understood: My parents would disown their son if he was gay. My parents would disown me if they knew I was gay. So I retreated as far as I could into the closet I was hiding in, and I resolved to never tell anyone my secret.

My family attended a fundamentalist church whenever its doors were open. They preached that God loved everyone ― except homosexuals. Gay men and lesbians were irredeemable. There was no salvation for me. There was no love for me.

I finished high school still deep in the closet and chose to attend a fundamentalist-affiliated university. The closet there was very big and contained many students. I know this because looking back, I realize that many young men made passes at me. Sadly, I was so scared and repressed that I honestly didn’t understand what was happening at the time, but now I can only smile at my naiveté. If I had known then, I’m not sure how I would have reacted.

The author participated in the usual rites of growing up including high school dances. Here he is, age 15, with a date in the spring of 1979. This was a few years after he had seen Barbara Walters interview Anita Bryant.
The author participated in the usual rites of growing up including high school dances. Here he is, age 15, with a date in the spring of 1979. This was a few years after he had seen Barbara Walters interview Anita Bryant.

But one supposed vice that I did embrace while at that religious college was drinking. I loved it. I was sure I seemed sophisticated holding a glass of liquor, but, even more importantly, drinking allowed me to stop worrying about my sexuality, at least for a bit, and that feeling was heavenly. I had found serenity, I thought. But what alcohol really gave me was a new way to continue to repress my sexuality ― a new way to hide from the...

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