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From: amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP (John Hobson)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: coming out
Message-ID: <617@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Feb-84 13:00:40 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.617
Posted: Wed Feb  8 13:00:40 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Feb-84 02:16:13 EST
References: <6788@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 37

My younger brother is gay, and when he decided to the our parents
about it, he came to me to get some advice about how to tell them
(just for the record, I am not gay).  

After telling him that his sexual orientation made no difference to
the way I felt about him (he had been afraid to tell me for years
because he feared that I would reject him), we discussed what we
thought might be our parents' reaction.  As it turned out, we got
their reactions completely backwards--we thought that our father
would refuse to accept it while our mother would be supportive, and
it was the other way round.

One result of his opening up to me was that it made us closer than
we had been in years.  He now feels that there is someone in the
family that he can confide in, and his openness to me has made it
easier for me to be open to him.  

However, whenever I think of him, I do think of him as "my gay
brother", not as "my brother".  (We have another brother whom I
think of as "my twin brother", but that is a very different--and
very special--relationship).  I love him, and I care about him, but
his homosexuality keeps intruding when I think about him.  I was
raised in a fairly traditional Catholic atmosphere, where "queers"
were looked down on.  I try to accept other people as people, but I
still get twinges of racism, sexism, and homophobia.  I try to fight
them, but they are still there, and, I suspect, always will be.

I will say that the only time I spurned a relationship because of
someone's homosexuality was when he kept making passes at me, even
though I let him know that I simply was not interested.  If he had
not kept doing it, I would have liked to have kept him as a friend.

				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Naperville, IL
				(312) 979-0193
				ihnp4!ihuxq!amigo2