Hello. For those just “tuning in,” I will ask you to read my “Love, Simon” review https://www.robbiereviews.com/home/love-simon-and then come back and read this. These are questions I would have for a person who came out to be gay. So, I figured, other people probably have these questions too. I’ve, therefore, taken the liberty of writing some questions down and answering them to the best of my ability.
Q. How long have you known?
I have known I was gay since I was 11 but thought it was a phase and it would pass. I thought that until I was about 20. I grew up, and still live in a household and community that is very religious, being gay is not a thing that looked on too highly. So I hid it with all my might from everyone, including myself, during those difficult teenage years.
Q. Why did you wait until now to come out?
Well, like I said, I grew up in a community and a time where it was inappropriate to be gay. I felt I would have been ostracized from the community. I was scared. I was SO scared. I was so unbelievably scared that I was willing to make up lies corroborating my claims to be heterosexual.
Q. Have you acted on your homosexuality before?
No. I had been taught, and learned all my life that this type of feeling or desire was wrong, so I stifled it for absolutely as long as I could.
Q. You acted quite heterosexual as a teenager. Do you have any regrets as to not coming out earlier and being who you were for a longer period of time?
Nope. In my own, personal, opinion, having girlfriends, going on dates, and hooking up with girls is fun! By not coming out, I did not exclude myself from the pool of eligible men that girls could date. Also, like I said, I lived in a very religious, conventional community. People would not have been accepting of me, and that’s okay, I might have not been accepting of me either, if I was them.
Q. Are you a sex-obsessed, repressed person?
No. Interesting fact is that I believe I value sex less than the average person. People assume that just because someone is gay that they’re going to rape them or try to get them to “switch teams.” While I cannot debunk this assumption for every gay person, I can say that is completely not true when it comes to me. I would venture to say that you are more likely to get raped by a heterosexual person than you are by me.
Q. Now that you’re gay, are you going to hit on me?
No. See answer above.
Q. Are going to act different now that you’re “out?”
No. Not at all. I am still the exact same person I was before. I still don’t like video games, I don’t love watching sports, i like it and will enjoy it when I do do it. I still care about how I look- really? Listening to myself it seems pretty obvious, I’m surprised more people didn’t know I was gay.
Q. Are you sad to be gay?
Sometimes. I was sad, for many years. I was pulling the old why me?! This is so unfair- thing. What helped me was: A) time, B) a sense that I was a valued member of society, even if I was gay, and C) looking at my life and being like- I’m still a good person, I still help people out, I still have good intentions. I think I had this incorrect assumption that gay people were evil. So me admitting to myself that I was gay would essentially be saying that I was an evil person. I did not want to admit that, at all. It took years for me to reframe it in my mind and start thinking I’m a good person who just happens to be gay.
Q. How will you feel if people don’t want to get to know you and be your friend now that they know you’re gay?
I am actually fine with it. I was deathly afraid of that when I was younger because friends were the most important thing to me. Now, though, I am at a point in my life where I am confident the friends I do have will continue to be my friends and people who don’t want to be my friends probably weren’t close, deep friends with me before anyway. Furthermore, if someone doesn’t want to be my friend because I’m gay, it definitely says more about their character than it does about mine.
Q. How do you feel about religion now?
I actually still love the idea of religions. I am not currently a practicing member of any church and I do not participate in any religious exercises or ceremonies. That is because I don’t want to be part of one, not because I am against them or what they teach. I recognize that any judgement or hatred tossed in my direction is due to human errors showing, not errors of religion. I learned SO much from being raised in a religious household. I learned to be kind, to be polite, to be honest, to be clean- in my speech and in life, I learned to manage my time, my money, and I learned so many more things from being involved in a religious institution. It shaped who I am, and I like who I am.
Q. Do you feel that you are doing a disservice to God and will be punished by going to hell?
No. For a long time I did, but in the time from when I admitted my truth to myself and now, I’ve “felt God’s love” and feel that being gay is not really as serious and disastrous as I was taught. Besides, it would be fully disheartening if God hated something as much as people say he hates homosexuality, but he still thought it was a good idea to “test” some of his subjects with homosexual thoughts. That would just be rude and cruel, and deep down, I do not believe God is rude or cruel.
I have no qualms with talking about this, so if anyone has any other questions they would like to ask me or would like any further explanation, please, let me know.
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