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My name is Jack and I was born back in 1967.
I'm half Chinese and have caucasian. The reason why I bring up the fact that
was born
all those many years ago is that in 1967 it would have been
illegal actually for my parents to have been married to each other
in several states around Union and it wasn't until
the end of that year that the Supreme Court but it struck down what they call
these
interracial anti...
interracial marriage laws. So that my parents could be legally wed in any of the
fifty states. Twenty years later
I would come out as a gay man and at first I wasn't
easy but as the years went on
I grew to love myself as a person
of worth and someone who is capable of loving and receiving love as much as
anybody else.
I started accepting myself for who I am and
understanding that this is the way that I was created.
This is what I was meant to be. I shouldn't
pretend to be something that I wasn't.
This is how God me
and God only makes good things. Growing up
I guess I always knew that I was a little bit different. It was
actually the summer before my senior year in high school and I fully realized
I was gay and I actually told my parents
later that year after a little bit of probing so I would know what their
reaction would be.
My dad who is actually a methodist minister
said that he loves me and after that day when I told him he actually made a point
and give me a hug
every day to remind me that he loves me, God loves me, so that I would have that,
sort of, support system.
So I never had a hard time coming out with my family. I just,
I really just told my sister who I was and how I felt about
other women. She was fine with that. My father, I never discussed it with.
He just always knew. It happened in my mother's birthday,
so my sister and I, my one sister,
and my father and mother we want to maggianos
for dinner and they could tell something was
on my mind, I was disconnected,
intense and all. Finally, you know,
we were sitting down for dinner, and of course it's the table in the middle of
the restaurant,
and I was very nervous, starting to sweat,
and I said "Look I have something important to tell you and I just don't
know how to tell you."
and, you know, they're eating and all
and my moms just like just get it off your chest cause I'm
starting to get concerned.
I said well you know I wasn't sure how to tell you, when the tell you
and I didn't necessarily want to tell you on your birthday
but I'm gay and I'm been gay for a while now and I just didn't know
how to tell you guys and I looked at my sister
she was just feeding her face with spaghetti
and I looked at my dad and
he was smiling and my mom immediately jumped
up off the table ran over, hugged me and said how proud she was and
how proud she has a gay son. At this point, I was more mortified that
everybody in the restaurant
was watching us. Came out to a few friends,
then I came out to my family. With my family
they had already all decided that I was gay,
just was waiting for me to tell them. In fact when I
was gonna sit down with...I sat down with
one of my sisters to tell her that,
when I decide I was gonna tell everyone I said, you know, lets sit down I have something I
want to tell you
and she said "What? That you're gay?" You know, I'm from the rural South,
my family's from Virginia and the Carolinas going way back to colonial period
so it's very conservative.
I was aware of my sexuality since my first memories
but for religious and social reasons I repressed
everything until well after college.
I was a late bloomer.
I was struggling through, even for my twenties with my
religious beliefs, my social structure, expectations,
I'm an only child so there were a lot of expectations of family
and I did my military service,
I volunteered, and so
it was...really I dated women into my late twenties because of,
not so much my own confusion, but my societal confusion based on the environments
I was in.
When I was growing up, I was a small kid
and I got called every name in the book from my
classmates, you know, older brother.
People were calling me gay before I even know what the word meant.
and so when I discovered that, in fact, I am gay
you can imagine how uncomfortable that was for me to come to terms with. My mom, on the
other hand, said this is a biological dead end
so thats where I started my senior year of high school
but, sort of, my advice to everyone is not to be discouraged by that.
Actually, it's almost nine years later and
she texted me when the DOMA
Supreme Court decision came out and she actually texted me and said
DOMA is unconstitutional exclamation point!
The reason why I know it gets better is because the discrimination factors that
I've had to deal with,
not only with just being a black female, but in just being a black lesbian
female
and I'm here to tell you that it does get better. Now
I am a parent, I raise two beautiful girls
and I see the struggles that they go through right now in school
being different, having 2 moms to raise them.
My niece has a mohawk
and people think that she's different and that's why I really wanted to
take part in this, was just to let people know that it does get better
and not only does it get better, it really gets fun! The first person I actually told was
my high school psychology teacher which turned out to be the best thing ever
because she said well now you join the ranks Michelangelo, Alexander the Great,
named off all these other famous gay people from history.
The advice I would give for somebody who is trying to come out
in a place where they don't have support around them, is
you gotta go within yourself
and you got to know that you were put on this planet for a reason
and that reason may not be apparent to you right now
because of the fact that you don't have support around you, there isn't somebody to show
you the way
but you gotta believe that, that day will come for you if you just stick
with it. So if you're struggling on coming out
my advice would be: don't wait for your mom's
birthday dinner in the middle of a restaurant you might wanna
pull them to the side at home or just say hey Mom Dad
or maybe one at a time, or both depending on how comfortable you are
and just let them know that what you've been going through,
what's meant to you and how their support
would help you go further. When I came out to my dad he said
in very traditional southern terms: I'm not sure I needed to know that
not sure the you needed to tell me and I'm not sure I want to meet anyone
you're involved with.
Of course over years that's changed and my and my mom both
two of my best friends, very supportive of my relationship which
is now in its 14th year and,
you know, I'm just very blessed. I was walking in this morning and I
thought about it and I thought
about it was an art form that we truly learned
art form to survival in my era. You know, as a young kid you learn that art form to
hiding yourself
and fitting in and no longer. You don't have to do that anymore, you can be yourself.
You just have to...you always have to be careful because it doesn't matter if you're
gay,
straight, black, white...it doesn't matter there's always going to be somebody out
there
whose prejudice and who is not gonna like you. So be yourself
and then you feel a lot better about who you are. I never thought
that today when I was 18 years old or 17 years old,
that I would be with the same person already now for almost 17 years
and that I've adopted two children.
One who is now 10 months old and the other thats two and a half.
I never thought that was something that was possible for me and
it does get better. It gets better.
It gets better. It does get better. It gets better
It gets better