Fridae

"This above all; to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any [one]."

- Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3)

While we will never know if Hamlet had coming out problems, being true to oneself is really the basis of "coming out".

It is a unique decision and process for everyone who is within a hidden minority.

And the most liberating experience of anyone's life. The mask goes off, relief comes without the silence, pretence, and compromised integrity.

Or does it?

While we hear of many a success story of people who came out to their parents, their friends and colleagues where everything went as well as a lark, for every success story, there is a hushed up version of a 'coming out' experience gone bad.

Take personal story number #1.

This is the worst case scenario that came true. A friend decided to come out to his family to be true to himself. Problem was that father, being a colonel in the army, a rather homophobic man as well, reacted in the most averse way ever. So his father threw him out the house, disowned him, shouting he was "a bloody embarrassment to his family" when he declared. He was 18.

He was only to go back when he was "ready to live (his) life right." For obvious reasons, son and father do not talk, while mother and father hardly talk between themselves. Mother keeps blaming herself till this day that it was her fault that her son is gay, and can never bring herself to forgive her husband for chasing their only son out of the house.

This, though extreme, is by no means rare. Across cultures, be it Western or Eastern, parents have been know to disown and throw their children out of the house because they declared their sexual orientation to them.

And when that happens, the decision is usually made by one parent, seldom both. The result is that family members on the side of the 'victim' end up hating whoever it was who drove their son/daughter/brother/sister out of the house, and things get more tense at home. At the same time, a 'no-mention' rule is observed. The gay son or lesbian daughter's name becomes taboo, swept under the carpet, another skeleton in the cupboard, albeit it being the biggest sized one.

Now personal story number #2.

Another friend announced his sexual orientation to his parents, and four years on, he still sees his parents bearing the burden of his sexuality. His mother could not accept the fact that her son was gay, that her once thought of 'perfect' family was ruined. So hard was the brunt of her shame that she turned to drugs and alcohol. Suicide attempts soon came after that.

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While things are calmer these days, relations are cold and superficial at home between family members, purely functional conversations really. The family is still struggling to come to terms with the mother's behaviour; and my friend's boyfriend.

Till this day my friend is labelled as 'that mistake' by his parents, and his younger brother is told not to follow 'your brother's footsteps. Don't you dare!'

Parents who have children who 'come out' to them tend to fall easily into two categories: those who are thankful that their children have come to trust them with the deepest, darkest secret of their lives, and those who aren't. For those who accept it, family ties actually grow stronger because of that deeper trust. Those who don't, suffer the complete opposite.

And the problems don't just end there. Once the extended family gets whiff of the 'scandal', tongues go wagging as Chinese paper thin walls report everything, and very soon the family finds their gay son the social pariah of the family. And if they don't follow suit in attitude, they would soon join his ranks.

And finally personal story number #3.

While this friend's parents did not react as badly as the others (not to say there wasn't the usual finger pointing, shouting, hysterical threatening), but they got over it rather quickly. What soon became a problem was the extended family. Word got around that this nephew was never going to produce grandchildren because he was gay. The family instantly became the social victim of the 'clan', while my friend became the social pariah.

No one talks to him at family dinners (if he gets invited), and when he walks by, voices hush or silence marks his arrival. Cousins are told not to mix with that weird boy. Grandma takes it like she was betrayed by him because he was the eldest grandson, and mutters sometimes that "thank god grandpa is dead" in hokkien. Now what used to be a boisterous family gathering and a time of fun has since turned into a parody of manners.

In the final analysis, those who have daringly, or unintentionally, taken the step to disclose their sexual orientation to their families often find themselves paying a devastating price if things go wrong.
In a society that fears differentiation, any deviance from the norm often gets frowned upon. And anyone who chooses to "come out" to their family often find themselves the cause of a breakdown in family ties. But until the day society tolerates or accepts the existence of homosexuality, gay men may continue to find themselves bereft of any family support.