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| Name: Schulyer | Date: Dec 18th, 2008 1:31 AM |
| Hi Aaron When I was 15 I came out to my parents, and their reaction was mixed, at best. While they reaffirmed their love for me they were hardly supportive, and my dad was actually scared about HIV/AIDS and hate crimes. He educated himself and eventually both my parents and my grandparents became completely okay with it. It took years, but the point is that when they did accept it our relationship was much better. I am now 22 years old and have been with my partner for 3 years. My family loves him and I we have a completely "normal" and healthy relationship (that is to say, as normal as any family in modern America). Unfortunately, they didn't really come to terms with it until I was an adult, which means that I missed out on being able to get relationship advice and sex advice as a child. The fact is that your son probably is sexually active with his friend, and that raises some concerns. Because I felt as though my parents didn't accept me completely I did a lot of stupid things that I probably wouldn't have done if I had their open affirmation. I dated a guy six years older than me who physically abused me and introduced me to drugs. I was somewhat sexually indiscriminate - and not safely. I suffered homophobia silently because I didn't want to talk about it with my parents, and that actually caused me to go into a depression. My dad's heart breaks when he thinks about what his insecurities cost me. It sounds like you are light years ahead of where my parents were when I was your son's age. That's good. I do think that, as a parent, you have every right to tell him what you heard. But he's probably going to get angry, say you're spying, you're treating him differently because he's with a boy (which is crazy since I doubt if it had been a female friend you'd have let her stay over in the first place) or he's going to deny everything because he's scared out of his mind. It's important that you do talk to him about sex though, and you can do that without ever mentioning homosexuality. Tell him about STIs, about HIV/AIDS, that straight and gay people both have to worry about them and that condoms do more than serve as birth control. My parents never had this conversation with me or my straight siblings, and we all agree now that we probably could have benefited from it. For the fact is that regardless of your child's sexual orientation, they are most likely going to engage in sexual activities. I am one of five siblings, and the four of us that are grown all lost our virginity in high school. I'm going to make sure my mother has that conversation with my seven-year-old brother when the time comes, because he needs the information that we didn't have. In short, what's probably the best decision for you is to talk to your son about safer-sex ASAP. If the topic of homosexuality comes up, great. If not, affirm your acceptance and love for gay people and your son and make sure he's aware that you will love him and accept him happily and openly no matter what. Don't push him to come out to you until he's ready (that's another mistake my parents made - they forced me to come out to the rest of the family before I was ready), but make sure he knows that when he does, the only thing that's going to change is which gender he can have sleep over (lol). Best of luck, and I hope this helps. ↑ |
