Hey my name is Ivan and I'm an 18 year old gay male with nothing but a toe and an arm out of the closet. Here's my life story I hope you enjoy it thanks.
Throughout my life I've gone through the exact same "growing up story" as most others have (not to imply that I don't yet still have plenty of room to grow into the person I will eventually become). I was a femmeish kid with a slightly higher inclination to making girlfriends than guyfriends. I didn't like sports much, so I felt constantly threatened by the seemingly brutish actions of my fellow straight male peers, and often relied on humor and wits to get by. I began to realize my true sexuality after dating two girls (once in 5th grade and once in 7th grade) and discovering that I would much rather watch wrestling than deal with sloppy 12 year old girl kisses. I eventually moved away from childhood friends right before high school, which allowed me to erase my past and conceal the parts of myself that I wasn't proud of, but I couldn't escape it and in 11th grade found out (half regretfully but also half happily) that most of the friends I had newly made were also gay. I ended up having a LARGE crush on a semi-close friend that was openly gay (he was tall, white, funny, smart, had the best blue eyes, and only ate marshmallows for lunch) that resulted in some ruined friendships and my eventual disappointment because of a "racial barrier". Now, I am open to most of my friends and will be honest if pointedly asked, but I have not come out to my family and have no intentions of being publicly out or flamboyant because even though I don't care much about other peoples' opinions, it's also none of their business. That being said, I have absolutely no doubts about my existing sexuality or gender.
But actually my upbringing isn't what I wanted to focus this post on; if I'm to be honest and objective I would have to say that I've had it way better than most, being part of an open community and having the opportunity to "test the waters" first by coming out to friends on the internet. What's plagued me much more than societal approval is parental approval and reconciling my sexuality with my personal religion.
So besides my gay childhood I also had a devoutly religious side of me that still persists (albeit weakly) today. I was raised a Christian (don't know the denomination because in the Chinese community it doesn't matter as much) and have been going to church every free Sunday morning AND Friday night since I was born. My family has always been part of our Chinese Christian Community, and most of my friends out of school are from church. I firmly believe just as much as I believe that I'm a gay guy in Jesus and the whole lot, which has created a serious internal divide between my inner beliefs and my gay reality. Moving to a new church was hard knowing that I was gay; consequently I have not participated much in my new church and have very few friends because I always leave ASAP, but I'm still strong in my foundations of my faith.
As of right now, I've managed to somewhat come to terms with myself. It took quite a lot to even get to this point, there was many a night where I would quietly try to pray the gay away but nothing ever happened. If you care, I personally believe that condemnation of homosexual acts was included not to be taken literally but as one of the many statutes written as a reflection of the current societal cultures of the time that the Bible was written, and not one to be applied to the life of Ivan from the 21st century. There's also an emotional stubbornness; I know what I feel is real because I've felt it before, and since I know I can't give up on religion but I also know I can't give up on my true self, I've had to accept a truce, however meager it may be.
Dealing with my parents is a much more pressing and difficult issue, however; I've brought up the subject to them objectively before and we've had some fairly open discussions about LGBTQ+ stuff while I tried my best to inform them with "stuff I happened to be reading on the internet" as well as various pro-gay religious arguments that I've found over the years, but while they did show some promising signs of being open-minded, they were still quite firm in their stance and interpretation. I'm not quite sure what to do next; I don't think I'm confident enough in myself or in them yet to be able to come out to them. I keep telling myself I'll "do it on this day" but then push it back. For right now I plan on dumping it on them while I'm in college but that's not going to make it any easier.
Balancing homosexuality with religion in the public isn't easy either; out of paranoia I have to consciously keep the news out of the hands of people that could potentially spread it to people from my church to keep it away from my parents, but a part of me also hopes that it might be accidentally leaked to them, like ripping a band-aid off quickly.
The practical aspect of a homosexual lifestyle has also been a problem for me since I've always wanted to have my own biological kids and to be able to live a fairly normal lifestyle. After already being turned down once for being asian, my dating prospects have been pretty bare so far. Not to mention, being asian in this godforsaken country is already hard enough, and I had no meaning of having to deal with homophobia either. Still, I've become more open to other types of families over the years. I guess that's one benefit of being gay; I definitely feel like I would have been much more of a pretentious, judgmental asshole if I hadn't myself been one of the people I was supposed to hate. I guess God really doesn't make mistakes.
Hoooooly shit that was a long ass text. From here, I just want to see if there are other people struggling to reconcile sexuality with their religion, and to see how other people have handled coming out to religious parents. I know religion is a pretty touchy subject especially in the LGBTQ community, but it has to be brought up, so let's keep things civil please.
Retrospectively this was a really odd type of post to write with Alyssa Edwards, the Queen of gay icons across the USA, as my avatar and signature