PhotoCredit: Heather Rice Photography
If you didn’t know I am married to a woman. Yes. It’s true! :) Nowadays it doesn’t seem that crazy… It’s not as foreign as it used to be. BUT for some reason… it is still news when a celeb “Comes Out”
One celebrity that I will always remember “coming out”is Ellen Page. I just adore her!Ellen Page came out as gay at the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to Thrive Conference.Ellen says she suffered for years because she was afraid to come out.
She told the audience, “I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.” I added the full speech right below for you to check out…For some people this speech brought them to tears and for others it made them wonder WHY this was news.JUST SO YOU KNOW- There IS a difference between being sick of hearing about people coming out and true worldwide acceptance.
I have received several emails asking how I came out, How hard it was, if people started to hate me after I came out… So I’ve decided to go ahead and put it all out there. (It’ll be short and sweet. I’m sorry for my poor grammar!) A couple of years ago my parents realized that I was acting funny and not being myself. I really wasn’t being myself because I was hiding a major part of me that made me happy. I would actually catch myself being mean to my parents and ignoring them because I was so afraid to talk about my “love life.” I hated myself for disrespecting them the way I did but that was the only way I thought I could handle the situation.
I didn’t sit my parents down or write them this long note about why I am gay or interested in the same sex I just basically told them that I was in love and they eventually found out it was with a girl… and they DIDN’T care! I was stressing over NOTHING. They love my Girl to pieces!
Coming out to my parents was the easy part … It was the other people around me and my old friends from high school that I would run into on a day-to-day basis that made me nervous.I would have people ask me Why are you gay? Have you always been? I would have old high school friends that were girls think that I was hitting on them… When I WASN’T! After a while I started to realize IT DOESN’T MATTER! What makes me happy has NOTHING to do with the people around me.
Happiness comes from within. I now know who my TRUE friends are and who didn’t want to accept me.For lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, coming out is a process of understanding, accepting, and valuing one’s sexual identity.It also involves coping with societal responses and attitudes toward LGBT people.
LGBT individuals are forced to come to terms with what it means to be different in a society that tends to assume everyone to be heterosexual and that tends to judge differences from the norm in negative ways. Yes I’m proud of Ellen but I also long for the day that saying “I am gay” isn’t news.
As I write this today I am Proud of who I am and I have NEVER been this happy in my LIFE. Instead of you wishing you were someone else.
Be proud of who you are. You never know who was looking at you, wishing they were you.
If you are thinking about Coming out.. Or confused…. This is a good site. Click HERE!
ALSO If you live here in Central Florida and need/ want some help connecting with others The Center Orlando- Orlandos GLBT Community is great. CLICK HERE for their site.