Growing up Gay

I came out to my mum aged 16, infact she had already told me weeks before that I was going to tell her something she already knew. The last year of secondary school was fairly tricky for me as of course every female believes you are after them!

A huge percentage of gay people scream and shout with pride as they jump out of the closet with confidence but a small percentage live with emotional scars of bullying, be that at school, playing out in the street or later on in their work lives.

Many  people I talk to on social media believe they are worthless or disgusting because they have absorbed what people spent time telling them as a teenager. 

My late teenage years were the worst time for me, cousins and certain extended family members made my life hell and caused a great deal of upset for my family.  I spent years trying to run from these feelings inside, I pushed all my inner torment into trying to be the best at golf for example believing then that I was perfect. In the evening when I was on my own going to sleep I found myself swinging from feeling worse than everyone else to better than everyone else, these years were utterly exhausting for me. 

 
I am not a shouter from the rooftops and I also do not live in denial, I am happy and settled and comfortable being gay and even got married in a dress last year. Over the years I have had my fair share of comments and remarks and people are cruel, really cruel but I pity them to be honest as nobody would given the choice choose this life because of the bullying. 

I think LGBT teens have it a little easier as time goes on but life is not bully or comment free for anyone regardless of sexuality.

Homophobia is rife today in modern politics, Putin for example is hyper-masculine, his homophobia is entirely in keeping with this.  I am really struggling to believe that disapproving of the sexual behaviour of others should go hand in hand with believing your nation to be superior to all others 

Meanwhile, the Vice-president of the USA, persecutes gay people, their biblical proclamations pushed into the shape of modern everyday life.  The problem with Christians is they are too interested in Sex, Sex of any sort.  

Currently people in the UK are more interested about the billions of pounds that will end up in the hands of the DUP instead of actually looking more importantly at the power they now hold due to Conservative incompetence, their threats alone to human rights are unbelievable.  Homophobia is on the rise and unfortunately now with the DUP the government has got into bed with people who want to erode the rights of LGBT people. 

I cannot believe it is 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act received Royal Assent, and male homosexuality was decriminalised.

Homophobia is nothing but a desire to stamp out otherness; it ends nowhere but in nationalism and control.  It is far more significant, and infinitely more costly, than a billion pounds to the DUP.  What's wrong is not our sexuality, but our experience of growing up in a society that still does not fully accept that people can be anything other than heterosexual.  It is the damage done to us by growing up, making no allowances for the fact that some people are different and we deserve and need to be supported and loved for who we are.