Dear Me,

I'm going to give you some very hard, possibly upsetting advice first. Please don't stop reading, because we're going to get the hard shit over and done with and then we'll move on:

Be glad your parents are honest about their disapproval.

Sound like it sucks? Trust me, it does. You know what sucks harder? Being 18 years old, having just come out, having heard the "oh, I love you no matter what, I can't wait for you to have a girlfriend, blah blah blah support blah blah wonderful unique blah" spiel and then three weeks later you come home for a surprise visit from college and your mother is on the phone sobbing to one of your relatives about how she can't believe you'd make such a terrible choice and all she ever wanted was to do what was right for you and how can't you see that you're just confused and you'll get over it. Sucky, right?

Ah, but this is where I hope you're still with me, because here's the lighthearted fluffy sequel: I walked out the front door, down to the street, and a mile away to my grampa's house. He gave me a cup of tea, listened to the whole thing, dried my tears and said "You still have a bedroom here, you know. Let me take your bag back." I lived with him for the next two years. He shared stories about my girlfriend (when I got one) at the dinor during "my grandchild's significant other" conversations. He called me on the phone to tell me he saw something in the paper about the Pride parade and asked if I was going. When I went through a butch dyke period he helped me find guys' shoes in my size and bought me a pair of unisex hoodies I could wear no matter what was under them (they fell apart many years ago from an abundance of love, but I still own the two he replaced them with!). He defended me against ignorant comments when they happened. And he told me, whenever I needed to hear it: "I don't have to understand to know you're happy, and I'm happy for you."

That's right: my biggest supporter when I was a wee little baby gay wasn't my middle-ticket, so-called bisexual hippie mother--it was my Republican-voting 77-year-old GRAMPA. (I'm happy to report that today he's 84 years old, reconsidering his political position and still my biggest supporter--in 2012 he voted on only one thing on the entire ballot, and that was equality for Washington state!) The purpose of this story is twofold:

1) All is not lost because your parents are ignorant. There are other people out there, some of them the least-likely candidates you can imagine, who will love and support you in ways big and small.
2) All is not lost because your parents are ignorant. You can talk sense to ignorant, truthful people, if they're willing to unplug their ears. When it comes to two-faced liars, however, you're screwed. (My relationship with my mom has never recovered, and now there's a gritty reboot that doesn't acknowledge the original: she knows I'm bisexual and just looking for the right man, all evidence to the contrary.)

So how do you make your parents not ignorant? Here's the sad and sucky news: sometimes you can't. Sometimes they not only want to remain ignorant, they will twist your own words into some weird version of "truth" so they can prove that you agree with them. But sometimes?

Sometimes you get lucky.

Other folks have provided a lot of resources for you, but I'm going to add one: http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.org/bi… Click around the left-hand toolbar and you'll learn some incredible stuff that's in the Bible--that Jesus blessed a gay couple; that one of the greatest kings in the Bible was bisexual; that our modern wedding vows are based on the vows, Biblically given, of a lesbian couple; that the early church welcomed a gay man; that Jesus said some people are born gay, and are blessed of heaven! Best of all, this website is run by a church--it's actual pastors and deacons writing these essays. It basically goes through not only the verses used against us, but verses people completely overlook (like the one where David and Jonathan were apparently not only lovers, but married--to each other), to show that far from the Bible condemning gay relationships, it contains within itself some very strong support for them.

Best of luck. Check back with us and let us know how you're doing, okay?

@39: BS. See, the Nice Guys expect all women to exist for their sexual gratification.

I do not expect this. What I expect is to NOT BE USED. Don't start a relationship with me, let me take you on dates, call you my girlfriend TO OTHER PEOPLE, etc., etc., and two months in when I suggest you sleep over, you say "oh, I'm straight, I thought you knew."

THAT is bullshit. If you're straight and you know I'm gay and you know I think we're dating and you are any kind of responsible, you'll say "hey--no offense, but you do know I'm straight, right?" the first time I introduce you as my girlfriend. It's not called "friendzoning"--I've definitely had straight girl friends I was attracted to, gone to a couple of activities with, and then had them tell me "you know, just so you know, I love doing stuff with you but I'm straight" and I have no problem with that (one of my best friends in college was a failed dating attempt that we still laugh about several years later). What I have a problem with is being really, actively led on.

@ other commenters telling me to stop hanging with douchebags, etc.: out of a total of four relationships I've had, TWO of them have been with girls like this--one whom I met first online through a shared love of musicals and then in person, and one who was part of a group of my friends; we did in fact meet in a bar, but could as easily have done in a restaurant or other "girls' night out" venue; the bar was just where we happened to be hanging that night. Where did they get the idea it was okay to make me an experiment (one of them flat out told me she was bisexual, only for me to discover later that she has no interest in women beyond what they can buy for her) without telling me? And I quote: "I see other girls do it all the time, I didn't know you'd be so upset." WHERE DO YOU SUPPOSE THEY ARE SEEING THESE GIRLS, HM?

DSGs make it harder for lesbians and MUCH harder for bisexuals: 24, 26, I hate to tell you I'm one of those lesbians with a no-bisexuals rule because fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. There is no fooling me three times.

Damned right I'm angry. I'm angry that it's okay for two DSGs to go to a lesbian bar, spend all night making out with each other, and then call me a disgusting queer. I'm angry that they think it's funny to point and laugh and try to shame actual lesbians. I'm angry for my bisexual friends that they have to put up with this bullshit (I assume that they, at least, are not lying to me about their orientations because, having been placed firmly in the friend category, they have no reason to do so). I'm angry and disgusted that this behaviour leads to men who find out I'm a lesbian and go "so, like--I can watch you and your girlfriend make out, right?" (The number of men who have offered to pay me to do this is absolutely revolting. I'm not a whore, assholes.) I'm angry that there are women who think it's funny to go out of their way to cockblock other women.

Don't like it? Try being on the gay side of the fence for once. Ask a gay man what he hates most about gay bars these days, and odds are good he'll agree with me: "All the straight women."

@5: You do realize King speaks very highly of women and that very often they're the strongest protagonists in his books, right? You seem to be misapplying the term misogyny. Yes, women suffer a lot in King books. SO DO MEN. Take Gerald's Game: She does a lot of damage to her hand and has mental trauma from childhood assault, but all of the main men in this book end up dead. Likewise, Dolores Claiborne: Dolores and her daughter are badly used, but Dolores gets her own back at the man who used them. Ah, but both of those books are connected and they were written a year or two apart--well then, how about The Stand, where the mentor character, God's representative on earth, is a woman, and the starter of the new society is also a woman? What about The Dark Tower--where a huge chunk of the plot hinges on one woman who is actually four, and that woman (in all her forms) is shown repeatedly as strong, wonderful, and independent?

Not convinced? Maybe it's his recent work that has you riled up, like--oh, I dunno, that horrible book about a widow working through her grief and saving her husband and herself, Lisey's Story. Or perhaps it's Duma Key--where the deaths of several men are treated as not such of a much but the death of a mother figure and a daughter are such travesties that they become the unforgivable acts of the book. Or even, perhaps, the book that started it all--Carrie, where the female protagonist (unusual enough for horror at that time) is a tragic figure for whom there is literally no possible happy ending? Carrie's story is a very real one; girls just like her exist all over this country, and drawing light to it isn't misogynistic--it's the exact opposite.

Or wait--maybe it's his short fiction? I mean, certainly, Mrs. Todd's Shortcut--in which a woman manages to transcend all known laws of physics to fulfil the destiny she chooses--is definitely anti-woman. And "A Good Marriage," lord, let's not even get started on how a man who would harm women is treated as being BEYOND the lowest of the low in that story.

Misogyny =/= no woman is treated badly, ever. It's HORROR. The men and the women are equal fodder for bad shit to happen. King's women, on the whole, are strong, independent, wonderful women, not a Bella Swan among them.

Please direct claims of misogyny where they belong--which is not at King.

I skipped a whole bunch of the comments so this may be repeat advice, but DUD--as a lesbian whose mom once tried to do the "compassionate premature outing" thing when I was thirteen and sent me scuttling in tears to the very back of the closet in fear, here is my advice:

Address the porn.

Not whether it's gay, not whether it's straight. Not whether it's moral, not whether it's kinky or vanilla or stereotypical or WHAT-THE-FUCK-EVER. Just the fact that there is porn, and it is on his computer:

"Hey, bud, I want to borrow your ear for five minutes. I've noticed some adult sites on your laptop. [Give him a second here to offer up whatever protest it is he wants to give you, from "I clicked it by accident" to "I didn't know it was porn".] Okay, that's fine--I just want to make sure you know free adult sites have a tendency to come with a metric asston of viruses attached, so if you do decide you want to browse--I'd rather have you looking at porn than having sex--make sure your firewall is turned on and don't bypass it just because something looks tempting, okay? There's more than enough out there and it's not worth risking your computer. [Give him time to agree.] One more thing. I want you to read this. It's by a columnist who actually gives pretty damn good advice." Then give him a printout of Dan's column on getting your twenty-year-old self laid. It'll embarrass the hell out of him (especially the part about masturbation), but it'll embarrass--and mortify--him far less than actually hearing this stuff from YOU. You sound like a good dad, DUD, but the last thing teenagers want is to hear their parents talking to them about how to have sex. I should know--my mom tried to take the open-and-honest approach and I was a terrified prude until I left her house.

That's it. Address the porn. Especially if he's been visiting sites where the address makes it blatantly obvious what's there. And do so NATURALLY. Don't "avoid" mentioning that it's gay porn--just don't mention it because in the context of what you're saying, it doesn't matter. Your kid is exploring. Let him explore and tell him to do it safely. If you let him see that it's not such of a much--that your first priority is his health and safety--he will be more willing to come out, especially because you've already made it not a big deal between you. (Feel free to freak out to a friend who can keep his or her mouth shut WELL OUT OF THE HEARING RANGE of your son, though--my mom did when I finally came out. It was the "out of my hearing range" part she failed at. The telephone does not count. Get out of the house, AWAY from the kid and talk there. You needing to adjust does not make you a bad ally or a bad dad. You having a big sad in front of your son would not be a gold star, however.)

And if he goes "uh, dad . . . about that . . . . " when you give him the two-minutes-or-less porn chat, be ready to NOT GIVE ADVICE, and say the following: "Yeah, I gathered. I love you." Nothing about "I still love you" or "I love you anyway." Don't make it out to be an "in spite of that fault . . . " thing. Just LOVE HIM.

Don't overwhelm him with PFLAG information. Don't offer to call the school and demand a GSA. Let HIM tell YOU what he needs. He will know best. Then make sure you follow through--that your door is always open.