It started like a normal Friday. My first year uni exams had
just finished. I’d be back all summer long in just a few weeks but I couldn't wait and came home especially for the weekend. I woke up and had a cuppa tea on the
sofa watching Lorraine. Mum and I went for lunch at Tomassi’s, saw my friend Lea
also having lunch with her Mum and then we went to the cemetery.
It was there, in
front of my Dad’s tombstone that I told my Mum ‘I’m gay’.
So today, June 18th, is my official ‘Outiversary’, much like
the Queen has a real birthday and an official birthday. There were friends I’d
already told before my Mum. Some at uni in the days and weeks before, who
smiled me on my way home that weekend. There were school friends I’d told years
before that ‘I thought I was gay’. And there was me. I can’t name
the day, but I still have the message to myself, scribbled in a school corridor
saying ‘I’m gay’.
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A photo of me in June 2010, a few weeks after I came out to my Mum |
That’s the very abridged story of my ‘coming out’ six years
ago. The story of ‘being out’ is one I’m
living now.
It feels like it only started 12 months ago. Yes, there’s moments
from when I first questioned and came out, of confusing and threatening times
that I’m almost ready to share. But for five years, I only put my sexuality
into innuendo or how much I fancied Zac Efron. I left it aside at the workplace
and the church door.
Until I heard a homophobic speaker in the pulpit. Their hurtful words forced me to bring my
sexuality and religion together. And get on with being gay.
It’s this last year that I’ve enjoyed being out. A few
dates, a few trips to Soho, blogging about my experiences, watching films with
LGBT leads, getting involved at Pride in London and CASENET (Christian Aid
Sexuality Network), going to same-sex weddings.
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My family at Will and Mark's wedding in March this year. Photo by Alex Beckett |
I’ve now realised that my sexuality isn’t a browser plug-in
to use as and when I need it. Earlier this week my Mum said: ‘you’re turning
into your brother, everything has to be gay’. I am gay. All the time. Now I’ve come out with my words, I can’t stay
in with my actions.
The poignancy of my Outiversary this year is ridiculously
obvious, sandwiched as it is between last weekend’s fatal homophobic attack in
Orlando, and next weekend’s Pride in London. And as I write this, Baltic Pride
is marching for equality in Lithuania.
That’s why I’m celebrating today and this Pride season. Homophobia
still kills and devastates lives in every country. I’m remembering and
celebrating just as I did in Soho on Monday night with at least 7000, maybe 10,000 other people to show
that love is winning.
So when my nephew
Mitchell, born just a month before I came out asks me about love, I’ll show him
this photo from the vigil, point to his two gay uncles (myself and my brother)
and tell him I love him.
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Ray Lang/LNP published in The Guardian, Tuesday 14th June 2016 |
This blog post is
dedicated to everyone who helped me come out, especially my brother Will and by
extension, everyone who helped him come out too.