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Subject: Re: He Lost 95% of His "Friends" Date: 10/15/2012 5:21 PM
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And not snooping through his mom's journal as a grown man.

Actually, that's the first thing that struck me also. It really bothered me that he'd do that.



True enough. Though it's hard to know what people will do in those situations*.

I can't say what would have happened while I was a church-goer. I can say now that if I announced I were gay, the only thing that would bother my friends or family would be the fact that I just got married last week. They'd all think that was a pretty crappy thing to do to him.

*This whole story hits me a little closer to home because I know someone it happened to. The guy was a gym-buddy of my then-husband's. Not a religious man that I know of, but I probably wouldn't have known. I didn't go to the gym, and barely knew the guy except through tDH. tDH had been mildly homophobic when we'd met, and I'd been working for 20 years to change that, with partial success.

So this friend announced one day that he and his wife were divorcing. Amicably. He was gay and had decided to stop trying to pretend otherwise.

Surprisingly, tDH not only didn't drop the friendship, but was deeply hurt that he was one of the few who didn't. He was shocked that so many people who had claimed such strong friendship with NowGayMan would treat him that way. I was incredibly proud that tDH (who wasn't known for being empathetic, or for putting himself to any trouble for his friends) worked extra hard to show his support and friendship for NowGayMan. It's like tDH tried to be the whole group of now-missing friends all by himself. And all homophobia disappeared. He realized how stupid it had been, and stopped.

NowGayMan moved about an hour away, to an area with a high gay population. He fell in love with another man, they moved in together, and the man died about a year later. tDH had meanwhile changed jobs so he was working in that area, and he and NowGayMan kept in touch pretty regularly for a while, until NowGayMan developed a close group of friends out there. He and tDH still run into each other now and then, but the friendship ran a very natural course to a gentle ending.

NowGayMan was one of the nicest, most caring people tDH and I knew. And to have so many people drop him over his sexual orientation was disturbing. But it made me aware that such things aren't as rare as we'd like to believe.

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