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comment by sounds_sound
sounds_sound  ·  4664 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: When your seven-year-old son announces, "I'm gay."
Attraction and sexual interests certainly come into our lives at different ages. For me, I remember shopping with Mom in the women's department and tearing of a jean tag with a brown haired model on it. I put it in my back pocket for safe keeping only to have Mom discover it on the way home. I was 5. Since then I've always had a thing for brown haired girls. And once, in fourth grade, a neighbor friend of mine would seem to always want to wrestle on his bed. I remember thinking immediately that there were alterior motives involved, "I do not want what he wants" I thought. His name, btw, was Guy. We were 9.

I think kids are way more in tune with these feelings than we give them credit for. Of course, they don't have the capacity yet to deal with them, but it doesn't mean they don't exist. For me though, the interesting part of this story is the description of the environment that he is growing up in - and I'm wondering - What part of that can we factor into his coming out? His exposure to gay couples in life and on tv has in some ways given a definition to the word 'gay' and made it something. It made it a thing you could be. Now, I'm am not suggesting that gayness produces more gayness. I just think it's interesting that when we produce an environment where it is ok to be or do something then suddenly we get more people being and doing those things. We call that culture I think.