I DON´T THINK IT WILL ALWAYS BE EASY: When Your 7-Year-Old Son Announces, 'I'm Gay'

"My 7-Year-Old Son Is Gay, and I'm So Proud To Be His Mom"

¨Considering that my son has a longstanding crush on Glee's Blaine and regularly refers to him as "my boyfriend," I thought there was a fair chance that he would someday say, "I'm gay." But my kid is only 7 years old. I figured I had a few years before we crossed that threshold (if we ever did), probably when he was 14 or 15. I never thought it would happen this soon.

Six months ago "gay" wasn't even a word in my son's vocabulary. He has always known that some of our male friends are married to men and some of our female friends to women, and it is such a normal part of his life that he never needed a special word to describe them. When he did notice the word and asked what it meant, I told him that when boys want to marry boys and girls want to marry girls, we call that "gay." He didn't seem very interested and quickly went off to do something else more exciting than a vocabulary lesson with his mom.

Fast-forward a few months. I was on the phone with a relative who had just discovered that I was blogging on The Huffington Post and openly discussing my son's crush on Blaine. I was in another room alone (I thought), explaining, "We're not saying he's straight, and we're not saying he's gay. We're saying we love who he is," when my son's voice piped up behind me.

"Yes, I am," he said.

"Am what, baby?" I asked.

"Gay. I'm gay."  there is more, please read it all, HERE

NOTE:   I´m Leonardo Ricardo/Len and I knew I was ¨Gay¨ at least by age 7 too.  As described in Amelia´s entry at Huffington Post, ¨I didn´t know what the language for *it* was and I was afraid *it* was wrong to be who I was born to be...the authentic me.  My parents were loving and accepting of me (and my friends) at all ages/stages of my life even though we never had much conversation on ¨Gay¨ specifically. Thanks, Len

·  Thanks to Amelia, Mother, Wife, Partner and Breadwinner
·  Thanks to The Huffington Post, sidebar
·  Thanks to End Bigotry in Venango County, HERE