Member-only story
Stop Saying This To or About Your LGBTQ Friend
My coming out has been an interesting journey, and I have often found difficulty in identifying with the LGBTQ2+ community. There are now more characters in the acronym than my name, yet I feel there are probably millions of questioning people who struggle to fit into the mix. And that’s OK.
Labels aren’t the greatest thing to ever grace humanity. Nor are the communities that strive for inclusion, but may end up separating us even further in the process. But this is not a story about segregation. This is a petition to stop the use of a few simple statements which I have heard spoken to me, about me, or about the ones I love. Such statements, I believe, are unwarranted and nonsensical.
“It makes sense now, because he turned out gay”, some have said.
“After all this time he ended up being gay”, I’ve heard others say.
Any variety of the statement of ending up, winding up, or turning up gay, bothers me. It doesn’t offend me. People mean no malice by using such phrases, and I’m comfortable enough in who I am to accept that. But what bothers me is that people try to leverage sexual orientation as an explanation for behaviors or events in the past. In my experience, more than nine times out of ten, they’re completely wrong.
