Anonymous Wrote:...I'm out to my friends and family - my mother, father and younger brother...
It feels completely normal to me to hold his hand or shoulders or to kiss him in public...
What kind of gibberish is this? Maybe I'm missing something. It sounds like you chose your brother's moment in the spotlight as a good time to come out to the whole town.
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I don't know how pertinent this is since it happened over 40 years ago, but when I was 18 my brother (21 at the time) came out to me. This was to me and me only. It took about 25 more years and being exposed to HIV for him to come out to the rest of the family.
Back to 1970. It upset me very much. I didn't want to believe it. I didn't believe it. He was my brother and I loved him, but I had trouble with it for months afterward.
I think it was maybe a year later that I saw him actually kiss another man. He probably thought nothing of it as we were in the Dupont Circle (DC) neighborhood at the time. I had come to terms with him being different (intellectually at least, that is to say the words didn't bother me anymore). But seeing that bothered me a lot.
A few years later, I had my first experience with a man, and my first experience with a woman. It was probably somewhere between 15-30 years after that that I actually concluded that I was bisexual.
Fast-forward to 2014, and I am amazed by how quickly everything has changed.
Everything? Sadly no, not everything. That might take another 40 years. In the meantime, 17-year-olds will get heckled anytime there's any
hint that they (or anyone in their family) are anything different from the norm. And keep in mind that when things have changed so much that every 17-year-old has an openly gay brother, those who don't will be heckled mercilessly. It's part of being 17. Not being strong enough to deal with it is another part of being 17.