Responses range from “I would not accept it” to “Great! It would be a great surprise!” (we all had our suspicions of that dad) when people across Europe are asked to respond to the hypothetical situation of their father’s coming out of the closet.
We’re a bit scared what people would say in less-accepting parts of the world.
Watch below:
Albert Du Mousset
…join the club ?? 😀
Andrew Button
Sidney DaviesWinter
I would love him and wish him the best finding his true love.
silveroracle
My father is no longer living.
Hypothetically speaking, I would accept it but I’m not sure how my mum would react.
Brian
If he’s your father and he has a wife, then he’s had sex with women and enjoys sex with women. He might not enjoy it with the particular woman he’s been married to but he still enjoys sex with women as a gender.
If he falls for a man, then he is expressing his homosexual desire. He has not necessarily chosen to identify as gay and nor does he need to identify as gay. “Male homosexual desire” and “gay” are two different things with two different meanings.
Identifying as gay is always a choice, don’t forget. It is a choice you make if you want to make that choice. Male homosexual desire, on the other hand, always lives there whether you like it or not – no choice here.
Captain Obvious
I don’t know too many people who would be happy that there dad lied to their mom and wasted her best years while he can skips off happily with another man.
I don’t really get the happy fantasy about that. Men age backwards, women age forwards. Men get more handsome and grow into their looks. Women have their best appearance around their 20s-30s and it’s typically downhill from there usually.
It’s not fair. I’d be pissed at him, not because he’s gay, but for dragging my mother along for his ride.
People so easily forget the women in that scenario like they don’t matter.
Aromaeus
@Captain Obvious: All of this.
Brian
Men are far more accepting of female bisexuality than women are of male bisexuality. Women see male bisexuality as a threat to their ability to control men.
If a wife sees that her husband might have homosexual desires, it scares her despite the fact that he may have no intention of acting on those desires. To her, it’s too powerful a thing to cope with.
This is why it’s fair to call out women as hypocritical.
Scott McIntosh
My father is dead, if he was still alive I would say ‘Great, when are you going to leave mum and find someone who really loves and helps you?’
Joseph Micheal Keetley
The only reason it would be disgusting would be because I don’t want to think about my dad doing it…
Morten Jensen
Considering he has been dead for 11 years I would go into some sort of heart failure if he showed up to announce it himself …
But besides that, if he were here and were to come out, – i would just welcome him and treat him with the same respect and love he treated me when i came out.
Willyam Firth
Why do people make a big thing out of being Gay? This just makes me sick! Live and let live I say, no matter who we are.
Matthew Thompson
I’m gay but I would feel deceived. Like he stole something from my mom. Lucky for me my parents are very happy married now for 41 years
Michael Martinez
I would simply ask him if his boyfriend has a nice single son.
John Malin
I’d faint! He’s been dead for 54 years! He was an extraordinarily good looking man, but I think a committed hetero.
NoCagada
@Brian: “If he’s your father and he has a wife, then he’s had sex with women and enjoys sex with women”
You do ASSume a lot, don’t you? Maybe, he NO LONGER LIKES PUSSY. Do you look at life through a collapsed straw?
Alex T Hornby
A lot of dead dads… Ps. Stop trying to make an issue out of EVERYTHING!
vonric
I think my dad was gay… or at the very least, bi…. pics of him from his tour of duty in WWII show him with another soldier occupying each other’s “personal space”. There was an affection there, exchanged looks… that and some early gay porn discovered in an odd location in the garage…..
had he come out, it would have explained a great deal… and I would have respected his candor…
hyhybt
How would I react? With more surprise than I’d know what to do with, given that, between my mom and my stepmom, he’s been married to a woman 50 years… and that I’ve done file recovery from his deceased computer.
Me2
I would definitely be upset. It would cause me to question a LOT!! He’d be a stranger who I’d have to get know all over again and I’m not sure I’d have the energy.
Stached1
I would be very surprised; but he’s been married to a woman for decades, and I have found porn of naked women like hyhbt posted about.
@Brian: A lot of gay men have had sex with women or are married to women and it does not make them bisexual. I happen to be bisexual but that’s because I’m sexually attracted to both genders/sexes, while gay men are only sexually attracted to the same gender and they can be a total virgin to men and only have had sex with women their entire life or even be married to a woman but they’re still gay.
DutchGay
I’d react the same as he reacted to my coming out; very surprised, I wouldn’t have seen it coming but hey – be happy !
Merv
@Captain Obvious: Well said!
Harrison Martin-Sandoval
He did, I was adopted by gay parents at birth and I am a gay man, too. So…been there, done that.
fitdad
After being married for 30 years, I can out at age 54. It was not an easy process. It took me 5 years to make the decisions that I wasn’t happy. Not that I didn’t love my ex,but I had come to a point in my life were I wanted true happiness.One that comes from within. Our lives had gone in separate directions.Through the divorce many truths had come out. How she had lied to me as I had lied to her. I guess we had never had an honest conversation in 20years. My daughter an I haven’t spoken in 2 years, but my son (straight son who’s relationship had always been strand growing up) is better then ever. It’s not an easy question to answer. There are a great deal of feelings that you go through in the process.
There are many married men in the same situation. Being responsible for your actions isn’t an easy road. But a necessary road that must be traveled.
Or you don’t find yourself hiding from others. you find yourself hiding from you.
jaack
Think about it! A gay dad. My father worked a night shifts at a car factory. WE spent little if any FATHER SON TIME TOGETHER. There was NO talk about the birds and bees, My father was not a church goer. I would have someone who I could talk to without all this religion crap and the hatred it generates. Since I had to travel more than an hour each way to and from high school in another county and city, I had no high school friends locally from my first freshman day to graduation and the last senior day and the isolation nearly killed me. I knew no one who was gay, the loneliness was unbearable. Yes, a gay dad would be GREAT. I didn’t have sex with another person until I was 21, the guy was 15 yr older and had a lover who he lived with and cheated on. I was quite clueless at the time. I tried to have sex with a woman but couldn’t perform, my younger brothers & their straight friends got a hooker for me to “pop my cherry” so I wouldn’t be a virgin any more but it didn’t work out.
My mom is Roman Catholic Irish. Totally brainwashed by the Church. We were never close since I was the oldest and was supposed to set the good Catholic example for my 3 younger brothers. Nothing I did made her happy since I was totally turned off by the Church. Its teaching that masturbation was a mortal sin since it wasn’t used within babies! I was abused by Catholic high school teachers, Priests and Brothers. I can remember and feel the punches today as if I were in those very classrooms. And I have no use for organized religion except the Quakers since the decades of abuse is still being hidden away and denied even today! The Quakers are still the ONLY people vocal about the abuse that was ignored by all religions from the end of WW2 to today.
A gay dad would be a blessing for me.
Glücklich
@Matthew Thompson: @jaack:
I’m with you. I would DEFINITELY be weirded out by it. Parents happily married 45 years.
Luke Ellison
I would say You Big Fat Hypocrite!
Glücklich
@jaack:
Sorry jaack…I must have fat-fingered a reply to you…meant for Thompson.
Prinny
I’d still hate him like before the coming out.Nothing would change
Bauhaus
Open arms and heart.
dm10003
The Dutch guy said he would have asked why he waited until age 60. (1:60)
May I say that the worst and most unfair response to someone opening up to you with complete honesty — aside from rejection — is “Why tell me now, why didn’t you tell me [at some earlier point in time]”?
stnc
@Captain Obvious: what a cheery soul you aren’t
RevJames
By starting to plan a funeral, ’cause this would kill him.
L Streeter
No doubt I’d be more shocked (and dismayed) that he had come back from the dead.
Jerry12
I was fortionit to have met his “Lover” by accident. He was one of my Father’s customers. When I was at lunch with both of them one day, he commented about a trip he and my Father had made to the Islands one recent weekend. (My Father had not told my Mother that he was taking such a trip. He said that he had to work that weekend on a special job that was due on Monday morning.) So much for Family Secrets.
John Westerfield-Moses
Interesting!
loren_1955
Seven years ago I took each son aside and told them the rest of the story. The oldest listened and then left. Same day he was on facebook telling and asking his friends about me being gay. In a chorus, his friends said so cool you have a gay day. Then he was alright. My middle son said he knew all along. I asked how he knew. He put my name into Google and found essays I had been writing and contributing about being gay and Mormon. My youngest was alright from the beginning. Since, all three have tried to set me up on blind dates with other men. I love my sons and they love their dad.
rayspooks
@Brian: Its not unknown for gay feelings to manifest themselves around the 60 mark in a percentage of men. For him to satisfy this new direction with a ‘friend with benefits’ while still maintaining the family as a unit, albeit based on a platonic relationship by then, is unnerving for him. Coming out while hoping for understanding deserves support.
Captain Obvious
@stnc: What exactly would be cheery about your dad leaving your mother high and dry for another man?
Or do you have some sort of daddy fantasy you want to play out with your step-dad?
Jerry12
I would say “Glad you joined the Club! What took you so long?”