The science of homosexuality in Vulnerability

I saw this TEDTalk tonight which was pretty cool.

He claims that mother’s who have prenatal stress increase the odds of that child being born homosexual. He also says that for every older straight sibling that is born, the odds of the next child being homosexual go up 33%. I find that one a little hard to swallow. My Aunt and Uncle have like 10 kids and there’s no way that 10th kid is even remotely rainbow. Not a chance with that cult-religion upbringing anyway. It’d be suppressed to the extreme lol.

I think about it sometimes. I’m a middle child, in a family of 4 kids. I was the 3rd baby who came along, with a 9.5 year gap between me and my older brother. But I also have a younger brother whom is two years younger than I am. And yet, me, out of the four of us, am the one who happens to be gay. All of my other siblings are, or were, married to a person of the opposite gender. Not even an inch of curiousness or experimentation with bisexuality (as far as I’m aware lol). And then, bam! I got hit with the rainbow dust-storm.

I’ve always been gay as far as I remember. I mean, when I was very young, I didn’t even know what I was and it didn’t even matter when I was a kid. The thing everyone sees growing up is what is considered the norm - boys going out with girls, going on dates, taking opposite genders to graduation/school dances/prom. And I grew up in rural Queensland. So it was a very interesting/somewhat dangerous place to grow up gradually realizing that I wasn’t like everybody else I knew.

From Grade 4 was probably when I started to clue on, and in Grade 5 there was this boy that I was utterly obsessed with, but I wouldn’t dare let anyone know. Growing up in a strict Lutheran family, I’d heard enough times during sermon’s from our various pastor’s over the years that “homosexuality is an abomination.” I didn’t even know what an ‘abomination’ was. Apparently it was a very bad word. Not every sermon mentioned it, of course. There was probably this stigma of hatred in the air toward the subject that probably made the pastor’s avoid the topic if they could. I dunno. I do remember hearing it mentioned every so often and that somehow the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Sp?) were destroyed because of homosexuality. I later on read a lot of the chapters of the Bible to myself when I was younger and learned that it was because they were cities of “Sin” and not just singled out for the one sin. But, that was the cherry-picking working it’s magic for ya. Add blatant homophobia to one of the sins and it’s somehow a million times worse than all the others.

I’m not gonna go through and mention all the homophobic shit my own father used to say in passing as I was growing up, because I’ve done that a million times in the past via my Open Diary entries and I just sound like a broken record. I know now that it eventually esculated (a few years ago now anyway), and I’ve just had to come to accept that either one of us will go to our graves and nothing will have changed for the better. He hates that I’m gay and I hate that the church has brainwashed him into believing it’s a terrible thing.

Mum has texted me the details of Christmas this year, and once again I am dreading going. Even before the whole truth came out, I was never that close with my family. None of my siblings and I ever ring each other to see how things are going. That’s just not the way things work in our family. The only person who ever calls me is mum, and that’s only every so often.
Dad is made things really tense. And I have to wonder what the taboo conversations between my parents about me have actually been.
My dad is in his late 60’s now and it’s like he’s never come across a gay person in his entire life. It’s really quite sad. We are a mythical creature to him, lol.

So whenever I’m out there for Christmas (I’ve made an effort even though I still hold a huge grudge against my dad for what he said), I’m suddenly back in the closet. They have absolutely no idea about my life and I have absolutely no desire to tell it. So the conversation is boring as bat-shit. It’s all about my siblings lives and their kids and their trips away and whatever juicy gossip mum has heard.
Dad tends to not be an asshole to me in person. But he’s made it fucking awkward to be around him these days, I tell you what. Even if he did want to apologize, I’m not sure how he would go about it. You can’t categorize your own child into a group of “rapist’s and murderer’s” and then be like, “Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”
Yeah you did. When you have pure hate for a minority group, you mean what you say.

But it’s been a few years now, and I know they won’t be around forever. I certainly haven’t forgiven him. I’m turning 33 next week and as much as that number scares me (one third of the way to 100!!!), I’ve been lucky to have my parents around for that long amount of time. Dad’s actions caused me to rebel and I refused to visit them for a very long time, even refusing to go out for Christmas Day. I still hate dad’s views and he’s been blocked from my Facebook still even now.

This is my current Facebook profile picture

and the reason I have it as this is because I know it’ll piss off the homophobes in my family, and I know there are a lot of them but they will never have to balls to say it. This is what religion has done to otherwise good people. And I know who the shitty relatives are and those who actually decided to branch out and have a mind of their own, and in my family, they are few and far between. Silence says everything in my family.
My parents were even in Brisbane last week. Visiting my older brother who also lives here (but I barely see). And do you think I heard from them? Nope. They only visit to see the grandchildren. They’ll drive three days to Mt Isa to see my younger brother and his kids.
But I don’t have kids. There’s no reason to visit me, is there?
I don’t even get a message letting me know that they are at my brother’s and to come over and say hi. That would be the convenient way out, to make me to go the effort.
But no, there’s the truth in their face again. The odd-out child.
I only find out they are here from a Facebook post or photo that my mum has posted.
And I’m like, “Oh, okay then.” ^shrugs^, because I’m more than used to it. It’s bitter, sure, but I’m quite numb to it inside, because once again, I’ve had to accept that’s the way my family’s cards have been dealt.

Eight years I’ve lived in my current place. They’ve visited me once, and that was on an invite to my 29th birthday. I came out when I was 19, so they had 10 years to get over it. Just add another 4 years to that next week. Things are the same. Things will always be the same.

My friend Luke deals with a very similar situation, although it upsets him a lot more than it does me. I find it more amusing than anything. But I think the difference is that he’s very close with his siblings whereas me and mine are like chalk and cheese. My older sister has always been quiet and reserved and I barely know a thing about her, my older brother is the cool-dad who basically lets his kids do anything and my younger brother is taking to fatherhood surprisingly naturally. Because he was only two years younger than me, he was the sibling I grew up with, whilst the older ones had already moved out and whatnot. So seeing that rebel of a kid now married with a mortgage and two kids is really kinda cool. He was also the first person in my family that I came out to, about a year before I told my parents. I still don’t know how he ever felt about it, other than telling me not to tell them on Christmas Day like I wanted to all those years ago lol. It was that day that I knew he was growing up.

Things change, and they all have their own situations and lives going on. I’m pretty sure I have to work Christmas Eve (retail, ergh) but I should have the few days after Christmas off work. I hate that all of these public holidays fall on a Monday because it’s a lost day for me, since I always have Monday’s off anyway. I will only want to spend Christmas Day out at my parents place, even though it’s nice being back in a rural town and back to my roots. It’s not the farm anymore, but it’s a close second. The farm I could take the motorbike out and ride to the creek with my own thoughts like I did a lot when I was a kid. Can’t do that so much now. i can’t even go back onto the old farm these days because someone else owns it now and it’d be trespassing. Sad really. But, like anything in life, I need to move on. Just like my fucking father does with me being a faggot.

Last updated November 27, 2016