In the small country town where I lived through my last few years of high school one of my mates from then and through university was bought up by a strictly catholic household. There were no same sex couples I recall in the area but regardless of the lack of influences that would normalise the idea as you put it, my mate was a deeply in the closet homosexual. For the five years I knew him through school and university he spent much of that time trying to convince himself that he could live a lie and enjoy a life where he denied his sexual urges. During this time he had many unhappy flings with women. Some of whom I'd have given a nut to do the horizontal ballroom dance with, others who I'd class as hideous swamp monsters if I'm being honest.
This all culminated with him attempting suicide. Our social group at the time eventually got him to confide about why he'd tried to off himself. With his families religious background he had been indoctrinated into the idea that his true desires were pure evil. He hated what he knew he was and thought that morally and socially what he wanted could never and should never be accepted.
You may think that it's a choice to be gay straight or bisexual but my friends struggle convinced me otherwise. Society shouldn't put people in situations where they feel that their being what they are is wrong. Normalizing acceptance to children might or might not lead to more if them growing up and experimenting with their sexuality, but shaming people who have no real choice in the matter is an evil thing in my opinion.
thanks for sharing that, I too , had the same type of experience but with a work mate except he wasn't from a catholic family but from an aethiest but strict Chinese family who were a family of doctors , 5 siblings all studying medicine except my mate, mum was a professor and dad was some medical specialist . He was around 20 at the time and was working with me at qantas.
We were tight and hung out all the time with my other girlfriends.. Didn't have an inkling that he was gay though . Then one day I turn up to work and I was told he was in hospital tried to overdose on some drugs he'd found at home!!
Wtf I was in complete shock , I raced over to see him and he told me he was gay and wanted to end his life because is parents would never accept him and he didn't accept himself .
He got counselling and eventually came good , but what stuck in my mind was that as a child his chauffeur had sexually abused him .
A couple of years down the track his 2 younger brothers (twins) 'came out' too and they'd suffered the same sexual abuse from the chauffeur as well.
His father died not long after that and I suspect it was from suicide from the enormity of the situation but has never been confirmed.
I'm not saying that there's been any interference with your friend but just wanted to put it out there that children are suspetible to outside influences and that's why I'm dubious in accepting SSM because it has the potential of changing a child's inherent perspective.
