Being Gay Coming Out in the 21st Century - Essay Example

I was surprised to learn that sexuality is like a continuum and there are many people all along the way who don’t fit the labels. In this case, people who are not straight are referred to as G.L.B.T.G. which is an acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning. This acronym is meant to account for everyone else that is not straight and is not comfortably referred to as gay.

Watching the video provides a lot of insights into sexual orientation in a society where people are either men or women and nothing in between. A lot of twentieth-century research on sexuality has been judged harshly by twenty-first-century researchers based on the downright dishonesty, myths, and prejudice suffered by gay people when they came out. However, despite the open-mindedness of modern society, and given that many states have even legalized gay marriages, there is still a lot of discrimination and prejudice against gay people. When people come out, they are labeled by society and most of them resort to destructive coping mechanisms such as suicide, drug abuse, or alcoholism.
This video is largely made of interviews with young adults expressing their journeys of coming out.

The youth share that being gay is not an illness, a choice, or abnormal, and therefore, they should not be targeted as weird for smoothing they found themselves into. This video is therefore very helpful to families, parents, and friends who should offer support and understanding to children as they come out. The in-depth on-screen texts coupled with the personal histories of the interviews give an overview of family human sexuality and how adolescents come to define their sexual identities. While it is normal for parents to wait until their children approach them and tell them or engage them about their sexuality, parents should approach their children when they suspect them to be gay at an early age.

This is because it can get complicated and change a child’s life forever while going through the first stage of coming out which is confusion. Gay children who do not know they are gay at an early age go through confusion thinking that they are different from the rest of their peers and that can negatively define their lives and may never get to the pride and synthesis stages. Gay children should be guided through their sexuality especially since most of them fear being attacked or rejected and thereby end up concealing their identities. There is also the fear of dealing with social attitudes. Read More