Your palms sweat feverishly as you enter the dimly lit living room, preparing to utter words you’ve only said to yourself in the mirror.

“I’m gay,” you finally let out, and for a few seconds you’re filled with both relief and fear. What will they say?

For queer children, this moment is life changing. 

The Human Rights Campaign found that parents are typically last to know about a child’s sexuality. A significant amount of youth delay coming out to parents due to fear of negative reactions that might wither away their safety or put them out of a home.

“My daughter is dead.”

Some of the fear associated with coming out may root in religion. This is part of the coming out experience for Beatriz Magalhaes, a junior mechatronics engineering major. She is originally from a Catholic family in Brazil and identifies as a masculine lesbian. 

She said she knew she wasn’t straight at a young age, despite being brought up in a conservative home.

“I think I knew deep down since a very young age,” she said. “But I think from like 12 to probably 16 – actually more like 17 – I kind of labeled myself as not even bi[sexual], but just nothing.”

She dodged the “issue” of her sexuality by avoiding girls altogether. She surrounded herself with male friends and kissed boys.

“I think the best way to describe it is kind of weird, but it’s like I gave them consent to kiss me, but it felt like there was no consent,” she said. “I felt like invaded.”

During her senior year of high school, Magalhaes kissed a girl for the first time. 

“That same day was a Sunday, so I went to church and it was really weird. I think it’s probably one of the most euphoric days of my life because I knew for sure I was a lesbian,” she said.

This certainty brought joy and fear.

The night that she ended up coming out she said, it wasn’t really on her own terms. Her mother called her into the bedroom and said, “Beatriz, you are a lesbian.”

“She cried a lot and it was kind of confusing in the sense that she was very homophobic, but I think she was challenging herself,” Magalhaes said. 

After her mom cried and tried to convince her that she wasn’t a lesbian, she called her father into the room and told him. 

“My dad said, in the most disappointed voice ever, he’s like ‘fuck.’ And then he rolls and lays on the bed and just stays silent the whole conversation,” she said.

Being the only child, first daughter and first granddaughter has given her a lot of pressure to be feminine and to have children. Ever since she came out, her family seems to discourage having children, which she finds odd. 

“It would be easier if I were femme,” she said, “because right now it’s two things to fix.”

Although she may find comfort in her family’s slow attempts to adjust and accept her, sometimes what hurts most is the immediate reaction: “My daughter is dead.”

“I don’t really know what stopped me, I guess it was just kind of like fear of change.”

Freshman biology major Lucas Hlavačék knew he was queer in middle school, but didn’t come out until last year. 

He and his parents had a good relationship when he was younger, but he said he has always been closer with his mom. Even when he knew he was gay and had told all of his friends, he still hadn’t come out to his parents. 

“I guess I just wanted to keep normalcy,” he said. “I was out to all of my friends, I just never like confirmed or denied it to my parents. It was just easier that way.”

His parents began to get suspicious of his sexuality when he got to high school. 

“Lucas, I know you’re gay,” his mom said to him one day. He still refused to confirm or deny it. 

Then Junior Prom came along.

Hlavačék hadn’t planned to attend the dance, but was asked out by a friend at the last minute. He went to his mom and asked for help getting an outfit together. Telling her that a boy had asked him out, and that he had said yes, was the first time he confirmed his identity to her. 

“I didn’t really get to tell my dad because she told him on her own,” he said. “So I didn’t really get the choice to come out to the rest of my family. I know she meant well, but still, I feel like I would have preferred to mention it on my own terms.”

He and his dad have still not talked about his identity that much, but the relationship he has with his mom has grown. They talk more openly, and she has become more vocal about her support and her political values. 

These are just two stories, but they both have one wish: to be understood and seen

What do you wish your parents understood?

“I think everything,” Magalhaes said. “Some of their beliefs, they’re like against my existence.”

Her choices to marry a woman or to wear a baggy pair of jeans instead of a skirt have not changed who she is at her core. She is still hardworking and takes pleasure in her studies. Their opinions should not be based on who she loves, but on what she does and believes in, she said, which has not changed. 

Even if a parent is accepting of their queer child, Hlavačék said, they might still, silently, be complacent with the policies that hurt the queer population.

“I wish they understood that whatever they vote for, whatever policies or ideologies they support directly affects their children,” he said. “They need to see the connections between their child’s own identity or struggles, and those of the children they don’t know.”