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At what age is it “okay” to be gay?
This commentary was written by Adrien Julious of The Daily Loaf
I frequently have conversations with people who ask me when I realized that I was gay. When I tell them I’m pretty sure that I was five, they say that I couldn’t have possibly known at that age. They say that all kids begin experimenting around that time, but that no one knows they’re gay at that age. Or they assume that because my aunt is gay and that I spent a lot of time with her that she must’ve influenced me in some way.
Since there were more straight people around me at the time (my parents, grandparents, and the million other aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters), shouldn’t I have wanted to be straight?
Recently, while discussing my 17-year-old cousin’s sexuality, my mom said that she couldn’t be gay because she is only 17. “She flirts with guys ,” she said. “She’s confused, she’s too young to know what she is.”
This is the cousin that we all have in our families who everyone just knows is going to be gay. She identified as a boy at a very young age, even refusing to put on a shirt because “she was a boy.” She played with “boy” toys, hung out with the boys, and didn’t want anything to do with anything “girly” or “feminine.” My own mother is even guilty of saying my cousin was going to be gay when she grew up.
The funny thing is that you never hear that someone is too young to know “what they are” in regards to a child being straight. Imagine that someone could be too young to be straight. Why the double standard? At what age can someone realize they’re gay?
Is it when you can smoke? When you can drink? Or is there some other court-decided age?
Being gay is a trait, like having freckles or male pattern baldness, which are traits that may manifest at different times. Just like the realization that you’re gay.
Maybe the reason some people believe someone is “too young” to be gay is because a lot of gay people don’t come out of the closet until they’ve moved out of their unaccepting parents’ homes. Some people come out after trying the “normal lifestyle” with a spouse, two kids and a dog: only to realize that they’ll never be happy in that role. These people often get divorced and realize that they always knew they were different, they just didn’t know how. They didn’t understand the signs. Or they didn’t want to.
People assume that because children are so impressionable that they’re just confused or experimenting. They say that they’re too young, easily influenced, that they don’t understand sex or that their hormones are raging. Wrong. Society’s “norm” is to be straight, and there are more people who identify as such. Why, then, would children not want to identify with the majority?
Children go through phases in different stages of their lives, and while they may think that they’re gay or bisexual during their teenage years, and may even identify as straight in their adult lives, they may actually be gay.
Since homosexuality is a trait and you’re born gay, how can you ever be too young to determine your sexuality? Or at least to begin to experience attraction to one sex or another? How can you ever be too young to say you think that you’re gay? I’ve read that sexuality is innate and that kids can be born gay.
If they can be born gay, they may just know that they are, too.
