For me, religion has been a paradox in my life and has served as the catalyst for my greatest challenge as well as my biggest success. As a child and teen I suffered from paralyzing insecurity. I felt as if everyone else had the key to living life well and somehow it had been kept secret from me. So, I looked to conservative religious understanding to give me a strict “how-to” guide to help alleviate my insecurity, live life and simply fit in. Needless to say this helped for a while but ultimately stripped me of my authenticity and left me upset and bitter. I eventually overcame this challenge, and now live life as authentically and honestly and I possibly can. To me, this is my greatest success. Oddly enough, the great success of authenticity couldn’t have been achieved without the comfort, encouragement and faith I often drew from the foundation of a religious upbringing (particularly in my darkest moments). Truly the paradox of life!

The gay community is Dallas is large and in many ways very active (Dallas’ local chapter of the Human Rights Campaign, The Federal Club, is annually a leader in fundraising for the HRC and the largest gay church in the WORLD is also located in Dallas), yet a word that is often used to describe the Dallas at large is “clique” and this is no different in the gay community. In many ways Dallas is still reminiscent of its segregated past…but today’s segregation happens not only across racial lines but across socioeconomic class, gender (gay vs. lesbian), geography (where you live in the city), and social groups. There are many clicks who rarely find the need to intersect with the others.

My coming out story is quite lengthy, so I’ll share the short version. I was raised religious; I was raised to be closeted, therefore I married very young (19 years old) and I had three children very young. I fell madly in love with a man. I could no longer go on with the farce….not to mention when I asked my wife for a divorce she went into my email and found a love letter to the gentlemen and confronted me with it….after which 99% of my friends distanced themselves, leaving me to recreate a new life…. high drama indeed (a screenplay waiting to happen)!

The greatest challenge in my life is to discover who you are, and trying to beat all the levels in your life. You know, sometimes it’s hard for us to get out from our comfort zone. Being who we are when many people are trying to see us as a treat, unusual, or worse- a freak. But that’s a life. People can talk bad about us, they don’t know who we are, just let them speak and do what you love.

Until now I still haven’t come out to my parents. But I think they already know about who I am. But well, my mom always supports me, she’s liberal enough, not like my dad. But I’m trying the best I can do to make them happy. I will show them that I can be someone someday and they will be proud of me no matter the sexual orientation that I have.