When I came out, I was in a relationship. I dated a boy who sang with me in a semi-professional young people’s chorus. One night, my mother ran into a friend of mine who knew about the relationship and she by mistake hinted that I had a “special friend.” My mother put it all together and sent me an email the next day saying that she thought I was gay and had a boyfriend, but that she wanted me to come out on my own terms. After a week of tension, I finally stormed into my mother’s bedroom after she went to bed and screamed, “Okay, I am gay! I’m gay. Okay? Okay.” She accepted me for who I was as long as I always used a condom and didn’t get AIDS. That seemed like something I could do.

Coming out to my father was not as easy. At the time, our relationship was strained. After almost losing him to substance abuse and lies, we rebuilt our relationship through a commitment to honesty. This began with telling him I was gay and his admitting of faults he was working to amend. Today our relationship could not be stronger, and I consider both of my parents to be invaluable allies in the fight for tolerance and equality.

As a whole, my family and friends have been incredibly accepting and loving. My only experience with hate came from my uncle, who in a heated argument told me that my lifestyle would lead to me dying of HIV on the street. He’s never apologized and we no longer are in one another’s lives. This has caused a rift in my relationships with some family members, but as I’ve grown older, those relationships have been able to slowly heal. If I lose someone in my life because he or she is intolerant, that’s fine. Hatred is not something I need in my life.

All in all, I consider myself incredibly lucky and I remind myself of that everyday. I was fortunate to be born in one of the most diverse cities in the world, New York. I was blessed to live and attend middle school and high school in a quiet suburban New Jersey town where the majority of my peers accepted me.

Moving back to New York as an adult after college, the gay community has been just as loving as I make it. Like any other community, some people are nice and some people are not. You build your community to be what you want it to be. I despise the notion that the gay community is any different than any other community. Any minority group that has faced discrimination and hate is likely going to be a little more tight knit in ways, but fundamentally no different than any other community. My gay community is loving, supportive and full of laughter. I choose to spend my time with people who inspire me, make me laugh and deserve to be supported. I live a life of passion, love, positivity and humor. That’s just me. Not every gay person is the same. Not every straight person is the same. We’re all unique – that’s the beauty of it all.

I think (or I hope) I’ve moved past the point of applying stereotypes to myself to be “accepted” by straight people. Being gay informs so much of what I do and who I am that I can’t look to manufactured images as guides; they’re just not adequate. I think this is becoming a trend among many young gay men in New York. The mainstreaming of the gay rights movment in the 1990s and 2000s has led to a saturation of images of middle-upper class, white, gay men in the media which don’t fit the experiences of young queer people anymore. It’s leading us to create new ways of expressing our identity, which is thrilling.

It’s also enormously challenging. I often find myself being silenced, not just by conservative straight people, but also by those who call themselves liberal, or even allies of the LGBTQ community. Because same-sex marriage is gathering mainstream support, straight people seem to think we’ve won, or are about to win, the battle for full equality without questioning the limitations of that equality. All the support is wonderful, but It’s becoming harder for me to explain to some of my friends what it means to be queer.