Gay Cumbria - Support
Here we have provided some support information and articles, we hope you find them useful. Please note that all experiences differ and each situation should be tackled on its own merit, our support articles are for guidance only.
Please follow the links below.
Coming Out | Cottaging/Cruising | Domestic Abuse | Drink Spiking/Date Rape
Homophobia | FFLAG - (Family & Friends of Lesbians & Gays) | In the Closet
Relationship Break Up | Personal Safety Tips
FFLAG - Family & Friends of Lesbians & Gays
www.fflag.org.uk
Everyone at gaycumbria.com do not just care about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, we also recognise that they have significant others in their life.
That’s why we are dedicating a section of this site to the families and friends of lesbians and gays (FFLAG). Below are links to the FFLAG website and stories written by families of a gay people. If you would like to write and contribute your own story then please feel free to contact us.
A FATHERS STORY
Up until she started school nothing really stood out. But once she started school, she started to have more and more boyish tenancies. She’d come home with pockets full of toy cars and covered in mud, and started to take more of an interest in what I was doing like D.I.Y and fixing the car, rather than what her mother was doing like cooking and putting on make-up. I just took this as her being a tomboy.
She never really had a great interest in boys, never brought boyfriends home, I thought she had the same attitude to the opposite sex as I did when I was here age. That was girls where just on big on cost, and I wanted to enjoy myself without that. Then in my early twenties I got married. I just presumed she would go into the same direction as I did.
The most noticeable thing was her appearance, it was getting more and more boyish and she started to refuse to wear any thing remotely girlie. Then the piercing, it stated with the odd ear piercing then ended in a lip stud.
I didn’t really suspect anything major until 2 or 3 years ago, this was maybe because of her strong-minded determined attitude to keep it hush. I found out she was gay when just having a conversation with her and the subject came up. Even thought I wasn’t expecting her to come straight out with it, I wasn’t surprised at the fact she was gay I was just surprised how well she had hidden it, and how ever so cleverly dropped hints so she wouldn’t shock anyone.
I am able to relate and understand her to some extent, by having both male and female gay friends myself, whom I was able to seek advice from how to handle the fact my daughter was gay. The best piece of advice I was given was just to take her as she’s always been.
Looking back it was that obvious my daughter was gay, I didn’t see it. I support any decisions in life my daughter makes, no matter what she decides to do or who to be with.
A BROTHERS STORY
Ever since I can remember, I have always known there was something different about my big sister. Until I was 11 or 12 I wasn’t really sure what that difference was. The obvious was she’d rather play football or play with my toys with me, alot of her friends where boys and she didn’t really do
things like what other girls do, like the girls at school and my other sister did. But as far as I knew that was just what my sister was like. She was more like a brother than a sister.
Now I understand what makes my sister different. She’s gay. When I first found out, I just took it as it was even though I didn’t quite know what being gay meant. As far as I knew gay people dressed in cloths people wouldn’t normally wear, talked and walked a bit funny and called everyone darling. But that wasn’t my sister.
Over the last couple of years I have found out what it means for someone to be gay, by talking to my sister and other gay people I have come across, and found as much information as I could to understand it. At first it confused me that a girl could like other girls, like my other sister would like boys, and that boys could like boys how I like girls, and how people can like boys and girls at the same time. But then I thought well some people like bananas and don’t like oranges. Other
people like oranges and not bananas and other people like them both.
I think its quite cool having a gay sister because it’s like having a brother and a sister in one. I can talk to her about boys stuff and girls stuff with out any problem.
I don’t really get much bother at school about having a gay sister, just the odd prat shouting down the corridor “your sisters a dyke” so I just tell them that my sister is a lesbian not a hedge.
I have never known my sister to be anything else, and I don’t think any different of her than before I found out she was gay, and I would change her for the world.
