First, let me thank my readers. There are WAY more of you than I ever imagined! Kinda cool, kinda scary, pretty awesome! In any case, despite SOME of you (ahem! you know who you are!) giving me some well-deserved shit over losing "the list", you all came through. I'm going to try to answer them in the order received, but...you all know how I am. Keep the questions coming, I'll keep them all (in my online account, so even if my hard drive goes, I'll still have it this time). :-)
Question: "As this is pride month, is your family 'out' at the kids' school?" (Secondary question: "How did you and your partner come out?")
Answer: Well...The short answer to the first question is yes.
The longer, more entailed answer is this:
When Fidget and her ex-husband divorced, we decided to let him have the kids during the school year (we get them every other weekend or so, depending on Fidget's schedule, as well as during school breaks) and have them with us over the summer (with her ex getting them every other weekend or so). The main reason for this was to limit the amount of upheaval they would have to go through, and later decided to continue the arrangement because her ex lives in a much better school district than we do.
I'm going to make a long story short, in order to keep things focused on the questions asked.
Fidget decided she wanted out of her marriage. She came out to her husband, thinking...okay, I honestly don't know what she was thinking. Big to-do ensued, he got carted off to jail for threats and acting out and such (his brother bailed him out the same night). They tried to live together while they worked out the details of the divorce, but he was being a total and complete asshole. As in, he emailed everyone in their address book about her "coming out". Yeah, nice. In any case, she's out to everyone.
As for me? I had lived in a few other states, and had a sort of girlfriend in one that I had recently moved from. I came home to take care of my parents because their health was failing. When my ex decided she wanted to re-locate to where I was, I decided to come out because: 1. I didn't want her to have to go back in the closet after 20 years of being out and 2. I didn't want to go back in the closet myself, as I had been out when I moved away.
I decided to tell my dad first, because I figured that if he accepted me no one else's reaction would matter as much; and if he didn't accept me no one's else's reaction would matter as much.
My dad's dad was a pentecostal minister: snakes, healings, the whole nine yards. My dad didn't keep with that religion, but was a devout Lutheran. He was strict, and generally non-tolerant of "faggots". Needless to say, I didn't expect acceptance.
I waited until I had about 20 minutes until I needed to leave for work. And I went out to the garage, where he spent a lot of time fixing things, woodworking, etc. And I said, "Dad, I need to tell you something. This isn't easy for me to say, and it's probably not going to be easy for you to hear. I'm gay." My dad blinked a few times. And then he said, "Well, you were born that way. I'm glad you told me, but it's nothing to be ashamed of."
Most of my co-workers at the time had already figured it out, and when I told my shift supervisor that night what had taken place he said, "Well, I guess everyone else can quit pretending they don't know, huh?" :-)
My dad's the only person I "came out" to. I mean, I didn't formally approach anyone else with the intention of telling them. Everyone else had either already figured it out, or did so by my references to my "partner". I never made (and still don't) a big deal out of it, and I've found that if I don't, no one else does (at least for the most part).
So we are both totally and completely out.
The story above might have made more chronological sense without my editing, but I took out a whole bunch of extraneous information, and tried to keep the info pertinent to my response to the questions.
