Dear Pastor Frank. I read with interest your Frank Answer About LGBTQ people “coming out.” You spoke of you and your wife raising two gay sons. Could you share if you knew they were gay before they “came out?” My son is in middle school. He is more interested in music and dance than in sports. When he was a child he played with both trucks and dolls. He seems more interested in boys right now than in girls. How can I know if he is gay? And how should his mother and I react if he does “come out” someday? Concerned father.

Dear concerned father,

The straightforward answer is that you won’t know for sure that your son is gay until and unless he come out and declares it.

A decade ago the Pew Research Center found that “12 is the medium age at which lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults first felt they might be something other than heterosexual or straight.” That’s middle school. But the kids don’t know what to do about these feelings at that age. The report continued: “for those who say they now know for sure that they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, that realization came at a medium age of 17.” That would put them in senior high school or college.

My boys were 16 and 14 respectively when they “came out.” I’m sure they both recognized same-sex interest in middle school. The oldest came out on his sixteenth birthday and then had to renegotiate his relationships with his girl friend and straight best buddy. His acquaintance with adult gay men who had partners helped him to come to terms with his feelings. This was in the late 1990s. His younger brother had the example of his older brother and came out just before he began high school.

Many boys don’t know for sure that they are gay until they get older and recognize their true feelings and sexual desires. Many don’t come out until they’ve gone away to college. Some recognize their true feelings because of an attraction to a particular boy.

Another situation is that a gay boy comes onto a boy with expressions of affection such as kisses. This can be confusing to the boy because he may be conflicted about how to respond to this situation.

The situation has changed with the growing acceptance of LGBTQ people in our society and discussions in high school about homosexuality and gender dysphoria. Gay and lesbian kids are recognizing their orientation as early as the onset of puberty because of information they’ve been given and support they see gay friends receive. In large high schools, gay kids can find affirmation, like my boys did, and can connect with other gay students. Gay boys might even find the girls trying to arrange gay dates for them. It’s no longer shocking that some same-sex couples attend their senior prom as dates. Boys who come out as gay may also remain friends with girls. My second son had a female date to their senior prom even though he had come out as gay in his freshman year.

These Belgian boys, Eden Dambrine (blond hair) and Gustav De Waele (dark hair), starred as 13-year old boys coming to terms with their gay identity in the film Close, directed by Lukas Dhont (released in 2022). The film shows them growing closer together, enjoying music, running in the fields, and sleeping together overnight (and spooning). They don’t think about their “close” connection until they return to middle school and are teased and called homophobic slurs by their classmates. Self-conscious, Leo (Eden) starts avoiding Remi (Gustav) and joins the hockey team. Remi becomes deeply depressed. In a touching scene, Leo tells Remi not to cry, as he juggles his desire to be “one of the boys” and his feelings for Remi

Gay persons finally come out as gay when they begin to take honest stock of their interests and desires. They may wonder about it before they are certain. Once sons and daughters come out as gay, parents have an “aha!” moment in which they recognize signs of their son’s or daughter’s sexual orientation that they have thought about all along. The problem is that behavior and interests don’t always match stereotypes. Boys can play with dolls as well as trucks, just as girls can show an interest in science and sports. One of my sons liked Snow White and also Masters of the Universe when he was a child. (Well, come to think of it, the muscular bodies of the plastic action figures probably appealed to his male orientation.) Boys can like music without being gay. Consider all the teenage boy bands there have been. Yes, a lot of male dancers are gay. So are some male athletes–football players as well as swimmers.

Jake Streder was “outed” as a freshman high school football player for the Matea Valley Mustangs in Aurora, Ill., in 2018. The episode intensified his love-hate relationship with football, and he wasn’t sure he could go back and play. But he did, and was accepted as a gay athlete and now loves football more than ever. He worked to raise LGBTQ consciousness at his high school. Here he is as a senior.

There seems to be a world of difference between ballet and football. But not really. Both concern the performative use of the body. Gays especially are into bodies and performance. You will find gays attracted especially to gymnastics, figure skating, and swimming, as well as to music, art, dance, and theatre—all of which feature the individual body. This doesn’t mean that every boy who does theatre or gymnastics is gay, or that gay boys might not be interested in something else. My oldest son, a professional musician, likes to build furniture. But if your son “comes out” as gay, his interest in these activities could be an “aha” for you. I just caution you not to assume this before you actually know. And please don’t discourage some interests “because they’re too gay!”

Gays admire the male body but also like to dress up in stylish tight-fitting clothing that shows off their body. They also delight in wearing costumes. Theatre and ballet and figure skating offer opportunities to wear costumes. Young children love to wear costumes. Pre-school and kindergarten classrooms often have boxes with costumes that children can try on. Some boys like to try on girls’ clothing in play. This is nothing to be alarmed about. Girls’ dress-up wear is more colorful than boys’ and boys might want to try on mom’s or sister’s clothing. It doesn’t mean that they will grow up to be crossdressers or transgender. But if they are identifying consistently as girls rather than as boys, it would be something parents might seek professional advice on from their pediatrician or a psychological counselor.

In boys’ schools and college fraternities, young men wearing women’s attire is typical fun. In the film Class (1983), Rob Lowe welcomes his new roommate (Andrew McCarthy) wearing women’s panties and a bra and entices him to also dress like this for the first night dinner. It’s a prank, of course, and poor Andrew walks out of his room wearing panties and a bra Rob Lowe loaned to him to be greeted with laughter. In any event, dressing in female attire is not a sign that a boy is gay.

It’s not surprising that middle school boys are more interested in boys than girls. They understand boys; girls are mysterious. Middle school boys are more likely to have buddies than girlfriends. Even interest in other boys’ bodies among early adolescents is not a sign that a boy is gay. Young adolescents have a lot of interest in the bodies of their peers as their own bodies are going through puberty. Boys want to see the bodies of other boys, including genitals, and make comparisons. This may include touching as well as looking.

Unlike in my day when we were all naked together in showers and swimming classes and had a full view of our classmates’ bodies, boys today have to be more circumspect about peeking at other boys’ bodies, especially in middle school, so that they are not tagged and bullied as being gay. Buddies may be more free about exploring each other’s body.

Bullying is something parents of middle school children need to pay attention to, watching for signs of it, especially on social media. Using anti-gay slurs is unfortunately common in middle school. It should be suppressed as hard as racial slurs. Boys who are discerning that they might be gay can become depressed as they suppress their emerging sexual desires for fear of being “outed.” They may deal with this by acting out physically or getting into drugs. We dealt with depression and drugs with one son, but not the other.

Parents also need to know who their children’s friends are. Offer to car pool kids to sports team practices or theater rehearsals and listen to the chatter (without interjecting!). Let your children invite their friends over to the house for parties and even sleepovers. One-on-one sleepovers is a way to know who your son’s best friend is. It’s also an opportunity for the boys to see each other’s bodies. They may hang out in their underwear and experiment with sleeping with each other. I had that experience with my country friend when I was a young adolescent who invited me to sleep naked with him. It doesn’t mean they’re gay; it’s macho to shed those child pjs and go commando.

There may be some experimentation with hugging and kissing best friends. Again, this is not a sign of gayness, but of bonding. As adolescents discover masturbation, they may discuss it with a best friend and engage in mutual sex-play. This is not a sign of gayness either, but of boys’ natural curiosity about and exploration of their emerging sexuality. Nevertheless, it is through these experiences of intimacy that a boy (or a girl) might discern that they are attracted to the same-sex. They might conclude, after they’ve tried a girl friend, that “I like boys more than girls.”

Your son is definitely gay if he desires only other males and even acquires a boyfriend. This could move into a sexual relationship as he reaches his late teens. What would you do if your daughter (if you have one) has a steady boyfriend and wants to spend the night with him? You’d probably be concerned about that. It’s more ambiguous with a son. If he wants to spend the night with his boyfriend you would probably have no qualms about it (apart from what mischief they might get into), although you might have qualms about him spending the night with his girlfriend. But suppose he is gay, and you know it because he told you, and he brings home his college boyfriend. Can they sleep together in his room? At age eighteen, of course, youth are free agents as far as sexual activity is concerned.

If your son finally does come out as gay, I hope you will affirm him as your son and make an effort to understand his homosexuality. Being parents of teenage sons and daughters is not easy whether they are gay or straight, especially when it comes to their sex lives. Your job is to constantly show your love and support for your children. No matter what they go through in their erratic adolescent development, home must be a safe place, and your love and protection must be a reliable refuge. Your son must know that his parents love and support him whether he is gay or straight.

In the meantime, children who discern that they are gay will watch for cues from their parents about their parents’ attitude is toward LGBTQ people or homosexuality generally. That sends signals about whether it is safe to “come out” to their parents. Especially if parents take them to church and they hear anti-gay rhetoric in the preaching, they may want to know where you stand. Their antennae are out and they pick up every little signal. They are all the more attuned to these signals if they have a sense of being attracted to the same sex. You need to watch for signs of depression (not uncommon in middle school and high school) and try to engage your son in a free discussion of his issues.

You can’t really be prepared if your son comes out gay. But chances are that if he does, he struggled with his decision to do so. The main thing is to tell him, if he comes out gay, is that it doesn’t change who he is as your son. Hugs would be in order—even if he turns out to be straight.

Pastor Frank