gay

Author: Saroj Kunnakkat, an avid blogger from New York.

I was born in the United States to parents who were themselves born in India. I don’t think I really knew what homosexuality was until I was perhaps in my early teens. It was a topic that my parents kept under wraps, and if even a whiff of it were to arise, they quickly stifled it, not allowing such talk to fall on my ears.

It wasn’t so much that they hated gay people—both have friends who identify somewhere along the LGBT spectrum—but they were probably more struck by how unfamiliar it seemed. Indians who are gay never are as open in public as those in other societies, so it was perhaps the degree of openness they are allowed in American society that struck them as unusual and perhaps even negative.

I ended up learning about homosexuality as some of my friends started to understand their sexual identities, some of them coming out as gay, bisexual, or lesbian. It never struck me as odd, and it never struck me as deviant. I realized that, in that regard, I was far removed from the views of my parents—who still held…