(April 3, 2015 at 1:30 pm)Norman Humann Wrote: I agree with that. I was under the impression you meant that they should come out to their parents. In your earlier statement responding to his comment saying coming out as gay being a bad idea you said that being proud of who you are is not a bad idea. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You can be proud of who you are and still decide it's better for you to hide it from your family until they don't have as much power over you. Not out of shame, but for practical reasons.
Sure, asserting who you are is important, but with devout religious parents it's not an easy or sometimes even possible thing to do. I don't know the OP's situation and I can only speak for myself, but any attempt to present beliefs contradicting those of my mother resulted in her telling me I'm wrong and lecturing me about it. It's really hard to argue with these kind of people so I chose not to discuss some things with them to save myself the negative response. But still, while it's important to assert yourself there's really not that much you can do at 16 and some people don't take kindly to disagreements. It's good to draw the line, though. I just don't think there is a universal age for that.
I wasn't trying to imply that they should, just that a fear of a parent's acceptance isn't a good reason to keep something from them by itself. Sure, when you have the other factors like financial dependence you have to take those into consideration, but I was trying to point out that people shouldn't feel the need conform to their parents' beliefs, despite how practical it may seem.
I've just seen enough destruction in my life from poor parenting and a child's inability to speak up against it that I think it's important to let teenagers know that they have to teach their parents lessons, too, and one of those lessons is when and where it is appropriate to determine what the child does with their life and who they become. Parents sometimes aren't very good at recognizing boundaries, but they'll never recognize them at all if the kid doesn't speak up.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
