Hi,

I have also been looking for other gay adoptees. I am new to this forum as well. Over the years - I am now 36 - I have met a few gay adopted people and I am interested in meeting more. There are, it seems, many issues that being both bay and adopted have in common. Among them:

1 - HOW COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET IS SIMILAR TO SEARCHING FOR ONE'S BIRTH FAMILY;

2 - THAT GAY ACTIVISM (for example, in the case of same sex marriage) AND ADOPTEE ACTIVISM (especially activism to open up closed records) HAVE SOME THINGS IN COMMON;

3 - ISSUES ABOUT IDENTITY -- HOW BEING GAY AND BEING ADOPTED ARE REALLY NOT UNLIKE EACH OTHER (this is, I imagine, going to be the most challenging stuff for me to write as it touches on larger issues of human identity);

4 - SOME MATERIAL AROUND BEING A MEMBER OF MULTIPLE INVISIBLE MINORITIES (in this part I am going to try to introduce a new idea that neither adoptees or gay people are not always invisible though).


Now, as for your specific query regarding your birth father -- I suggest that you find some method of communicating with him -- people are constantly surprising with their respective responses of rejection or acceptance. HOWEVER, make sure that you are safe -- take along a friend or two if you want to meet face-to-face (?) Maybe get to know him a bit more before you disclose -- you CAN come out on the phone or through email after all. I found my 'putative' birth father - long story - and just as we were beginning to get to a mutual comfort zone, he died suddenly of a heart attack. I never came out to him (and I suppose I know now that coronary problems are something that should be vigilant about as well). Thing is, see, after his passing I was able to look at HIS therapist's files - turns out he had had a homosexual "experience" during the 1970's. In retrospect, it would have been cool to have been able to discuss that sorta stuff with him. But, however you decide to go about disclosing to your father - the most important thing is YOU [as a gay person and as an adoptee it is most likely that you have seen more than your fair share of your discrimination and outright 'mean people' during your lifetime...don't allow yourself to be wounded (and this is, indeed, a potentially wounding encounter)].