The Internet can be a scary place and one hears stories of people chatting for months only to discover the person at the other end of the connection is not who he seems to be. But often times people are real and genuine. I encountered one young man reaching out desperately to be heard. He happened to dial me up. This is his story.

It has been an exhausting, draining couple of weeks.

Last week I met T for the first time, a young man who at 16 knows very clearly he is gay. He lives on a farm in a very tiny community about 135 km north east of Toronto. In mid-January, he found me on the net and asked for my help. After a terrifying experience at the hands of the local school and health system, during which he was outed to his mom and urged to commit suicide so that the world would have one less gay man, he ended up in my care for a weekend, delivered to me by a frantic mom. There was some major concern about the reaction of his dad when he got the news.

T has been out of school now for about 12 days as all this has played out. There is virtually no support for gay youth anywhere near his community and even the nearest city of about 100,000 has support for gay men but not teenagers. I have been working with him and his mom to see about facilities in Toronto. There is a gay high school program here but surprisingly little else for gay teenagers beyond a youth shelter -- which is pretty scary and not terribly gay positive.

Anyway, T returned this weekend and we hung out and chatted a lot more about life and stuff. We cooked a few meals together and he went to a gay youth drop in at the local community centre (I live in the heart of Toronto's thriving gay community). We also rented Billy Eliot, a film about an 11 year old living under oppressive circumstances who manages to find his voice and the courage to be who he is. The message was not lost on T.

The more I got to know him, the clearer it seemed that his fear, while real about what his dad might do -- up to severe physical violence and at a minimum kicking him out of the house -- didn't jive with his dad's actions. It appears his dad is pretty attentive and involved with T although not physically affectionate. And he has a terrible anti-gay patter including some pretty dark ongoing comments about how sick gays are and what they deserve. His dad, btw, is my age, 47. It is not a religious household.

After the movie on Saturday evening, after his mom told his dad his son was gay, T cried again on my sofa terribly conflicted. He had frequently said he hated his dad ... now I heard him wail how much he loved him. As I comforted him, it was obvious he really wanted to be accepted and was so deeply hurt by all those comments his dad had made over the years while T was harbouring his secret of being gay. Each one of those comments wounded him as he took on the hatred personally that his dad voiced about gays. And T grew more and more afraid of being who T was. His zone of parental safety evaporated and soon he was isolated, angry, ashamed, afraid and desperately lonely. He felt unloved and rejected.

Last night, Monday, T went home with his mom and met his dad in the kitchen around 10 pm. It must have been quite a scene. They actually talked, and then cried, and both men said to the other they loved each other ... and T said "I forgive you, dad". His dad had had a pretty rough weekend too when his wife told him and he went for a long walk on Saturday night. His dad realised how destructive his "innocent" comments had been and felt with horror the pain he had put the son he loves so much through. Homophobia runs so deeply in our culture and causes so much pain and heartache. For what? For the way someone is born. It is not a crime to love another. Even of the same sex. It is a crime against nature that this hatred tears families apart.

I have a couple of grateful parents out on a farm north east of here. T even showed them the 10% Production card I gave him when he arrived on Friday night and inscribed with a few words of encouragement and support. And his mom looked through a number of issues of XY Magazine while at my apartment and is going to get him a subscription.

(There is an *excellent* book they publish "The XY Survival Guide: Everything you need to know about being young and gay" by Benjie Nycum (US$9.95 direct from 1 877 996 0930). The section on preventing suicide is wise and compassionate; I have read it myself with tears in my eyes. This book ought to be in every single junior high and high school in North America.)

So while today is T's first day as an openly gay teen, and he has a long road ahead, especially living in a small community, he does have and knows he has the full love and support of his parents ... even as they struggle to understand what it means to love someone who happens to be gay and is their only son.

T is a beautiful, spiritually strong, creative, bright young man who came close to the edge time and again. I feel so blessed to have been part of his coming out process and believe he is going to be a survivor. Watch out for this kid in the future ... he's going places.

Alexander Inglis - In Toronto