The Asian World is a monthly magazine targeting South Asians living predominately in the Midlands. This magazine is read by over 150,000 people a month so you can imagine by delight when I was offered an opportunity to write an article! The brief I had was to write a short article outlining my coming out and reaction from the community. I had to avoid all religious references (which makes sense due to the vast readership) and instead focus more on the social acceptance side of things. Here’s what I wrote:
“When I was in secondary school, I often found myself having gay thoughts, finding myself attracted to the same gender, how could this be possible? Surely I’m not gay! Back then, I was told being gay is something “Western”, something that is reserved for white people and there’s no possible way that any Asian, let alone Sikh could be gay. I believed this, but somehow these thoughts wouldn’t settle. I always assumed my peers had these thoughts but were never spoken about. At the age of 21, I refused to let this battle in my head continue. I finally decided to explore these thoughts. Luckily I had a friend who was openly gay and we struck up a very strong platonic relationship. He introduced me to other gay people. For the first time in my life, nothing made sense. How can all these people, Lesbians, Gays, Transgenders all be happy with who they are, and why is nobody laughing and pointing? The more I explored this side of life, the more the thoughts in my head began to make sense. No longer did I feel I was living a lie, instead I was able to speak what I thought and not fear of being judged.
In my social circle, there is a mix of males, females, straights, gays, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. We have celebrated religious festivals in the past, been to places of worship and have had long weekend holidays away. This is nothing different from your average friends circle. Just because I am gay doesn’t mean that anything is different.
I’ve never had a problem with homophobic abuse, lots of people looked, yes, but this was a look of shock, confusion, never one of anger. In fact, some smiled and nodded their heads. What would your reaction be if you saw a guy wearing a Turban holding hands with another guy? "
