10 Tips for Talking to Your Parents About Being Gay

Author's note: This is all completely tongue-in-cheek! It is not meant to be taken seriously AT ALL by anyone!

Time to come out to your parents? No worries. It's been done lots of times, so here are a few tips to help you broach that awkward topic.

1. Come out to Mom and Dad via email or text messaging.

Your parents are of a different generation, so one way you could come out to them is to send them the message via email or as a text message. They may not even understand how to open the message, so there's a chance you can avoid it altogether. ("You didn't get that text message I sent you? Oh. Well, never mind.")

2. If you can't come out over email, try doing it on the phone... from miles away.

Even if you still live with your parents, you could first travel to another state, then call them to break the news. This is especially helpful if your parents are prone to throwing things.

3. Use the "good news, bad news" tactic to come out to your parents.

This one is sure to soften the blow of "Mom, Dad, I'm gay." For example, you could say, "Mom, Dad, the good news is that I've decided you're right - I'm voting for John McCain. The bad news is, well, I'm still gay." Or, "The good news is you don't have to include me in your will anymore..."

4. Include coming out within a long list of other information.

The next time you call your parents from college to give them an update on what you've been up to, just slip "I'm gay" in with all the other information. For instance, "I'm doing really well in my classes, I've applied for a scholarship to study abroad, I'm gay, and my friend Mike is going to sell me his car for real cheap."

5. Pay someone else to come out to your parents for you.

Coming out to your parents in person is overrated. Why not just pay a friend five or ten bucks to do it for you? Then everyone can avoid the long awkward silence that naturally comes after the words "I'm gay" - and your friend benefits, too.

6. Just introduce your significant other without any explanation.

Instead of coming out to your parents directly, why not just bring your significant out to dinner with your parents, and introduce them as your girlfriend/boyfriend without any other explanation? With any luck, your parents will be so shocked and so reluctant to make a scene in a public place that they will refrain from questioning you about it until later.

7. Sign your parents up to start receiving PFLAG literature without them knowing.

PFLAG, or "Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays" in case you didn't know, is a support group for the parents and friends of gender queer folks. Add your parents to the PFLAG mailing list in lieu of coming out to them directly; by the time they get around to asking why all this new literature is showing up at their doorstep, the PFLAG brochures will already have started to work their magic.

8. Give your parents a greeting card on October 11 to wish them a happy National Coming Out Day.

Seeing as National Coming Out Day is just around the corner, leave a celebratory card on the kitchen table wishing for Mom and Dad to enjoy National Coming Out Day. At the bottom of the card, add: "PS - I'm gay."

9. Remind Mom and Dad that there are worse things than being gay.

For example, you could have been a Neo-Nazi.

10. Just tell them.

If all else fails, just buck up and come out to your parents. It's not THAT hard, after all, just two and a half little words... "I'm gay." If you do it fast it will be over before you know it, and you can all start getting on with your lives.

And by the way... there's a good chance they've already figured it out, anyway.