I have to say that whilst therapy may be helpful for the daughter, that at 75 years of age her father is not answerable to anyone, let alone to his children, on the matter of his sexuality, which is intensely private. I agree that it is very possible that by this stage of life the mother is aware and that the two have a private understanding. If you don’t put your nose where it doesn’t belong, you don’t generally discover things which are none of your business.

It is not our right to know something about a parent merely because we think we need to. Neither is it our right to tell our parents how to run their marriage, or what kind of communication they should have about what. Another scenario might be that the mother doesn’t know. What is this daughter’s “carry-on” going to do to her parents at this late stage of their lives!

When I thought I might be gay, the only thing I had heard were viscious names that have now been coopted by the gays themselves – “Queer!,” “Fag,” “Faggot,” “Cocksucker,” “Fairy,” — each said with sneers and vehemence. No respectable gay was ever identified in public. Besides I knew fulll well that a gay man was an abomination to God. I thus refused to be gay. I denied to myself that I was gay. Yet my gayness would not be squelched. I begged God to make me straight. I pressed [or suppressed or repressed] my gayness
down deep inside of me and refused to acknowledge it. I acted on the promises that God would answer my prayers and accepted that I was straight.

I dated, fell in love, and married on this premise and on these assumptions. But as I grew older, the suppressed gay man within me refused to stay put. I went through agonizing decades of denial of who I am. I poured myself into the church, into my job, and eventualy into being a father. As a father I doted on my son and was the best father around. With the empty nest, a stressful work situation, a biopsy, and meeting a young man who I fell head over heels in love with, I went into a deep depression. I came out to my wife. It was painful and agonizing. I hated myself. I hated being a gay man. With some medication for the epression, a neagtive report on my biopsy, a bity of time off, a discussion with my doctor, tellign my wife, and telling my boss, I quickly came to the point where for the first time in 60 years I could actually say the word “queer.” I could say to myself that “I am gay.” Besides, my wife still loved me and acepted that I am gay.

I joined a help site — SOTTS [Spouses Out to Their Spouses] — and learned that a large number of people are in the same boat. Our society has forced them to choose to be straight when they are indeed NOT straight. The present political climate wil force many young people in homes that hate homosexuality and are obsessed with it to deny their own being and “choose” to be straight, thus continuing the cycle, one more charade that will involve not only them but their wives or husbands, their parents, their in-laws, their children.

I’d suggest that the daughter learn more about homosexuality — that it is not a choice, not is it a disease, that her father was placed in a no-win position in his youth, etc. Then she can approach him in a loving way and ask him about what he has been through and not approach him in a blaming way.