Sometimes a child perceives their father to be a certain way when it isn’t true. Most children worry about their parent’s dissapproval or anger and don’t undertsand the depth a parent loves their child. However, there are parents who will cut off from their kids, who do abuse their kids, and who are homophobic to the point of no return. But, sometimes people seem to be homophobic, but aren’t.
My BIL came out to me around the age of 40. Me before the rest of his family. He did it because his boyfriend at the time pushed him to, and he knew from hints I gave him that I knew. I told he could tell his brother, my husband, but he was very unsure, he needed my reassurance. He had built up in his head that the family would reject him. Finally he came out to everyone. It was a total shock for his parents. A total honest shock. His mom actually had a little more trouble with it than his father, but there was never a hint of them cutting him off. His mom and sister were horrified they had said things like his shoes or hair looked gay when he was younger. They remembered all the thing they said to him. I remember asking his sister a few years before that whether she thought he was gay, and herresponse was, “I would never ask him, I wouldn’t want to offend him.” But, living in America in South FL, and I worked in retail and she started working there too, and her parents met some of the people we worked with who were gay, they had become more exposed to gay people and so they had dropped some of their prejudgments about them. Not that they would ever be homophobic to the point of hating them, but more a not knowing or discomfort.
Anyway, when my BIL came out to my husband, my husband afterwards said to me, “I don’t think I would have accepted it as well if I hadn’t known you.” Meaning me. I tell this story because it backs up what people said above about exposure to gay people, really knowing them. My experience is the more you know gay people the less you bother to classify them as gay or not, it becomes a non issue, something that dissappears as a identifier.
But, there is no way for us to know this father well. It is hard for us to give good advice that fits this paricular situation without really knowing the people. It seems like this is a traditional sort of old world family and announcing the son is gay might make his dad deal with something he is not ready to deal with. It will likely feel like a loss to him, especially if he is the only son or worse the only child. Loss of the future. How he pictured the future for his family.