He was in high school the first time he witnessed the Westboro Baptist Church protesting. The group stood outside Free State High School in Lawrence, where Cameron Case attended school. The posters and anti-gay messages troubled him. After viewing the scene, he went to the parking lot of the school, upset, talking to a friend on the phone about his disbelief.

This was the first time Case, now a junior at the University, felt hated for being gay.

For Case and at least two other students, the University and Lawrence community provide a comfortable place to come to terms with their sexuality. The acceptance and friendships gained during their college years made them more comfortable with being gay.

Growing up in Lawrence, Case never felt uncomfortable as he came to terms with his sexuality. A lot of his friends suspected it, and he always knew his parents would be accepting when he finally told them he was gay when he was 16. In junior high, other boys teased him for hanging out with only girls or for his flamboyant personality, but the tormentors made Case realize a bigger truth: some people would never accept him because of his sexual orientation.

For many like Case, coming out at a young age is becoming more and more typical. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2010, over 50 percent of Americans feel homosexual relations are morally acceptable, and because of this growing tolerance, the average age of a gay person coming out is dramatically younger than it was just 30 years ago.

Accepted from the beginning

Case admitted being gay for the first time to his best friends at the age of 16. He already told one, but he wanted to come out to the rest of them. It was the weekend, they were drinking, getting ready to go to Taco Bell, and he had the courage.

He was 16.

But they already knew, and immediately supported him.

He was more nervous to tell his family. His parents don’t have strong religious oppositions toward gay people, but he was nervous about what they would think. He told his mom first, then his sister. Telling his dad was the most difficult. He didn’t want to disappoint him as his only son, but after coming out to his family Case found that they were all very accepting.

Coming out was a gradual process for Case. After elementary school, he found himself with fewer guy friends. He was closest with his girl friends, and around this time considered what he was feeling.

“It was more in junior high that I slowly started to realize I wasn’t physically attracted to girls,” Case said. “I was with them all the time and I got along with them really well as friends. That’s when it really started developing.”

The summer before Case came out to those close to him, he started talking to another guy. They became very close, and eventually hooked up. And then he questioned what he was doing.

“I ended up having sex with a girl at the end of the summer,” Case said. “I kind of think I did it to prove, do I really like this? I kind of realized I liked guys better.”

Are you like me, or your dad?

Nick Harbert came out three times. To his mom, to his dad, and to his aunt and grandmother. Harbert, a senior from Wichita, did not have to come out to a lot of people, because growing up he always had effeminate traits. A lot of people just assumed.

When Harbert was five — three years after his parents divorced — his father sat him down and revealed his homosexuality to his son.

Harbert witnessed the struggle his father endured after coming out, including falling-outs with family members. Although his father faced conflict with his family, it paved the way for Harbert to later come out to them.

The conversation with his mom consisted of a simple question she asked him, “Are you like me, or like your dad?”

He was a junior in high school.

Despite seeing the process of coming out firsthand with his father, Harbert still struggled with accepting his sexuality.

“I went to private Catholic high school,” Harbert said. “The school paid for me to go to school, so it wasn’t really possible for me to come out. It brings up all the issues of they’re paying my tuition and what if they find out?”

Harbert was new to Wichita at the time he was trying to keep his sexuality under wraps at school. He grew up in Johnson City, a much smaller community, and did not know many people when he started high school. Trying to come to terms with his sexuality, keep it a secret and make close relationships was a struggle. He hated high school. It was difficult for him to socialize when classmates made comments before knowing him.

When senior year arrived, Harbert was out. The attitudes of other students were the same, but how he felt about himself shifted.

“It got better for me once I started accepting it,” he said. “So people would say something and were taken aback that I wasn’t offended by it. It got easier once I was more comfortable with it.”

Hiding the truth

For nine years, Taylor Scrivner wanted one thing— to not be gay.

Growing up in Hoyt with conservative family and friends, Scrivner thought being gay was the worst thing that could happen to him.

From the time he was 11 years old, Scrivner, now a junior at the University, struggled with knowing he was gay.

“I was good about lying about it,” he said. “I wanted it so bad to not be true, which is not how I feel now, but at the time I wanted it so bad that it was easy to suppress.”

When he was 17, Scrivner told his mom how he was feeling. She said his assessment of these feelings was incorrect and it was a phase that would pass. He became depressed. This attempt to come out to his mom reaffirmed his feelings that he had to hide the truth about being gay.

Once Scrivner got to the University, he made a lot of friends who were out and open about being gay, which caused him more pain.

“I would sometimes look at them with envy,” Scrivner said. “They could be out. I wished that my friends had been different, my family had been different, that I would have had a better environment or that I would have been braver when I was younger.”

Last summer, Scrivner kissed a boy for the first time. It felt right and he realized it was the right time for him to come out. He told his close friends first, and after getting their support, got the courage to go home and come out to his family. Coming out to his mom again was difficult, and she continues to struggle with it but is trying to accept that her son is gay. Scrivner thinks she is doing a good job.

This semester, Scrivner’s life completely changed. The friendships and relationships in his life improved because he feels he is not lying anymore. Scrivner is bisexual, and he finds people have a hard time grasping what that means. For him, being bisexual means he is open to an emotional or physical relationship with either sex.

Finally accepting his feelings and not hiding a part of himself was a struggle, but one Scrivner said was one of the best things to happen to him.

“It’s not a choice you can make, unfortunately,” Scrivner said. “Now that I’m out though, I don’t think that I would choose not to be. I’m so much happier and it’s a great life.”

The study of coming out

When teaching about coming out in his classes, Milton Wendland, a visiting assistant professor in the department of women, gender and sexuality studies, tries to make sure all of his students can relate to the process. Coming out is not just for gay people, he said, but happens when anyone reveals a part of themself they are afraid won’t be accepted by others.

“If you’re a staunch Republican and your family is Democrat, at some point you have to come out and that can be sort of a serious thing for you,” Wendland said. “Or if your family’s entire fortune is in the broccoli industry and you detest broccoli that’s a sort of coming out.”

Wendland teaches courses on LGBT culture and strives to make sure his students take away something they can use every day. A major point Wendland stresses about the coming out process is that it happens throughout a person’s life.

Wendland said every time a gay person has to explain to a schoolteacher, a veterinarian, or a landlord who a partner is, it’s a coming out process.

“It forces you to constantly reveal that part of you,” Wendland said. “Where other people will often get to coast on assumptions. In that way it makes it more real to people because it’s not just this horrible conversation you have with your parents and then that’s the end of it. It goes on and on and on.”

Wendland’s own coming out process is not over. Twenty years ago, he told his parents he is gay and they asked him not to tell anyone else in his small town. Since then, the subject never came up again. His parents do not know about his job, what he teaches and that so much of his life is devoted to the LGBT community. Recently, the circumstances changed and he knows he needs to talk with them again.

He is in a serious relationship now. He and his partner adopted a dog together. And now Wendland wants his parents to know about their relationship.

“That’s a good example of how with coming out you can’t do it on someone else’s schedule,” Wendland said. “It has to be according to your family situations or your economic circumstances.”

— Edited by Laura Nightengale