I love you, Dad

I'm home for Thanksgiving Break.  My dad and I went out to dinner the other night, just the two of us.  He started talking to me about how he's recently taken an open stance at his workplace against discriminating against LGBT people.  I personally don't know too much about the environment that he works in, but he claims that many of his co-workers show a lot of discomfort when it comes to hiring an openly LGBT person.  He makes it sound like his workplace is overall not very welcoming.  He wants to change this and sounds pretty passionate about it.  I'm not sure what exactly he plans to do, but I have faith in him.  He's good at getting what he wants lol.

We got to talking about homosexuality and homophobia in general.  I made the comment that sometimes it seems like most straight people don't care much about LGBT issues unless they are close to someone who is LGBT.  My dad quickly defended himself by saying that he's always been supportive of LGBT people.

I'm sure my dad has never had anything against gay people.  At the same time, I don't think he really cared or thought about gay rights much until I came out.  Before I came out, my dad never said anything about the issue.  I remember because that made it really hard for me to figure out whether or not he'd be supportive of me if I came out.  Now that I'm out, he's been going to these diversity seminars and has taken this stance at work.  I don't think he would be doing these things if he didn't know that these issues affected one of his kids.

I didn't want to bring this up with him.  Usually, when I do stuff like that, he denies it and becomes incredibly defensive.  He tries too hard to be perfect sometimes.  I think he's afraid that I might think less of him if he admitted that he hadn't really cared until I came out.  I wouldn't.  I wouldn't hold it against him at all.  I guess he thinks that he shouldn't have needed me as a reason to care; that he should've been a good enough person to care anyway.  None of that matters to me.  He's done his best to be there for me, and that's all I can ask for.  I'm proud of him, no matter what.  I hope he understands that.  I'm not really good at expressing my feelings towards him.

I love you, Dad.

-Robbie