Dan Savage

On Coming Out
"I tell gay kids now that are thinking about coming out that you should really give your family a year, at the outside, where they can say hateful things and they can ask embarrassing jerky questions without you freaking out and you really have to parent your parents at that moment. They're going to have a tantrum and you know, if you are a parent, that tantrums are a strategy a child employs and if it works, the tantrums continue. And so you have to let your parents throw tantrums, but you can't let the tantrums work — you can't go back into the closet, you can't censor yourself and you can't protect them from the news about your life as an openly gay person. And eventually the tantrums stop." (From an appearance on The Colbert Report)