by Dean Ostrum

Dean Ostrum was married to a woman and had four kids when he met the man he would fall in love with and later marry. Dean explains: There was no secret about [Richard] being a veTRANSCRIPT: My name is Dean Ostrum and I was born in Russel, Kansas. A very small town on the prairie. When I graduated high school I went to the University of Kansas and by that ...

by Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson came out to one of his best friends. He didn’t expect what happened afterwards. One of my friends was Southern Baptist. She ended up causing a lot of trouble fo...

by Jay Santiago

I came out to my family and close friends around the beginning of January 2011. Although my mom is a lesbian, I still found it difficult to come clean with her. I suppose a lot of...

by Tom and Barbara Johnson

Today’s Video Story was collected on the 50-state Story Tour. Check out the blog where you can follow us on our adventure. If you haven’t submitted a story yet to IFD, or ifTom Johnson, Omaha, Nebraska. Barbara Johnson and I’m originally from Wichita, Kansas. Tom: Our daughter Brett, she was involved in Proud Horizons in high school as a straight a...

by Jonathan Mertz

Today’s Video Story was collected on the 50-state Story Tour. Check out the blog where you can follow us on our adventure. If you haven’t submitted a story yet to IFD, or ifMy name’s Jonathan Mertz and I’m from Manhattan, Kansas. Although, I’m, as you can see, on a farm about fifteen minutes outside of town. I’m the youngest of five kids, and...

by Daniel Smith

I, as a 14-year-old boy, was sitting next to my mother as she drove us home from school in Valdosta, Georgia. We came to a red light and she stopped the car. I turned to her and s...

by Emily Kolatch

People don’t usually ask you what it’s like to be gay. They ask you how your parents reacted when you came out to them. They ask you when you knew. But they never ask what it ...

I’ve never fit in. I’ve always been the one white sock in a drawer of colored ones. The one who lost its mate so long ago, it’s forgotten that it ever had one in the first p...

by Eric Jost

Kansas City is a convergence of conflicting values that seem to balance each other out. I suppose this is illustrative of the divide between Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) and Kansas C...