If there’s one thing I learned from growing up as a gay kid in Texas, it’s that nothing you do or say can change homophobic people’s minds. I was dead set on the idea that if I were funny, charming, and popular enough, I would be able to win over all of the homophobic kids and make them accept me and, hopefully, other gay kids, in turn. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to accomplish that, nor is anyone. It’s true that having a more diverse friend group can make you less prejudiced, but simply knowing a likable gay person will seldom turn an honest-to-goodness gay basher into an ally. That even extends to family. Families constantly disown and dismiss their own flesh and blood for being LGBT and don’t think twice about it. That’s what happened to the main character of this Reddit post, whose parents told him to never come out to his brother, and when he did 11 years after their warning, all heck broke loose.