Alternatively, if you are straight but the parent, sibling, or close friend of someone who came out as gay, lesbian, or transexual, how surprised were you?
In either case: what would you change about your behavior during the coming-out process, if anything? What would you change about the other person’s behavior?
No special reason. I thirst for all non-lacrossse related knowledge.
Big shock to my parents. They really didn’t know how to react - my dad has said that he felt like I was killing the child he knew. They became very supportive fairly quickly and we’re all happy now.
Probably just as big a shock to my other relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc.), but they were much more graceful about it and much faster to accept it. I’m not aware of anyone having any real issues.
What would I change? First, I wouldn’t combine the coming-out announcement with the news that my spouse and I were getting divorced. My parents weren’t really happy about the marriage in the first place (I was pretty young, and my spouse and I were both still in school), and I think they felt like “I knew this was a bad idea.”
Second, I would practice my coming-out speech more. I’d make it less technical and more personal. I think I overwhelmed them with language and didn’t put enough emphasis on “I’ve always felt this way, but it’s taken this long for me to understand how to live with it.”
I never really did a ‘coming out’ to my parents, it was a more gradual process of them accepting what was right in front of their faces. The only member of my family I can think of that I actually had to say ‘I’m gay’ to was my youngest brother.
It was while I was home for christmas and we were talking about various family ‘secrets and legends’. I told him there are some things he’s too young for or Mom wouldn’t approve of us telling him, so start making a list of the things he wants to know and we can go over it when he turns 18. Later something came up in conversation and he looks at me and says “Russ, are you gay?” and I answered that I was. He thought about it for a second and then shrugged and said, “Well, that’s one less thing I have to put on the list.” I love that kid.
My family have had pretty much no reaction. TBF, pretty much any piece of news in my family passes without comment. I could tell them I was getting a civil partnership with Sarah Palin and they’d just nod and make some comment about the weather.
My GF’s family were only surprised that it had taken her that long to come out. 
ETA: actually, my stepmum only found out a few months ago when she saw me mention ‘Helen’ on my Facebook page, and asked who she was. Apparently nobody had thought to mention it to her. She hasn’t said anything negative or positive or in any way related to my sexuality since then, same as the rest.
Since I was probably one of the few 12-year-old boys to have seen both The Pearl Fishers and Dialogues of the Carmelites, my guess is “not much of one.”
Contrary to what I thought, my father handled it very well, but mom - not so good.
(I had assumed it would have been the other way around.)
Eventually mom came around, but took her a few days at first and later, not a problem.
Brothers didn’t particularly give a damn and the topic went back to “normal” about three minutes later.
Not very surprised but the sexuality of a friend or relative (I never knowingly had a kid) isn’t a big deal to me. In the case of one lifelong friend who came out to me as a lesbian I was sort of forced to respond basically “Sparky, I’ve been telling you that for 50 years! Cool deal you finally caught on!” More politely and with more words but basically in that sense. In that case I wish I had acted somewhat shocked or surprised. The whole thing had been a major struggle for her all of her life and in a strange way I think she wanted somewhat more of a reaction. I was aware enough of it all that I wish I had acted somewhat different - if that makes any sense to you.
My high school best friend came out to me after we both had graduated college and I was totally shocked. I started muttering things like “No you’re not” and “You’re kidding right?” Honestly, I was totally floored as he had spent his high school career lusting after a handful of pretty hot girls. The fact that he never dated any never crossed my mind because we were both pretty nerdy.
I felt like a real jerk about it afterwords and I more or less did a “man apology” a few months by paying for the rental truck when we both used to moved into apartments.
My mom told me to leave. My dad didn’t have much of a reaction.
My older (and only) sister called me when I had my baby to say thanks, this would get mum off her back. I figured she didn’t want to have kids, not I’m gay and I don’t want to have kids.
Later a family weekend was planned and my sister and her friend were coming. They were going to share the bigger bedroom, I was on the couch. Made sense to me for the two girls to share a room. Frankly I’ve had enough of sleeping with my sister growing up anyway. I guess they had to stand hand in hand in front of me before the penny dropped and even then I had little interest. Turns out the girlfriend was terrified of my reaction. I just want my sis to be happy and no-one to hurt her. Being gay can be difficult, but when she was straight or trying to be straight it wasn’t easy for her either. I only wonder if there was a point when she realised she was gay and if that was a long or lonely time before she told me.
I remember as a little girl looking at my sis and thinking - here’s someone I’m going to love more and more each day. That will never change.
I found out my sister was gay when I was 12. My mom intercepted a letter she had written me. I was probably a little young to really understand, but mom and dad pretty much disowned her for a few years. Eventually she was back in our lives, and embraced.
She passed away in 1988. I miss her.
One of my best friends in high school came out to me as lesbian. While we were still in high school, that is. She called me up and told me she had something she wanted me to know. She built it up so much (“you might want to sit down, this is a really big deal…”) that by the time she finally said it, I was just relieved it wasn’t something terrible.
Eventually, over the course of several years, she came to the conclusion that she was bisexual, and she eventually married a man.
Mom was shocked, just shocked when she found out I was gay (I came home from college for the weekend & she found a copy of Freshmen when she was putting laundry away). She was completely floored. Nobody else in my family was when they later found out. They’d all suspected/assumed (but never actually said anything) for some time; including my nieces (the youngest of them were in middle school).
Somehow she missed signs like me never really dating, bringing exactly one girl home (Prom), never showing the slighted interest in girls (though I did have a poster of Lucille Ball in my room), that when I was younger and played with dolls (no boys my age in the family) I’d dress Barbie up in all kinds of costumes (some of which I made) while leaving Ken naked, or a whole bunch of other cliched behavior.
Part of the reason I opened this thread was that I just got a friend request from a woman I knew in college. She made a somewhat-big deal of coming out to her friends, only to find that no one was even slightly surprised. That she liked girls in ways Fred Phelps would scream at her for was enormously obvious to everyone but her, I guess. She actually did ask, while talking to me and another friend, why we hadn’t told her she was in love with her best friend. 
When my good friend from high school finally came out to me during his freshman year of college, my reaction was “Well, it’s about time. So, do you have a boyfriend?”
Seriously, the guy wore a Madonna t-shirt to threads when he was 15 years old. There wasn’t a soul shocked when he finally came out.
We’re still great friends–he and his partner went with us for my 30th birthday bash in the Dominican Republic a couple of years ago.
I came out to my older brother first who was not ‘surprised’ to my knowledge. Though any emotional reaction from him is a very rare case. He’s always calm and reserved. With my permission he outed me to the rest of the family. None of my siblings were surprised but both my parents took years of me dating men to accept that I was indeed gay.
Many people are surprised to learn I am gay. I do not fit their stereotypes. A common reaction to me outing myself is ‘you’re joking’
When I came out to my mother in the late 70’S (My father passed decades before) she was silent for a while, then said “Well, you were never one to do things the easy way.” After a bit, she did an almost pro forma “of course I consider it wrong”
My siblings’ response was more like “I don’t understand it, but you are my brother” My mom was more concerned about my first lover (15 years my senior) whom she considered an “opportunist”
My lover of 25 years, on the other hand is also a German/Irish midwestern man (people often think we are broothers/twins) and any of his family could fit in my family album and vice versa. Eventually each family demanded we both come to family gatherings. And we seem to be examples of a working long term relationship.
Among my social friends, the response was typically “I knew you were gay, but didn’t know if you were aware of the fact.”
Nobody was surprised. But that was late 1963, and there was no such thing as “out.” It was like admitting that you were a pedophile. Nobody back then said it was ok to be gay, and the most liberal parents got their kids into therapy. That’s what my mother did, and obviously it didn’t take.
My coming out statement to my mother was in the form of a suicide attempt when I was 14, so obviously there were other things in play when we had that talk. My parents had divorced when I was young so my mother rang my father to tell him, and about the suicide attempt too. He and my step mother were really upset at the thought that I had been going through such a bad time (I’d come out at school the year before and was going through hell) that I felt that was my only way to deal with it.
No-one in my family gave a shit that I was gay.
My former step-daughter came out to her father, brother and me when she was a junior in high school. It really wasn’t a surprise to any of us.
I attended her wedding to her partner of two years a year and a half ago. They are both loved and accepted members of the family.