Countless times before I have posted or tweeted on policy issues facing our region, our Commonwealth, and our nation. Today, I write of a more personal nature. While our nation is embroiled in the turmoil of racial division people all across our country are also commemorating June as Pride Month. During this Pride Month I announce that I join the millions celebrating as a bisexual man.

You may ask: why come out now? The simple reason is that I met someone who gave me the courage to be myself and showed me that love can exist even in the most dismal of places. I have been shown that when someone enters your life and changes it through the power of their love alone, its beyond clear that you only get one life to live, you only get to be one person in that life, and I knew it was time to show the true me to the world.

I have wrestled with the truth of my sexuality all my adult life. I describe it just like many have described it before as a kind of war of denial and oppression of my own self and true nature. How will my christian family judge what they religiously reject? How will my friends and my socially conservative political party embrace this change in my status? But times have changed and my courage with it and now is the time to tell my story and plan for a future, a future of opportunity regardless of race, gender, political ideology, and yes regardless of who you love.

The idea that there is something wrong with me or the man who loves me is preposterous, you like him are perfect the way you are and have been created in God’s image. To think we are somehow different in a negative way is a narrative designed to put a person at the very war I just described. Our community has seen me fall due to gravely poor judgement and wonder if there is left in me a honorable return. But this announcement is part of my changes in life. I am damaged but stronger for it. So to all in the LGBTQ community this Pride Month, if you have ever been knocked down, counted out, set back in life, judged for who you are or who you love I join you now and together go forward to live a life of happiness, love, and success to leave this world a better place than we found it.

Kyle Adams
DOC #1531836