Coming out to your family about one’s sexual orientation can oftentimes be challenging.

“I came out to my mom when I was 10,” Giovanni Ayala Martinez said. “We had this neighbor and I used to always think of holding his hand and giving him a kiss on the cheek when I was a kid. But as a little kid, it's like, that's the most sexual thing, you know? It's like in the sense of sexuality, kisses on the cheek and holding hands.”

And it can be no less difficult when coming out in a Latino household.

“Latin people are loud and proud, and that's how I was raised,” Giovanni said. “So that's how I carried myself coming out as a queer person. I'm loud and proud. I still am. I'll wave the Puerto Rican flag right next to the Pride flag. But that's really where, like, those arguments and the dissonance and kind of like almost like there was a schism in our relationship between like 15 and 18.” 

Raised in a small town, Giovanni had felt like he had always stood out. He said he felt isolation for not only being a minority within his community, but also being gay.

“Growing up in a little town where there's only 900 residents, he's going to stand out,” Giovanni’s mother, Regina Ayala Martinez, said. “And my fear was that because he stood out, because he was a minority, because he was Latino, and because he was different than everyone else. And people do not accept gay LBGTQ+ children. Unfortunately, they don't understand.”

Despite being raised in a Latino household, religion was not the setback, but rather the fear instilled from Giovanni's mother.

“It was never an issue of him being gay, it was the fear of someone hurting him,” Regina said. “Growing up in the 80s where many gays were killed just because they were gay, we saw it growing up all the time. This guy just walked up to him, stabbed them in the neck because he was gay. Oh, my God. This guy was killed in the train station. He was thrown in the tracks. He was gay. Which was still in my mind of him walking out my door.”

And through that fear, had caused a division between Giovanni and his mother for several years.

“I would argue with him and say, ‘Hey, you're not supposed to wear makeup,” Regina said. “You're not supposed to be just like that. You're still supposed to be a boy. You were born a boy, and we clashed until I grew to understand more and realize, OK, it's not as bad as I thought it was.”

Making amends through open communication, Giovanni wants to remind others that although everyone’s coming out journey may be different, there is always a community to call family.

“There is a place for you in this world. LGBTQ+ members are making that place,” Giovanni said. “And it's not just a place for the white, cis-gendered people that we see in the media. It's a place for disabled people. It's a place for people of color. When you go into a queer space, there is love.”

As Giovanni's mother reminds him, that there is always love within their own family as well.

“I will never let anybody hurt my child or treat them any differently because of their sexuality, because that's what I'm here to do, protect them and their mother,” Regina said. “And I'm a mama bear. I will fight till the end for them. They’re my top priority regardless of everything going around them.”