Dear Mr & Mrs Smith,

You have a fine strapping son of whom you feel very proud and then one day he tells you he is gay. A father's worst nightmare?

For many men, yes, it probably is, but it shouldn't be. After all, your son is still exactly the same person he was the minute before he told you.

One of the greatest fears gay men and women have about revealing their sexuality to their families is that they will be rejected by the people they love most. Sadly, all too often their fears come true.

How do I know? Well, I am the father of a gay man myself and in the last five years since he gathered the courage to tell my wife and I, we've met a great many like people.

Neither of us knew anything about the gay community before. Now we'd both say that some of the nicest, funniest and most generous people we've ever met are gay.

I don't want to paint a rosy picture and tell you that it is easy to hear your son is gay. It's not. In fact, from the family's point of view, that initial knowledge is often linked to going through a bereavement.

In some ways that's exactly what it is; the bereavement of your unconscious expectations about the kind of person you expect your son to be and the kind of lifestyle you expect him to have - you know, marriage, children and so on.

And then there's the fact that as a parent you want what's best for your son. You can't help worrying that his life will be made so much more difficult as a gay man than as a heterosexual one. My son was 32 when he finally told us about his sexuality, although he'd known since he was a teenager. I have to admit the news came as a bombshell. Neither my wife and I nor his two brothers had suspected a thing, and we were a very close family.

What hurt most was the fact he felt unable to share this crucial fact about himself with the people he was closest to. But as he explained to us: "It's the people you love most who you don't want turning against you".

He knew deep down that we would never reject him- how could we, he's our son? - but he still had a tiny residue of fear that we might. After all, he knew plenty of people who'd turned out of their homes for good.

It never crossed my mind for an instant to reject him. He's my son and he always be. Because I am heterosexual I will never fully understand what it is to be gay. But that will never prevent my accepting him totally for who he is.

Coming to terms with the fact that your son is gay is one thing; learning to live with that knowledge is quite another. As my wife says: "We now had the secret too".

We still loved our son and certainly weren't ashamed of him but we were worried how other people would react We were afraid that some of our friends and family would reject him.

We were also worried about how our neighbours would respond. We'd lived in our house in Bristol for more than 30 years and the boys grew up here.

We left it up to our son to decide when the time was right to let other people know. And then there was the problem - just how do you do this? After all, you don't walk into a pub and shout: "I'm heterosexual!"

In the end we needn't have worried so much. News gradually got out and none of our friends and family reacted badly. Quite the opposite in fact.

Our neighbours were also fantastic. They all immediately came to the house saying: "Why did you keep it secret for so long, why didn't you say anything?" It was a very emotional moment for us.

Perhaps we have been luckier than most in people's reactions. But we are still sad about the fact that our son felt he had to hide who he was throughout his youth.

Our son came out at an unusually late age: most gay people know they are homosexual in their teens. But homosexuality was not discussed at all when he was at school and so he was forced to struggle with 'being different' alone.

That's why I am so disappointed, though not surprised, that the House of Lords rejected the Government's proposal to reject Section 28.

There's been a lot of rubbish talked about Section 28 and how getting rid of it would enable homosexuality to be 'promoted' in schools.

There is nothing to stop teachers talking about homosexuality, even with Section 28 in place. Instead it has been used as a wall for people to hide behind if they don't want to discuss the issue. One thing is certain; you won't make a child gay by discussing it at school.

We've always said that we just want our children to be happy and to do what they may want in life. Our son is happy now, fortunately, and our relationship is stronger than ever. The other day he told my wife: "I don't tell you often enough how proud I am of you and dad." We are also incredibly proud of him.

Reproduced by courtesy of the Western Daly Press.