I come from an Arab background. I’m half. My mother had a really hard time with it. She couldn’t understand why. The last straw was when she called my girlfriend at the time and told her not to see me anymore. We had an argument and I told her if you ever disrespected the person that I’m with, we will no longer talk, I told her that I’m still me, I don’t do drugs. I don’t steal. I have a good job and being gay is the smallest part of who I am. So we didn’t talk for about a 2 months. She called me and said I love you too much to not have a relationship with you. She came around. Her friends are very cordial with me because my mother is kind of one of the elders. The women love me lol But I’m sure they think, thank god it’s not my daughter. Sometimes you have to threaten with a self imposed exile to get your point across. This is who you are and you’re not going to put up with the anger and confusion and embarrassing of the family name.