We asked readers of LGBTQ Nation to tell us their stories of “conversion” to self-acceptance as part of the March 2026 Issue. Here are some of the responses we got.

Reader Theodore W. Hayes, 95, wrote to LGBTQ Nation to tell us about his life, which involved being in the closet for the first 47 years.

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Religion taught them to hide who they are. They overcame & are living wonderful lives.

He said that he knew he was gay since he was six and worried about “being beaten or even killed, because of that difference, by someone who thought that action was doing the will of God.” He lived in “abject fear of being discovered,” a fear that stayed with him from childhood and into the first decades of his life.

“Imagine serving in the military for two years during the Korean War, working with men in all states of dress and undress,” he wrote. “Imagine being so attracted to one of the same gender and realizing that sharing lives was an impossibility because my ‘difference’ could never be disclosed.”

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“Imagine falling so deeply into depression as a result that suicide seemed the only solution. Attempted but not taken to completion.”

For Hayes, what helped him finally accept himself was coming out at age 47. While we often imagine the journey to self-acceptance culminating in coming out, some people start their journey with a leap of faith and then work on themselves from there.

Hayes said that in the years that followed coming out, he met “the love of my life” through The Advocate – the paper version, which used to run personal ads – and they spent “26 wonderful years together.”

“Imagine my pride to have been one of the hundreds who carried the mile-long Pride flag down First Avenue in New York City on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Stonewall in 1994,” Hayes wrote. “Imagine being involved with the planning and execution of the first Pride March and Festival in the Hudson Valley.”

At 95, Hayes has plenty of ire for the president trying to “erase the activism of hundreds of thousands of others who have played a major role in securing more equality for more citizens in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

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