Story one 
told by a gay friend of mine connected with a friend of his. I am citing:

I have this friend who decided to come out at 16 and tell his parents he is gay. They sit together and he tells them - I'm gay. His parents look at him as if he is a 3 year old, in complete ignorance they smile to each other, and his mother turns to him and replies - No, you are not. You know, with that motherly head nodding, which tells you in a way you are too young to know what you are.

Story two
not that innocent

Last summer a 24 year old medical student was murdered in Sofia. He was gay, but not that openly. The gay community suspected his murder was a hate crime commited by skin heads (also the clues and the people who knew something about that night pointed to a hate crime on the grounds of sexual orientation). What followed after that was:

1 - There is no lawful definition in Bulgaria of "a hate crime" so even if they prosecute people, they will sue them on the grounds of a murder, rather than hate crime murder (hate crime is more serious). The active part of society came out after the murder with demands to lawfully define "hate crime" and put it into the books, so the murderes could be prosecuted according to it, in case it really was a hate crime.
2 - There was a protest in the park he was killed, where we wanted to link our demands for the necessity of hate crime legislation to this murder.

What happened at the protest horrified me. I could say it gave me a worse feeling than the act of murder itself. It's what the mother of the victim demanded from the organisers. The fact she refused to come is in a way understandable since she lost her child two days ago. But what shocked me was that she specifically told us to not even mention hate crimes. Just like that - don't link hate crimes with my son. 

I asked one of the organisers to explain to me this illogical reaction. It was very simple, I was told, there was no power on this earth to make her admit her son was gay or to assume he was killed because of his sexual orientation, even though in his past he has been a victim of lighter hate crimes. Shame was stronger than the mother's love. She was acting as if the only thing left for her to protect is the family pride. And for me, this was even uglier than the murder itself.[tpb][/tpb][tpb][/tpb][tpb][/tpb][tpb][/tpb][tpi][/tpi]