This was an answer over on Quora.
By recognizing that they already are gay.
Before I could put a finger (teehee!) on how I specifically felt different from other, “normal” boys, I knew I was different. Apparently, as a tot, I didn’t go through an “eeeew, girls have cooties” phase. I was friends with several of the neighborhood girls.
They were awesome. They cared not a whit that I was a boy and was every bit as interested in their dolls and silly plastic jewelry as they were. (Mom put a stop to that, however. I may well have been the most obviously pink boy ever, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to cover over all of that with liberal coats of any other color.)
A little later, when folks would talk to me about when I grew up and got married, and had kids of my own… I knew, somewhere deep that wouldn’t happen. My nine and ten year old crushes were all boys. My fourth grade male teacher was awesome in ways I had already learned I needed to keep to myself. A fourth grade boy with a crush on his female teacher is regarded as cute…but his male teacher? Don’t ever let that slip.
A short while later, when the hormones and adolescence kicked in, that interest in boys became overtly sexual. I wasn’t just the somewhat fey, pink boy who didn’t enjoy “boy things”…I was gay like a box o’ Christmas lights. Visible from space gay. Diamond tiara and combat boots gay.
Pretty freaking gay.
But I didn’t become anything so much as realize, and eventually accept that I was, and had been all along.
babble 