MAN PRETENDS TO BE GAY FOR A YEAR

A straight American man has pretended to be gay for a year in an effort to understand what gay people experience in day-to-day life.

Timothy Kurek, who said that he used to be a homophobe, decided to pose as gay after a friend of his was completely disowned by her family when she came out as lesbian.

He “came out” to his own family and began to socialise within Nashville’s gay community and frequented gay clubs, bars and bookstores.

Kurek, who has written a book about his experience, was interviewed last week by MSNBC‘s Tom Roberts.

“I will be the first one to say that my experience is severely limited. There is no way I could possibly understand what it’s like to actually be gay,” he said.

“And the book itself is not at all about what it is like to be gay, but only about how the label of gay impacted my external life and how those things kind of altered my faith and challenged my beliefs…”

Kurek told Roberts that he hopes that the book will have an impact on people in a number of ways.

“I hope people read the book and read the experiences and they have, you know, the same emotional and mental reaction that I did as I was going through those experiences and I also hope to the LGBT folks that read it that they’ll accept my apology.

“You know, I know people are sick of hearing straight apology after straight apology but this is really me saying, ‘hey, I’m sorry for who I was. I’m on your side. you know, I don’t understand every detail of your life and your journey but I would like to walk beside you in it from now on,'” said Kurek.

His book is expected to be released later this year.