Dear Care & Feeding: I want to reach out to my queer cousin

[minoanmiss]

Recently I learned that my cousin, who lives on another continent and is in their early teens, is queer. My cousin lives in a pretty liberal environment overall, but queer identities are not generally accepted by our families “back home.” My cousin and I aren’t really in touch, though we’ve met several times and our parents speak to each other often. Apparently my cousin is out to my parent’s sibling but not to their other parent. I’m bi and my sibling is queer too, and while we’re both out to our parents, we’re not out to the extended family, so my cousin has no idea they have queer family members they could reach out to for support. When I asked if I could contact my cousin, my parent said absolutely not—their own relationship with their parents and siblings is too tentative and fragile. Of course I don’t want to disrupt that or disrespect their agency and right to privacy. At the same time, I feel an obligation to my cousin to tell them they’re not alone, and that, as someone who has been out for 10-plus years already, I am happy and all is well. Should I wait till they’re a bit older to talk to them? Or do they especially need this support now?


I am sympathetic to and supportive of your desire to reach out to your faraway cousin and offer your support, and I hope you will be able to do that before too long. But if your cousin has told only one of their parents, and that one parent has told only one sibling—your parent—with whom a fragile, tentative relationship exists, and your parent then told you, in confidence, what their sibling revealed, I don’t think it would be ethical for you to contact your cousin to say, “You are not alone. I’m queer too.” Not right now, anyway. This whole winding game of telephone is too fraught and you don’t know enough (you don’t know anything) about your cousin’s situation.

I do have two suggestions. One is that you drop a line to your cousin that is nothing but a friendly hello—a reintroduction to them, as it were—with the invitation to keep in touch (you can be pen pals!). The other is that you let your parent know that you are doing this, and that you have another conversation—perhaps this time with both your parents, and (for good measure) with your sibling in on it too—talking frankly about why you believe your support may be helpful to your cousin, but at the same time also assuring your anxious parent that you will not betray their trust. If you establish a solid long-distance relationship with your younger cousin—if the two of you truly become friends—they may eventually feel ready to come out to you themself. That’s when you can be of real help to them.