This weekend, I’m heading down to New Orleans for the Reaching Out MBA conference (ROMBA). When I tell people this, the response is often confusion as I do not identify myself as LGBT. I’m writing this post to explain why I am interested in LGBT issues, why I’m coming out as an ally, and why I’m attending ROMBA.

Growing up in the South, it was common to hear sexual slurs used casually at an early age. Often these were used with some negative connotation, not necessarily directly attacking people. As a result, I became accustomed to overlooking casual discrimination, whether it was regarding sexual orientation, or race, or any other way that people cast judgment upon wide swathes of human beings. As time went on and people matured, slurs were used less as people learned to be politically correct. While it was certainly nice that these slurs were being used less, the fact that people were still holding on to these prejudices was not great. On top of that, the political correctness prevented dialogue, and these issues were things that I never really considered before.

Fast forward a few years to 2010, I was in Hong Kong for work for a couple days, and was able to meet up with my cousin Whitney, who had relocated from New Zealand to Hong Kong after graduating college. I was asking about our other cousin Carla, as I knew they were close and I hadn’t really kept in touch. Whitney responded: “Yeah, Carla is great, Harry and Julia are doing well too!” I had no idea who Harry and Julia were. “Is Harry Carla’s boyfriend or something?” I inquired.

Over the next few minutes, I found out that Julia is Carla’s partner, and they have a son, Harry. I had no idea about any of this. Many aspects of Chinese culture are very conservative, and views on sexual orientation are no exception. My aunt and uncle had kept this a secret from much of our extended family for nearly five years. Discussions with Carla and ultimately meeting Harry and Julia really pushed me to think more about LGBT issues and helped me come to the realization that these issues touch on very basic human rights which should be inherent to everyone.

Over the course of the last few months, I’ve realized that although my thinking has become more supportive of LGBT issues, I have allowed my experience growing up in an anti-LGBT setting prevent me from actively discussing these issues and growing. Not only that, my inability to discuss these issues restricts my ability to help others within my class to grow as well.

Coming out as an ally is an important step for me to continue to grow as a person and to avoid the complacency of passive “open-mindedness.” Being passive makes it too easy to err on the side of heteronormative thinking, i.e. assuming everyone is heterosexual. By coming out as an ally, I hope to correct my own thinking, and become a stronger resource for those who identify themselves as LGBT, as well as those who are also interested in becoming more active in supporting others.