Coming out can be a complicated event for both LGBT people and family members, as it can involve issues about far more than just sexual orientation or gender identity.

For the family of a famous local newscaster, a coming-out announcement triggered fractures along hidden fault lines in their relationships that took a decade to repair.

News anchor Kevin Newman and his son, Alex, an art director at J. Walter Thompson Co., transformed the lessons they learned into their memoir All Out: A Father and Son Confront the Hard Truths That Made Them Better Men.    

The Newmans, who moved to Vancouver in 2001 when Kevin helped start Global BC, spoke about their experiences and their book at Qmunity's 12^th annual International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia breakfast today (May 13) at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.

The theme of this year's event was family but it also had a literary theme as—in addition the Newmans who spoke about their book—it also featured a performance by spoken-word artist Spillious and a reading by poet Amber Dawn.

Kevin summarized their story as being a universal one that all families eventually face.

"If we imagine what our lesson was individually, and as a family as well…it's centred around this idea of forgiveness," he said. "Alex had to forgive me for my homophobia. He had to forgive me for some of the things that he heard me say in our house. I had to forgive him for some of the harshness in which he judged me as a straight man after he came out."

Kevin talked about how, as he had grown up without many friends, he had devoted himself to his work and, as an adult, came to define himself by his work.

Although he achieved success in his early 20s in news broadcasting (his first job was at Global TV in Toronto), he started to lose jobs in his 30s. He was replaced on CBC's Midday in 1994. When he moved on to ABC News, where he eventually became co-anchor of Good Morning America in 1998, he lost his position there as well.

"What happens when you tie your self-worth to your work, when work throws you for a loop? You're not only going to lose your employment but you start to lose yourself," he said.

Meanwhile, Alex had been growing up with an impoverished sense of self-worth.

"I had this thought in my mind that I was always a failure because Dad seemed to be so perfect," he said. "Dad seemed to get everything done. He was the leader of the household…I felt like I couldn't live up to Dad's expectation of what he wanted me to be."

Then, when Alex realized he was gay, he began to wonder if that was yet another failure to add to his list.

When Alex finally did come out, the impact it had on his family members was not what he expected. Although Kevin told Alex that he accepted him, Alex questioned his father's acceptance.

"That moment of coming out actually was not a bonding for our family but a divide, and it took 10 years to fix because I didn't believe him," he said.

What widened the chasm between them was that father and son were operating at different rates of acceptance: Alex was quickly adjusting to being out, while Kevin took a lot longer to adapt to his son's sexual orientation.

Part of the challenge Kevin faced was that he had to shift to a new role as a parent. As he was still worried about Alex being bullied, he was in "protection mode". Consequently, Kevin eventually found that he had to let go of some parts of his role as a father.

"One of the things that I learned is that in his coming-out process in his early years, we had to accept a lower level of influence in his life because of the community helping him come out," Kevin said. "We couldn't parent his coming out. It was his secret. But in our mind there were many older gay men who were telling him the way, what he had to do, his path out, and we as parents had to accept that at this point in our lives we are coparenting Alex. He is part of a community that we need to get to know, that we had a little bit of fear about, to be honest. But it turned out, in many ways, he had—and I know this is a loaded phrase—other daddies out there."

Meanwhile, Alex began to test his father's acceptance of him.

"Because I felt like my dad didn't legitimately approve of me from the beginning, I felt like I sort of had to tease the answer from him," Alex said. "Unfairly so, I would have public displays of affection in front of him and keep one eye open, like, 'Dad, what do you think?' "

Alex said the turning point was when, while he was walking in a parade, he received a selfie of his father dancing shirtless with a bunch of his friends—it was a sign his father was enjoying himself amongst LGBT people without Alex being present.

"What Alex did, which I'm forever grateful for, is he didn't give up on me," Kevin said.

Although Kevin acknowledged that writing book stirred up discomfort, it made him uncover an uncomfortable truth: "[It] made me realize that, in retrospect, I had failed at the most important thing that any parent can succeed at, and that's making your child understand that their love is unconditional."

Both of them wrote their contributions to the book in isolation from each other, and both were surprised to see how different the experiences of and perceptions about Alex's coming out were from each other.

However, as Alex spoke about how attitudes are changing among younger generations, Kevin pointed out that the emotional process that their family went through may eventually become a thing of the past.

"The lives and the transitions that many of us have made—gay and straight—are becoming less and less relevant as younger people, teenagers, begin to think of sexuality as a completely fluid concept."