We see a load of happy coming out stories via YouTube. They're uplifting and more often than not prove that the world is changing and learning to not just tolerate, but accept people of different sexualities.
However, those huggy stories of joyful outings couldn't be further from Daniel Pierce's. The 19-year-old from Georgia, USA, came out to his stepmother last year. Coming from a religious background, he hadn't wanted to tell all of his family as he didn't think they'd take it well. And he wasn't entirely wrong: when his stepmother told his father, grandparents and aunt last week, they tried to stage a 'delayed intervention.'
Daniel filmed the 'pray the gay away' session, which gets violent, and posted the video to YouTube. You can watch it here, but beware, it's pretty depressing:
In case you can't watch the video right now, Daniel explains how his sexuality isn't a choice. A woman's voice chimes in: 'No, you can deny it all you want to but I believe in the word of God, and God creates nobody that way. It's a path that you have chosen to choose.' (Which doesn't even make any grammatical sense.) She adds: 'Since you have chosen that path, we will not support you any longer. You will need to move out and find wherever you can to live, because I will not let people believe that I condone what you do.'
Just FYI – according to the Williams Institute, 40 per cent of America's homeless youth are LGBT. Over here in the UK, it's 25 per cent.
After posting the video, the story picked up, though. Somewhere along the line of it getting 5m views, Daniel's boyfriend had started a crowdfund for his 'living expenses'and put a link to it under the video. He had hoped to raise $2,000 (£1,204) for his boyfriend. But at the time of writing, he's got $93,805 (£56,511).
But while the windfall of money means that Daniel can help him live unsupported by his creepy family, he's also encouraged by the fact that the bad side of coming out has been represented by the video going viral. 'The video was not posted for people to attack them… They are still my family and they are in my heart but what happened in that video is very hurtful' he told WXIA-TV, adding: 'What I hope people take away from watching that is it still happens. A lot of people don't realise that it happens. They see all the positive videos and the negative video never gets seen, so if one family maybe watches it and maybe changes their minds in how they are going to handle it about their son or daughter coming out, one family and I will be happy.'
His family are yet to comment on the video.
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
This Grandma's Reaction To Her Granddaughter Coming Out Is Hilarious
Why All These Public Displays Of Faux Lesbianism Need To Stop
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.