Nancy is a junior majoring in business. During spring semester of her sophomore year, she began attending meetings of the local gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender student group, primarily because she was feeling lonely and wanted talk further about her sexual feelings. Since high school, she had been quite certain that she was a lesbian, but had been reluctant to come out or to talk with anyone else about it. She had dated boys in high school, thinking that maybe she would become more interested, but she did not. Since coming to college, she had avoided the social scene for the most part. At one of the meetings in the spring, she met a young woman from the community, and they talked alone a few times. They stayed in touch over the summer, and Nancy looked forward to pursuing the relationship when she returned in the fall. Nancy and Jill did become more serious during the fall, and they both enjoyed their sexual and social interactions. Jill took Nancy to meet her parents, who seemed very friendly and accepting of their relationship. This was encouraging to Nancy, who had not yet told her own parents about her sexual orientation. She had an older brother who during the Thanksgiving holiday had announced that he was gay, and this had...

She now felt even more reluctant to come out to them herself. At the same time, she wanted to begin building a lifestyle in which she could be as open about her sexuality as she cared to be and not have secrets. At this point, she has told several friends about her sexuality and has received strong support from them. Some of them have told her that they were not at all surprised and in fact had assumed that she was attracted to women. She is still trying to decide what to do about her parents. She has always felt close enough to them to want their communication to be open and without secrecy. On the other hand, she wants to make certain that their reaction to her brother's sexuality would not affect her approach to disclosing her sexuality with them. Jill continues to be a strong source of support for her as she tries to make a decision
The homosexuality experiences of Nancy's brother and the fact that Nancy is a lesbian may shock her parents but is in accord with the Kinsey report that notes that people are neither entirely heterosexual nor homosexual, and that people veer on a continuum in sexual tendencies as they do in all others. Said Kinsey as explanation for his…