"The Truth About Who We Are..."

Francisco, Journalist, Sydney, Australia by thegaymenproject

photos by Kevin Truong

photos by Kevin Truong

Francisco, in his own words: "I think (being gay) has the same meaning like being straight, Christian, Muslim, Colombian, Australian, rich, journalist or Latino. I mean it's just a part which describes something small in a human being.

Being gay is a vital part of my life, I was born that way and that means my spirit is attracted to people with similar characteristics like me but it is not the only thing that I have to offer to humanity, because that part just describes a part of my feelings, my intimacy and part of my expressions and culture.

(A challenges is) finding a way to teach to society in my country that being gay is nothing wrong, negative or evil, like some religions try to show. We’re just humans and our sexual orientation is just something which belongs to our essence and diversity as humans.

One of my greatest challenges in my life was when I decided to create the first two LGBT radio stations in Colombia. It was huge, with over two hundred thousand listeners per month in my country and Latin America. It was a chance to teach people and our LGBT community the responsibility to be ourselves, it doesn’t matter what society says about us. We tried to start a revolution in growing a young generation in which only five years ago was trying to find their own expression. Thousands of people around Colombia transformed, Radio Diversia and El Eden Radio into two communicative models to express their feelings, their music, their news, their artists and their own stories about how it is living as am LGBT guy in Colombia and how to be happy and change their environment into a good place to live instead of one with discrimination and violence.

After that another great success in my life was when I started as a Director and Television Anchor in my own Television Magazine about International Showbiz through international news TV Network (NTN24) for Latin America and the Latin Community in United States. It was like a professional dream, my biggest challenge and a huge responsibility as a Journalist.

This is not exactly the way to coming out, but I was in the middle of a big argument with my mom, who found some Gay guides in my room and she started to yell at me about that, I was so angry and I just said to her “Yes, I’m Gay!” after that, it took over a year for my mom to start to understand why I’m Gay and why I was born Gay. Currently our relationship is very honest about my Gay life, my friends and my boyfriend. She understands I’m more than my sexual orientation, I’m her son.

(The gay community in Sydney is the) same thing like everywhere: having some fun, sometimes a boyfriend, depending on the moment, a long term relationship, a husband or just a summer love. I found my country (Columbia) a better place to get a stable relationship because my culture and traditions are more aligned with the fact that Latinos are more passionate, closer to each other and more communicative. In Sydney people are busy all the time, sometimes they don’t have time for close relationships or it just takes a long time to get that.

On the other hand, Sydney is a better place to express one's feelings because it is a capital of the world. It is a place with people from everywhere, a city growing up with minorities, even gays and lesbians have here in Sydney one of the most beautiful and biggest celebrations in the world, the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras which is awesome because in Colombia we don’t have something similar, just the gay pride in June, but it is smaller, not very organized and is not visible like the Mardi Gras is in Australia and around the world.

(Advice to my younger self) Don’t be afraid about what society says about you, sometimes society represents the dumbest things of humans, just be yourself, take some risks to be happy and always think about conquering the world, because you are more than just another gay; you’re brilliant, smart, a nice guy, you can do whathever you want, just try to find the way to get it and enjoy this fantastic journey which is life because you only live once."