When you first knew another family member was (also) gay...

Circling the wagons meaning adopting a defensive stance so I fail to see how it applies to what you have described. Were you arguing and taking sides about where it fit best?

It's the Christopher Lowell reference, R1.

Turn in your gay card.

When I found gay porn in my uncles DVD cabinet. I was 12 and was so confused. By about a year later I was sneaking into his house to watch when he was gone.

R1 As usual, you are a complete idiot.

Remember Christopher Lowell as an interior decorator with a couple of TV shows in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A young kid flipping TV channels could have watched him. A parent could have tuned-in to hearing Christopher’s decorating tips. If it was left up to a 11 y.o., wouldn’t he be watching cartoons instead?

When my uncle had his cock balls deep in my 18 year old ass.

When I bumped into my cousin in a gay club. Neither of us was out yet. We kept each other’s secrets for a couple of years.

When my aunt divorced her husband and her sister in law moved in and started sharing a bed. The ex-hubby told my mother “The bitch stole my wife.”

Male cousin from my father's brother, after he had died, only time I ever met him he was around 5 years old and I was around the same age and he died in his 60's we live about 1500 miles from each other, found out his male partner wouldn't release his ashes to be buried in the existing family plot. Since he died without a will, I inherited some money from his estate.

[quote] she was talking about where to put a just-purchased chair in their family room

Off subject but do people actually buy furniture without any idea where they are going to put it.

My love knew when at the age of 5 an older cousin raped him.

R10 My mother has made it a lifelong compulsion. There are times she has three dining room sets set up in various rooms- its like the ocean, the furniture moves in, around and back out, ceaselessly.

My lesbian sister had a childhood crush on Suzi Quatro, specifically her bum in black leather. At the same time, I was in love with Marc Bolan.

I only met him twice but the son of one of my father's cousins was evidently the other gay one, the other smart one, the other different one. He worked in research and design for IBM in the early1960s but quit around age thirty to devote his time to investing in the stock market. He invested for his parents so that his father could retire early as well. He had a conventional but rather nice suburban house for himself, furnished in a Mid-Century taste, not the kitchsy Atomic Age stuff, but with rather sombre Swedish and Italian furniture with bright ceramics, and he kept a large apartment in Florida where he lived part of the year. Everyone in the family used bachelor as code for presumed gay, my parents both speculated likewise but offered no opinion beyond that. Most impressive to me was that he travelled and read a lot.

That's the only one I knew.