Father Contemplates Suicide After Gay Youtuber Son Comes Out

In an emotional and raw video, the father of Irish gay Youtuber Riyadh Khalaf has explained how he contemplated taking his own life after his son came out as gay.

Riyadh has been known to involve his parents in many of his youtube videos, including one where his mother reads out Grindr messages (Which you can see below) and has produced some of the funniest and clever gay youtube stunts but none of them have hit the heart strings like this one.

In the video, his mum(Lorraine who was born in Ireland) and dad(Sam born in Iraq) are both in the video sitting either side of Riyadh as he explains that he has been asked so many times to do a coming out video but needed to do it with his parents present.

In the video, the Khalaf family take it in turns to share their thoughts regarding their son’s sexuality.

The first of Riyadh’s parents to find out about his sexuality was Lorraine, his mother.

She stumbled upon a “gay website” in his Internet history and decided to talk to him about it;

“I got a shock! It was a confirmation in my head – I thought he might be… I walked into the living room, dried my tears, and said, ‘Riyadh, do you have something to say to me? I love you no matter what, you can tell me anything’”.

However, even though both of his parents were raised Catholic and his mother accepted the news so well, it still took him over nine months to finally come out to his father, Sam.

In the time following his coming out to his father, Riyadh admits that he felt increasingly more distant to him.

Sam addresses this distance by saying that “it was just so confusing… thinking about it now, it was such a drama” before he then goes on to tell his wife and son something they had not previously known about.

In the emotional vlog, Riyadh’s father shares what he was going through after finding out his son was gay;

“I actually got up that night about 3 or 4 in the morning, and I was looking for tablets to commit suicide. It was so stupid”.

At this point, both Lorraine and Riyadh are visibly shocked.

The Khalaf family were able to pull together and now seem even stronger that ever, with Riyadh admitting that he’s “never seen such a turnaround in two parents as much as these two.

We talk about everything. We actually talk about too much! It’s a bit over the top… Both of them have come with me to gay nightclubs, we’ve gone to gay pride, they were at the front of the parade for years”.

This video is worth a watch and it will be interesting to see if it sparks a new round of coming out videos which will involve parents.
See the video with this mother in which she reads his Grindr messages! You can watch it below:

Last Updated on May 27, 2016