Me and a friend of mine who's still in the closet (he came out to a few of his close friends very recently, he hasn't told his parents yet) were hanging out the other day. At a point in the conversation I mentioned to him that my parents would probably flip out and disown me if I was gay and came out to them.

He said that it's fucked up that they would do that. I agreed before saying that it's not their fault and it can't be help. I explained that my parents are from China and only moved here shortly before I was born, and back there homosexuality was still considered a mental illness up until around 10 years ago. Put most people in their environment and culture and it can't be helped that they would turn out to be homophobes.

Just to be clear I am not one bit defending homophobia itself, I think that it's definitely bad and will eventually be eradicated from the world as society progressed. However I do believe that there has to be a process for this and in our day and age we can't expect everyone everywhere to be so open-minded. The older generations as well as other cultures are from different times/worlds and it's not entirely their fault for believing what they believe. I believe that just because people such as my parents are homophobic doesn't mean they are shitty people. After all it's not like my parents would randomly walk up to gay people and tell them to fuck off or activity spread hate speech on the internet. They keep their homophobia to themselves and aren't bringing harm to anyone. I said that it's not right for them to be homophobic, but it's not wrong either.

My friend seemed a tiny bit upset by this and didn't say much, we then changed the topic and didn't mention this again. Looking back, I understand that I really have no idea what he's going through with his parents right now and I now realize that as a straight dude I probably was out of my place talking about something that doesn't affect me personally. So was I being insensitive by defending my homophobic parents in front of my friend? Should I apologise to him?