Out actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson said
this week that he considers getting caught stealing gay porn at the
age of 14 his coming out to his parents.
Ferguson, who plays Mitchell Pritchett
on the ABC comedy hit Modern Family, revealed this in an
interview with actress Aisha Taylor for her podcast Girl
on Guy.
“Well, I was caught stealing gay porn
when I was 14,” Ferguson
answered when asked how his parents responded to his sexuality.
“So, I always considered that my coming out. … It was so
humiliating. I had been stealing porn for a while. I had quite a
little collection.”
Ferguson said that when he was caught,
the store called his father.
“She took to me to the back room.
They brought my dad in, and they showed him the nature of the
material I was stealing. And it was really, really humiliating. So
I always considered that my coming out process.”
Ferguson said his father asked if he
was gay.
“And I was, like, 14. I didn't
really know. I didn't know what I was going through. But then in my
later teen years, I did come out to him. And it was like he needed
to be told three times. … [When I was 21] he asked me if I had a
girlfriend at the time, and I was like, 'Dad! You know I'm gay,
right?'”