By Dave Paone
Campus News
Ty and Jack are identical as well as mirrored twins. One is right-handed; one is left-handed. If you take Jack’s eyeglass prescription and turn it upside down, it then becomes Ty’s prescription. And they’re gay.
“I always knew that I was different in some way that I can’t exactly place,” Ty told Campus News. He felt this way as far back as first grade. By middle school he suspected he was gay but was in denial.
Jack’s celebrity crush was John Stamos on “Full House” – while the other kids had crushes on celebrities of the opposite sex – which indicated to him that he’s different.
Ty and Jack never had an outright conversation about their sexuality in their young lives. “But we knew about it,” said Ty. “I think we just knew based on intuition,” said Jack, who’s younger than Ty by one minute and 57 seconds.
“If you said to me, ′When was the first time you talked about it?′ I straight-faced could not tell you,” said Jack. “It’s always been this unsaid thing between us.”
The twins attended Bible camp in their home state of Texas, where Ty attempted to “pray the gay away.”
He came out to his family as bi, referring to it as “bi now, gay later,” but it wasn’t until COVID that he finally accepted himself for who he is.
“I thought my dad was going to take it really rough and our mom was going to take it fine, and it was the exact opposite,” said Ty.
He wanted Jack to come out with him. “We should just rip this gigantic Band-Aid off together,” he told Jack, “But he wasn’t ready.”
“It was harder for me,” said Jack. “I was just more nervous and cautious.”
Jack described Ty’s coming out as “a bit rocky” which made him hesitate to come out himself but eventually told his mother a year later.
Now that the hurdle of coming out has long passed, Ty and Jack are living their lives and have grown closer, even moving to New York together and sharing an apartment in Brooklyn. “Now we’re each other’s gay besties,” said Ty.
What does that mean?
“I feel like everyone has a relationship with their siblings that’s pretty familiar and even though Jack and I are very identical twins it still felt pretty sibling-related, and so now the older we get, and being each other’s roommates, that sibling dynamic has shifted into more of a friend dynamic,” said Ty. “All that means is Jack and I significantly butt heads less.”
In an excellent example of what the modern dating world is like, Ty’s current boyfriend, Conor, originally matched with Jack on Tinder but it wasn’t a love connection.
“It just fizzled out,” said Jack.
But one night Jack and his boyfriend at the time invited Conor to hang out with them and Ty. Soon after Ty and Conor became a couple.
At times when both of them are single, they communicate with each other to avoid any “cross-contamination,” as Ty puts it. Some people they’ve encountered are interested in hooking up with both of them as some sort of conquest.
“We try to keep things honest in that regard,” said Ty.
While the two of them are identical in so many ways, neither thinks he has a specific type he’s attracted to.
Jack studied at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, which is part of Brooklyn College, and worked at the school as well. Ty works as a production assistant in the motion picture industry.
While Ty and Jack may exclusively wear the moniker of gay twins, they’re not alone in the sibling department. Mark and Leo are brothers from Long Island and they’re gay.
“I was caught in kindergarten kissing a girl under a table,” Leo told Campus News. He also had a steady girlfriend in seventh through ninth grade. At one point she was very eager for some fun with him, but “there just was no chemistry,” he said. “Nothing got accomplished for either of us.”
At this time in his school, being gay “was heavily stigmatized.”
It was in sixth grade when Leo first suspected he’s gay and concluded it was true by late high school. “First year of college it was a go,” he said.
It was in middle school Mark noticed his preference, in ninth grade he declared he was bi, and in 10th grade concluded he’s gay. At this point coming out wasn’t the social stigma it was in Leo’s day.
Mark recalled an “altercation” with his mother where she confiscated his phone, and then his father took it to AT&T. While he was gone Mark told his mother of its contents. She called his sexuality “a phase” and “a hype in the media,” but eventually accepted his preference.
Leo never officially came out, which confused his parents who had various pieces of the puzzle, but ultimately they were fine with it.
Applying Occam’s razor, the most logical explanation of siblings being gay is it’s strictly genetic, but that’s only a theory.
“The jury is still out on whether or not being gay is hereditary,” Nina Nguyen, a Berlin-based sex educator, and LGBTQ+ expert told Campus News.
“While some experts believe that sexual orientation is determined by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, there is no definitive evidence that either one is solely responsible. However, there are a few studies that suggest that being gay might be at least partially determined by genetics,” she said.
A 2014 study of gay brothers analyzed the genetics of over 409 pairs and its findings support the theory that homosexuality is genetic. The findings corroborate a smaller study conducted in 1993 that had similar results.
“Another study found that homosexuality tends to run in families, which also supports the idea that genetics may play a role,” said Nguyen. “Of course, more research is needed to determine definitively whether or not being gay is hereditary. However, these studies suggest that it might be, which is an intriguing possibility,” she said.
Mark and Leo have a lesbian cousin on their mother’s side and no gay cousins on their father’s. “So perhaps it’s on my mom’s side if it’s genetic,” said Leo.
It appears the chances of multiple siblings being gay are a result of the roll of the genetic dice. While there’s no definitive, scientific study that supports this as of yet, the twins lean toward that conclusion.
“For us, it feels kind of like it had to happen biologically,” said Jack.
“We were from the same egg that split,” said Ty, and that he and Jack were “destined to be this painfully identical.”
Ty was the first of the pair to have a romantic relationship. And he’s almost a full two minutes older than Jack. So when Jack had his first romantic outing, Ty got to wear three hats.
“Giving him advice throughout his first boyfriend was really cool and I felt like I actually got to finally play ′gay friend, older brother and roommate′ all in one,” he said. “I had two crazy, failed relationships so I was just like, ′Don’t do this!′ and ′Don’t do that!′”
“We can slip into those conversations easily, which is nice,” said Jack.
Not a bad outcome from the genetic roll of the dice.
Facebook Comments