06/21/2026
If you don’t receive emails from PFLAG National, we wanted to share this here. Several of our board members were fortunate to meet Khary Payton at the national conference last fall. What an amazing, genuine person, actor, writer, producer, and most importantly, dad. Read his letter about Father’s Day below, and if possible support PFLAG National or our local chapter today in honor of any faith figures in your life.
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When I found out I was going to be a dad, I started writing the story immediately. I’m an actor, a producer, a writer—this is what I do.
I had the whole thing mapped out. The games of catch in the backyard. The graduation. The daddy-daughter dance. I was the producer, the writer, the director—I had this film in production before the first scene was ever shot.
Then my kid picked up the pen.
My son Karter is transgender. He told me when he was nine years old. He’s a senior in high school now. He is thriving. And I want to be honest with you the way I wish someone had been honest with me back then: I wasn’t fine with it. Not at first.
Not because I didn’t love him — I loved him more than anything. But because I was so focused on the story I had written that I wasn’t paying attention to the one he was writing for his own life. I was so worried about what the world would think that I lost sight of what my own kid was going through.
I think a lot of parents know that feeling. Maybe you’re in it right now. If you’ve ever been that parent, as I have, I hope you’ll join me in supporting PFLAG National for Father’s Day.
Here’s what I learned: you don’t have to understand everything to show up. You don’t have to have it figured out. If you think you know everything, you are definitely missing something. You just have to try. One day. Then another. Then another. That’s how love works when it’s doing its job.
PFLAG gave our family something I didn’t know we needed: the knowledge that we were not alone, and the space to figure this out together. PFLAG gave me the safe meetings, the resources, the publications and, most importantly, the other parents who started just as lost as I was and who were now sharing their hope and determination with me. That’s what PFLAG is. That’s what your support makes possible.
This Father’s Day, I’m asking you to give to PFLAG — for every parent who is still in the middle of a rewrite. For every kid waiting to see if their family will choose them. For every dad like me who needed someone to say: put down the script. Your child is writing it and has something beautiful to show you.
I am so proud of my son. I am so proud of the story he is writing — one that is more original, more courageous, and more alive than anything I could have come up with on my own.
Turns out, I didn’t need to be the writer.
I just needed to be in the audience, cheering him on.
With love and gratitude,
Khary Payton (he/him)
Actor, Advocate, PFLAG Dad
https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/b6f0ca3e-554a-4408-85b6-6360c0bfbfb7
https://give.pflag.org/page/99413/donate/1?locale=en-US
