Klepto-porn! A coming out story, by Jesse Tyler Ferguson

[Kirbi]

I realise this was probably utterly humiliating for him at the time, but given that he's now a successful sitcom actor (Mitchell on Modern Family) I think I can legitimately just find this funny.

“I was caught stealing gay porn when I was 14, I always consider that my coming out. It was so humiliating. I had been stealing porn for a while, I had quite a little a collection.

I had been stealing porn and I had three magazines underneath my shirt. I guess the certain magazine that I picked up had a sensor in it, and I set off the alarm. I had to go back to the woman who asked me if I had anything in my backpack – she was giving me the benefit of the doubt.

I couldn’t be like, ‘some porn fell inside my pants’ – I lifted up my shirt and I had tears in my eyes. She took me to the back room and they brought my dad in, showed him the nature of the material that I was stealing. It was really, really humiliating.”

From this random webiste - http://uproxx.com/tv/2014/09/modern-family-star-jesse-tyler-fergusons-coming-out-happened-when-he-got-caught-stealing-gay-porn/

[Hanley!]

It was probably a good way to distract his parents from just yelling at him for stealing though.

It'd be funny if they spent the day talking to him about being gay and how he felt, and not needing to hide things from them and how they'd support him, etc. They'd be thinking that they were doing this fantastic job of parenting. Then a week later they wake up thinking "Shit, we never punished him for stealing."