The first time Michael Gardiner realised he shouldn’t be ashamed of his sexuality was marching in the Mardi Gras parade in 2004 – he and his then wife dressed in matching fluffy bunny costumes. He had come out as gay just days earlier to his wife, Theresa Leggett.
“I was petrified about what it meant to be gay … It got to a point where I thought it would be better to end my life, but Theresa wasn’t going to have a bar of that,” he says.
