Tabatha Coffey: My mom didn’t handle me coming out well

Tabatha Coffey: It is true. That's how I grew up, and that was our family business.

Larry King: And they funded gender reassignment surgeries?

Tabatha Coffey: Yes, they would lend the money to the girls so that they could go and have their surgery.

Larry King: Is that what attracted you to the movement, growing up with it?

Tabatha Coffey: I'm gay. So I've been out forever, it feels like. Sometimes it feels like I come out multiple times a year depending on who I'm speaking too. But the biggest lesson that I learned from growing up in the environment I grew up in, was although it was very unorthodox and there were a lot of things that in retrospect people could find wrong with it, the biggest thing was authenticity and people were really standing up for what they believe in and who they are, and taking that chance, and standing with themselves to make themselves happy. And as a child, that was very empowering.

Larry King: Having progressive parents, did that make it easier to come out?

Tabatha Coffey: Interestingly, no it didn't. My mother was not very happy when I came out, which I thought would be the opposite. It was extraordinary.

Larry King: How old were you?

Tabatha Coffey: 15.

Larry King: She didn't handle it well?

Tabatha Coffey: She did not handle it well. No, she did not handle it well. And it took along time for her to handle it well. So that made me not handle it well, and it made it a very confusing time as well. So it took awhile for her to warm up to it and it was an extraordinary thing. But luckily, in the end she did.

Larry King: And your father?

Tabatha Coffey: My father disappeared when I was 11 years old.

Larry King: Oh.

Tabatha Coffey: He went to work one day and never came back.