Yesterday's Oprah Winfrey Show was quite amazing to watch, as it featured the kind of coming out experiences we don't hear about very often. The show started with Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil of India, who came out after a nervous breakdown prompted by a miserable, closeted marriage. The Prince's coming out was a huge scandal in India, with his mother buying an ad in the paper announcing that she had disowned her son and wouldn't allow for anyone to refer to him as her child.

His mother was the first thing that Oprah asked him about and the Prince answered that he wasn't surprised by her reaction: "I don't blame her, I blame her ignorance." It wasn't so difficult to accept her reaction, he explained, since they were always distant (he was raised by governesses). When they did speak to each other, he explained, they never referred to each other by familiar names. Instead he referred to her as "Her highness" while she called him "The Prince".

The Prince also explained how he struggled with his sexuality, eventually getting married in the hopes that his homosexuality was a phase he'd get past. Unlike many other gay men in India, he wasn't coerced into getting married, but went into his wedding willingly. Oprah questioned him quite a bit about his wife and how she felt in the marriage, getting him to admit that he made her miserable by ignoring her and showing no interest in her physically.

Next she talked with Staceyann Chin, a New York-based poet, playwright and performer originally from Jamaica. Stacyann fled Jamaica after she was sexually assaulted by a gang of boys in a public restroom for being a lesbian. She explained:

"The culture is so actively homophobic ... I grew up listening to these songs -- songs like 'Boom bye-bye in the back of the head' ... the sound of shooting a gay man in the back of the head."

Hearing Stacyann talk about her attack was one of the episode's most chilling moments. Stacyann talked about being frozen by fear: "I thought I was going to fight but I was petrified." She said she still blames herself for the attack, wondering if she did something to bring it upon herself and feeling frustrated that she didn't fight her attackers harder. She had always thought of herself as someone with a big voice, someone who'd fight to defend herself until she found herself unable to act when facing hostility.

Before introducing Stacyann, Oprah told the audience that there were over 100 violent incidents against LGBT people in Jamaica in a period of just six months, and hearing Stacyann talk about being the subject of one such attack brought the reality crashing down.

Here's a clip from the interview: