At first glance, Rami Zein appears to have a comfortable life.
The recently-turned 18 year-old Rock Ridge High School senior lives in the kind of tastefully furnished, single-family townhouse that’s ubiquitous in Fairfax County.
Ring the front door bell, and you’ll likely be greeted by the barking of three hyper dogs, including a Boston terrier named Turnip that Zein says follows him everywhere.
An aspiring actor, he has been accepted by some of the top performing arts colleges in the country.
There’s one problem, though. The Chantilly townhouse where he currently lives isn’t his, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to afford any of the prestigious schools he dreams of attending in the fall.
Zein claims that his Egyptian parents kicked him out of their house and essentially cut him off after finding out that he was gay.
He says he remembers the date exactly: Nov. 22, 2015; he says he was 17 years old.
“My father hasn’t contacted me in over four months,” Zein said during a Mar. 20 interview.
“He hasn’t said one word to me, not a phone call, not how are you doing…That’s just not right.”
Born in St. Louis, Mo., Zein says he has always had a contentious relationship with his parents, stemming partly from his desire to pursue acting instead of studying law, medicine or any other career path that they consider more respectable.
When Zein was growing up, he said his father resented his preference for Barbie dolls over Hot Wheels, and that his parents didn’t offer any financial support when he got accepted into the University of California in Los Angeles’s (UCLA) summer acting and performance institute in 2015.
Zein says both his parents moved to the U.S. from Egypt when his father, who now works for a consulting firm, was in college. Their disapproval of his sexual orientation is bound up in their religious beliefs, Zein claims.
“They grew up in these very traditional cultural backgrounds where they believe that gay is wrong, gay is a sin, gay is hell,” he said.
Also a victim of bullying at school when he was younger, Zein says he turned to alcohol sometimes to cope with the hostility he experienced at home. At one point, he says he was hospitalized after a suicide attempt.
Zein says he never officially came out to his parents about his sexuality, though he clashed with them over the subject even before they found online messages on his laptop that referenced his sexuality, a discovery that prompted them to ban him from the family’s house in Ashburn.
Fortunately, Zein found that he wasn’t alone. He says that after his parents kicked him out, his best friend, Claire Quinn, and her mother, Mary, opened up their home to him. When he’s not at the Quinn’s Chantilly townhouse, he stays at the house of another high school friend who lives closer to Rock Ridge.
Mary Quinn says she first met Zein when he was a sophom*ore in high school, and he immediately struck her as a “thoughtful, caring person” when he once helped his mother navigate an icy sidewalk back to her car after she dropped him off at the Quinn’s house for a visit.
Zein says that after he was allegedly kicked out of his home, it was an easy decision for Mary Quinn to take him in, since he was so close to her daughter and their house had an extra bedroom anyway.
“I feel like in my heart and soul that it must be so difficult for [Zein’s parents] to choose culture over their child,” Quinn said. “It must be a big struggle. I don’t think I could do it.”
As difficult an experience as this has been, Zein finally feels free to be himself, a newfound contentment that he attributes in part to acting and his involvement in his school’s drama program.
Though he started performing in seventh grade, Zein didn’t become serious about acting until he entered high school, landing roles such as Captain Hook in a production of Peter Pan and the lead in a play called The Other Room, which focuses on a high school student with autism.
“For me, acting was always an escape from my parents and all the negative things that were happening at home,” Zein said. “I can really be myself when I’m on stage. I don’t have to worry about what’s normal, what’s different, what’s considered weird.”
Zein hopes to turn acting into a career and lists Pace University’s School of Performing Arts in New York City, N.Y., the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Southern California as his top schools.
He has already been accepted by Pace and CalArts and is still waiting to hear back from USC, though his parents’ refusal to pay for him to attend college means that he’ll have to find a way to get the money himself.
Acting isn’t Zein’s only ambition, however. Among his other goals are starting a film production company for realistic dramas that tackle social issues and launching his own cosmetics line to combat gender stereotypes.
“I believe that makeup is an art. It’s just a way of expressing yourself,” Zein said. “What you put on your face doesn’t determine how masculine you are, or what your gender or sexual orientation is.”
Zein is aware that his situation isn’t unusual for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teenagers and that he has been luckier than most in that he has been able to find people willing to take him in and care for him.
According to the nonprofit organization True Colors Fund, the U.S. sees about 1.6 million homeless youths each year, 40 percent of whom identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Pointing to nonprofit shelter Casa Ruby as one example of an organization that offers help to homeless youths, Zein says that these young people still need more support, but they often encounter suggestions that they must’ve done something to deserve getting thrown out by their parents.
In an effort to reach out to LGBT youth who might be struggling to find acceptance, Zein shared his story in an eight-minute video that he posted to YouTube on Dec. 23.
“I wanted people to know that they’re not alone and it’s going to get better,” he said, noting that a lot of kids and parents have expressed gratitude to him since the video went up online. “I’m not just advocating for LGBT homeless youth specifically. I’m advocating for homeless youth as a whole, because they all need help. None of them deserve this.”
Though he still struggles to understand his parents’ actions, Zein says that he has never been happier now that he is away from home. The most challenging part of this experience is being separated from his two brothers, one of whom has a form of muscular dystrophy.
“Even if I don’t talk to them in years, I want [my parents] to know that I still love them, and that I still respect them as people,” he said when asked what he wants to say his parents. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be your ideal version of a son, but I am who I am, and I just wish you could accept that.”
Zein’s mother, Shirin Zein, said in a phone conversation that she and her husband, Alaa Zein, both love their son, but she disputed his account of their separation.
According to Shirin Zein, Rami Zein left their house on Nov. 27, rather than being kicked out, and the main source of conflict within the family wasn’t Rami’s sexuality, but rather, a lack of academic focus after his first year in high school and his decision to pursue out-of-state colleges instead of ones in Virginia.
“He doesn’t want any academic work. He wants to rely on drama, and drama by itself, I don’t think that it will work,” Shirin Zein said. “As a family, we were very happy. Rami has everything for him in the house, and you know that’s how much we all really do love him. We give him lots of stuff, and we still do, but he just wants always his way…I want the best for my son.”
