A shockingly cruel letter sent from a father to his just-out gay son has gone viral, beginning with a Facebook post from LGBT ally wrestler Hudson Taylor.

It has now spread to numerous LGBT sites including HuffPost's Gay Voices, Towleroad, Pink News, The New Civil Rights Movement, Truth Wins Out.

It is, as Truth Wins Out's John M. Becker says, "a stark reminder of why the fight for LGBT equality and against religious extremism is so critical."

Unfortunately, no "fight for equality," however successful, will ever stop this sort of father from disowning his son.

I'm not sure about that. I think that if more and more people accept homosexuality that parents will eventually come around because of the need to be like others around them. It won't happen over night but I think it will eventually happen.

If my father had disowned me for being gay (who knows, he might have, but I don't think he ever figured it out & I never told him) I wouldn't give a rat's ass. I would consider that I had disowned HIM.

I don't believe that just because a man fathers a child, the child has to blindly respect him. Respect has to be earned and by disowning your son (or daughter) for being gay cancels all respect IMO.

That letter is so terrible it brings tears to my eyes. I hope his son has plenty of friends and family that will support him. I also hope that this father sees the light some day. I hope that this father is only reacting in the moment, but it doesn't seem that way. The father must have lived a life with little challenge and want or was very deluded. There is so much worse news that this father could get. He should count his blessings. My heart goes out to his son.

The good news is that this happened five years ago and, from the guy's recent posts on Reddit, he's doing fine.

More, I'm sure, than can be said for his father.