On Tuesday, May 26, Colton Underwood used Instagram to shut down a troll who claimed to feel sorry for his 20-month-old son Bishop, apparently because Bishop has two gay fathers.
The 34-year-old former Bachelor star posted a warm family selfie alongside husband Jordan C. Brown and their toddler, using the image as a direct rebuttal to the homophobic comment.
According to the troll’s comment targeting Bishop, the person expressed that they felt “bad” for the child, a sentiment Underwood clearly had no intention of letting stand without a response. Rather than ignoring the remark, he chose to answer it publicly, centering his rebuttal on the visible joy of his family.
A Long Road To This Moment
For anyone who has followed Underwood’s journey, the confidence he now projects as a husband and father represents a profound transformation.
He publicly came out as gay in a 2021 interview with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, describing years of self-denial rooted in his Catholic upbringing, his time in competitive sports, and a deeply internalized belief that his identity was something to be ashamed of.
He told Roberts he had known he felt different from the age of 6, though he lacked the language to understand it at the time.
The path to that interview was not a gentle one. Underwood described reaching a breaking point before he could finally be honest with himself, recalling a moment that still carries weight.
“There was a moment in L.A. that I woke up and I didn’t think I was gonna wake up. I didn’t have the intentions of waking up. And I did,” he told Roberts in his candid coming-out interview on GMA.
He credited that experience, along with other periods of suicidal ideation, with motivating him to reclaim his life on his own terms.
Roberts, who is also openly gay, noted during that same interview that she could see both joy and relief in Underwood as he spoke.
He agreed, describing himself as more content and at peace than he had ever felt at that point, a sentiment that appears to have only deepened in the years since, as he has built a marriage and started a family.
From Coming Out To Building A Family
Underwood married Jordan C. Brown, and the couple welcomed son Bishop, who recently turned 20 months old. The family selfie Underwood posted in response to the troll was not just a clap-back; it was a statement of normalcy.
A father, a husband, a toddler, a Sunday-afternoon kind of photo that millions of families post every week, offered here as evidence that love and stability are not determined by the gender of the parents providing them.
Before his marriage and before his coming out, Underwood was best known to television audiences as the lead of Season 23 of The Bachelor in 2019, a season defined in part by his public declaration of virginity and a now-iconic fence-jumping moment.
He had also appeared on Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette in 2018 and on Bachelor in Paradise.
In his GMA interview with Roberts, he reflected honestly on that chapter, acknowledging that the women on his season may have felt misled and saying he wished he had found the courage to confront his own identity before involving others in his personal struggle.
Same Sex Families Are Still Families
What makes Underwood’s response to this troll worth paying attention to is not the drama of a celebrity clap-back.
It is the reminder that homophobic commentary directed at same-sex families does not stay abstract; it lands on real children and real parents. Bishop is 20 months old. He cannot read Instagram comments yet, but the culture those comments reflect is one he will grow up in.
When a parent chooses to answer that kind of hostility with a family photo rather than silence, they are doing something quietly significant: insisting that their child’s home is not a subject for pity.
Underwood’s own history, marked by years of self-rejection and a mental health crisis serious enough to bring him to the edge, gives his current confidence a particular resonance.
The man who once prayed to stop being gay is now posting selfies with his husband and son and telling the internet, without apparent hesitation, that his family does not need anyone’s sympathy.
