Pedro Santos, the nephew of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, was 14 when he came out as gay to his parents nearly a decade ago.

Pedro Santos’ father, Francisco Santos, who is Juan Manuel Santos’ brother, was Colombia’s vice president at the time. Pedro Santos told the Washington Blade that he planned to tell his parents over dinner at a restaurant, but he had to abruptly cancel the reservation because his brother was admitted to the hospital with appendicitis.

Pedro Santos instead brought his parents to a McDonald’s near the hospital.

“Now imagine my dad is in office,” Pedro Santos, who is now 22, told the Blade. “He has 100 bodyguards. My mom has 100 bodyguards. I have 100 bodyguards. They evacuate the McDonald’s. The McDonald’s is secured for my mom, my dad and me and we’re in this small table for three people in this regular McDonald’s with 100 people listening to me coming out to my parents.”

Pedro Santos described the scene to the Blade as “crazy.”

“I’m just sobbing and sobbing for one hour until my father tells me, ‘You’re gay, right?’ and I tell him, ‘Yes I’m gay,’” he recalled, noting his parents’ reaction was “beautiful.”

Pedro Santos sat down with the Blade against the backdrop of the expansion of rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Colombia and the implementation of an LGBT-inclusive peace agreement between the country’s government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that his uncle helped to broker. Read more via Washington Blade