Blog

I am not good at hol­i­days. I lack that (hon­or­able, healthy, and near-uni­ver­sal) human char­ac­ter­is­tic that moti­vates peo­ple to sched­ule time off, to pause from dai­ly rou­tines, and to take spe­cial note of his­tor­i­cal events on their anniver­saries. So Nation­al Com­ing Out Day takes me by sur­prise when it rolls around on Octo­ber 11 of each year.

In my (half-heart­ed) defense, I “came out,” at least in my own mind, on May 8, 1993 at a con­cert I’d put togeth­er just after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege. When one plans such an event (at least when “one” is I), one tends to have “once-and-done” expec­ta­tions of the fête. So when I real­ized that today was “the day,” I jok­ing­ly post­ed a three-word announce­ment on Face­book:

“Psst. I’m gay.”

Most of the com­ments were of the sort I expect­ed:

• “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?” (from my sis­ter)
• “What the HELL?” (from my very sar­cas­tic, very aware sem­i­nary advi­sor, a spe­cial­ist in apoc­a­lyp­tic lit­er­a­ture and staunch ally to LGBTQ caus­es)
• “Does your hus­band know?” (from a friend with whom we just had din­ner recent­ly)

When peo­ple who know me well take “the gay thing” as an unsur­pris­ing part of who I am, the tongue-in-cheek respons­es are under­stand­able. And it might seem… odd… that when just about any­one who knows me as more than an in-pass­ing acquain­tance knows that I’m mar­ried to a man, I feel a need to keep “com­ing out” pub­licly on Octo­ber 11 each year.

Why both­er, real­ly? What’s the point? There are a few pos­si­bil­i­ties:

One pos­si­bil­i­ty is that I crave ego-fuel­ing, plain & sim­ple. As with many of my pub­lic posts, my “I’m gay” post was intend­ed at first to bring a chuck­le. But scrolling through the com­ments has been, frankly, deeply mean­ing­ful to me. There’s some­thing pro­found­ly affirm­ing to see so many expres­sions of sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port, espe­cial­ly at a time in his­to­ry when LGBT exis­tence is los­ing its grip as a “social­ly accept­able iden­ti­ty” (and if you’re not sure what that means, count your­self lucky).

I can also hope that part of me is seek­ing prac­tice at being brave. The oth­er day I read a post by Robin Sokoloff that blew my socks off. To read about the no-effs-giv­en brav­ery of a woman who’d had enough of male priv­i­lege… of soci­ety’s blind-eye, head-down, don’t‑inter­fere accep­tance of atro­cious, vio­lent, inhu­man sex­ism… put me, quite frankly, in my place. I’m embar­rassed to say that I saw myself in the pas­­ta-focused onlook­ers in her sto­ry, and that my pres­ence at that scene would prob­a­bly not have made a dif­fer­ence. And it’s no won­der, really—I still feel my body tens­ing with fight-or-flight prepa­ra­tions when I use the phrase “my hus­band” with a new acquain­tance for the first time. As an edu­cat­ed, Eng­lish-flu­ent, cur­rent­ly phys­i­cal­ly enabled cis white male of com­fort­able socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus, I have a lot of priv­i­lege cards to play, and I want to be bet­ter at mak­ing waves when it’s called for, and bet­ter at rec­og­niz­ing imme­di­ate­ly when it is called for.

But I think, most of all, I make off­hand, off-the-cuff, (appar­ent­ly) effort­less “com­ing-out” ges­tures because I remem­ber being a clos­et­ed teenag­er, and I’ve known plen­ty of clos­et­ed adults, and, in a nut­shell, the clos­et is dead­ly. Try­ing to hide, to min­i­mize, to excise a part of one’s iden­ti­ty leads to crip­pling self-hatred and deep, painful shame. But at least as bad as the dam­age we do to our­selves are the con­se­quences to oth­ers of the poor choic­es we make when we’re hid­ing in clos­ets, whether we’re try­ing to prove to oth­ers (or our­selves) that we’re “not real­ly like this,” or whether we’re turn­ing our backs on our val­ues and our wis­dom, and seek­ing out­lets for desires we’ve been lock­ing inside like a pres­sure cook­er.

Some­day, I trust, a gay kid will be able to say the words “I’m gay” for the first time with­out fear­ing that his fam­i­ly will dis­own him, that his faith com­mu­ni­ty will try to “cure” him, that his employ­er will find a rea­son to ter­mi­nate him, or that his gov­ern­ment will demote him to a less-respec­t­ed class of cit­i­zen. We’re not there yet. But I know that, even now, even in the midst of all the… stuff… that’s going on in Amer­i­ca right now, no one needs to feel alone.

You are not alone.

Psst. I’m gay.

Resources you may find useful

• The Trevor Project, a life­line of phone, chat, and TXT resources for LGBT youth con­sid­er­ing sui­cide
• GLSEN (pro­nounced “glis­ten”), a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion that works to improve an edu­ca­tion sys­tem that too fre­quent­ly allows its les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al, trans­gen­der, queer and ques­tion­ing (LGBTQ) stu­dents to be bul­lied, dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, or fall through the cracks
• LGBT Cen­ter of Cen­tral PA
• PFLAG (Par­ents, Friends, and Fam­i­ly of Les­bians And Gays)