Coming Out Day 2009

Today approximately a quarter million people marched on Washington to assert the equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Today was also National Coming Out Day. And, not coincidentally, today one of my best friends came out to his parents.

He just called me and gave me the news. I'm actually still a little teary. He called his parents and individually told them that he is one of millions of gay people in the United States. They told him what he always knew they would say: that they love him regardless of his sexual orientation; and that they had always wondered anyway if there was something they didn't know. It sounded like the quintessential coming out story, circa 2009.

The days when parents shunned their gay kids are coming to an end, as my friend found out. When parents realize that nothing changes when they find out that their son or daughter is gay, just that they have more information about their child, well, it's not 1920 any more. We aren't placing kids in mental institutions (by and large). Kids are not being rendered homeless by coming out (by and large). There is still a long way to go, and too many lives are needlessly ruined by coming out, but the direction and the trends are unmistakable. The process of coming out involves less stigma than ever before, both for the outer and the outee(s).

Coming out is the first and necessary step for gay people to assert their equality, and it is the first an necessary step to pressure the government to recognize it. The more gay people that a single person knows, the more they support gay marriage, civil unions, domestic partnership benefits, open and honest service in the military, and a host of other issues on which the government sees fit to hold us to the status of second class citizens. When people know gay people, they are less likely to want to discriminate against them. The more people that are out, the closer the LGBT community gets to a critical mass when fantasies of essential legal reform become reality.

That's why what my friend did today is so important. He put a human face on a group of people that are stereotyped as inhuman. I told him that today is one of the most important days of his life, and it is. Standing up to say that "gay" is more than a two-dimensional stereotype or an idea that religious leaders exploit to further their own power is the most powerful and important weapon we have in the fight for equality. Today, we're one step closer.