Learn From It

I think National Coming Out Day is a huge success. I will cite you the only statistic that matters; it is not universal, but personal. It is not objective data, nor should it be. It is well-researched. It is hard-fought and hard-won. It is the end of a long road. It is an end that happened years ago.

The success is this: I have no one to come out to! I haven't for some time. Or at least no one I've had to save it for until October 11.

When I started work at Apple in March, for example, the HR form for benefits had multiple checkboxes for “others to be insured”: Spouse, Domestic Partner, Dependent. That's it. That's how Apple “found out” I was gay: a benefits form with a checkbox that had equal footing with those to whom marriage is an earnest option. My employer is so extreme.

My new boss knew I had a partner because I said so. He told me about his wife, so I told him about Sam. I'm such a flaunter.

All that said, I have to say that the day...today...National Coming Out Day...holds a bittersweet place in my heart and head. It reminds me of the hard work still ahead, where difficulty takes the form of the base insult of having to discuss on such a conscious and direct level something which is so fundamental, so basic to one's very nature, that one can't do it real justice, can't convey the true experience of it. Our very lives and livelihoods set out on display for the enlightenment-challenged and enlightenment-unwilling out there to cast stones upon, to inveigh about, to use as a masturbatory exercise of their own Fundamentalist cosmology. Yes, even a chance to flaunt their chosen lifestyles in our faces.

I would offer that coming out has the strange benefit of being both the most effective and the least radical thing that any gay person can do to help the cause of equality. Christians, like most humans, find it so much easier to hate a phenomenon rather than hate a person. They'll tell you as much: hate the sin, not the sinner!

Everyone I know, to whom I have come out, has found understanding where there was only surface reaction or has found empathy where perhaps there was only sympathy or has found that siding with the better angels of their nature is preferable to throwing a tantrum in Leviticus' no-fun zone.

Coming out is not flaunting anything. Insofar as any given heterosexual's (true heterosexual or chosen-lifestyle) sexuality is a fundamental aspect of their lives and families and societies, my homosexuality is fundamental to who I am. If it seems to some that Pride and Coming Out Day and Halloween (yes, that one is ours :) are an exercise in self-promotion and self-gratification, well, you're right. But you have Easter and Christmas and the Fourth of July. If it seems from our parades that all homosexuals are either drag queens or leather queens or dancy nancyboys, well, remember that we don't assume all heterosexuals are cheerleaders, band members or Mummers. If it seems we have an agenda, well, we do. But that one is your fault. Just as Pride is a response to the Shame you have foisted on us, an agenda is the natural consequence of organized defense against those who would treat us as less. It's really as simple as that.

We don't want more homosexuals in the world; we just want the ones that are already there to be as fabulous and as unimpeded in their lives as you seem to fancy yourselves.

So for those of you who have not come out to everyone, do it because it's the right thing to do. For the cause of equality. For your fellow gay folks. Most importantly, for yourself. It's the most selfishly selfless thing you'll ever do.

Also sprach der Gott der Plätzchen.

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