Coming Out Day, October 11, 2012

Yesterday, October 11, 2012, was Coming Out Day.  Congratulations to all of you who had the courage to finally come out then.

For those of you new to my blog, the entire month of October 2011 was Coming Out Month at "This Gay Relationship."  I wrote twenty-two posts on all aspects of coming out–everything from how do I know I'm ready to come out, to coming out dos and don'ts, to a sample coming out letter, to why bother coming out at all.  If you have yet to come out of the closet and think you could use any of this material, I urge you to take a look at it.  I sincerely believe it would be worth your while.

Finally, in a post I wrote some time ago but can't locate now, I talked about what might happen if all of us who are still in the closet came out at the same time–how the world would have no choice but to sit up and take notice, how the world would literally change overnight.  Magnificent thought, isn't it?  No more closets.  Every one of us finally able to get on with the business of who we are and what we're intended to do, rather than waste yet more time and energy worrying about what might happen if our loved ones knew we're gay, and the possible (but unlikely) long-reaching ramifications of that.    

Merle Miller, 1919-1986

Then, in my reading last evening, I found the following quote in the footnotes from Merle Miller's "On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual," a classic essay written for The New York Times Magazine back in January 1971 and recently released by Penguin Classics.  In it, Miller, a well-known and respected writer, came out in the most public way, at a time when coming out was much riskier than it is for most of us now.  I share this quote with you below:

I sometimes wonder what would happen if we all announced it all at once, every one of us, the obscure and the famous and all those in between.  It would create quite a revolution; all by itself it would.  All those famous actors and singers and dancers and playwrights and novelists and songwriters and lawyers and CPAs and engineers.  And truck drivers and ditch diggers and grocers and butchers, you name the job and profession.  We're in all of them, not just in the business of selling divine Chippendale chairs to ladies who adore antiques.  And suppose all those tough, homosexual football and baseball players, instead of doing all those hair and shaving commercials, thus lining their pockets with gold, came out on television for homosexual rights.  And say they were joined by even a tenth of the movie and television stars who are homosexual?  A mind-twisting thought, isn't it?  [pp. 73-74]

I wish you godspeed in your journey to self-acceptance and eventual coming out.  It will be the best thing you've ever done.  It will be the beginning of your real life.