For Pride I want to say what has been on my heart for years. There has been a thread in Queer Discourse that seems to be comparing the conditions of “coming out.” Some people, it is said, have the “privilege” to be out, while others experience too much oppression or precarity. People who come out late in life likely experience some scorn and criticism for waiting so long, while recently I read a dear friend suggesting that youth have an easier time coming out than those later in life, who have to deal with the complexities of coming out with a career and sometimes a family and children that do not align with their sexuality and gender.
Multiple conflicting things are simultaneously true. No one should be pressured to come out if they’re not emotionally ready or if their life circumstances are too precarious. And the challenges and heartbreak of coming out late in life is certainly much different than the risks of coming out young. What rankles me, however, is the way these perspectives seem to subtly invalidate the courage and risk-taking of those who do come out, whether early in life or at all.
The truth is, you do not know if you have the “privilege to be out” until you are out. When I came out to my parents, I had no idea whether they’d be accepting or affirming or even allow me to stay in the house, as kids my age at that time (and today) are at risk of being thrown out when they come out to their parents. My own friends made jokes about beating up queers.
What prompted my disclosure, at age 15, was going to church with my mother and listening to yet another homily from the priest about the sinfulness of homosexuality and the Catholic love that wants to call them home (to be straight, or celibate). By this point in my life I’d been wrestling with my sexuality consciously for three years. Catholicism was deeply important to my identity and the culture of my family—our extended relatives would pray the rosary together with my grandparents during out family vacations.
I was fully aware of the Catholic teachings on homosexuality, and after much prayer, contemplation, and painful efforts to change, I’d come upon my own knowing that God was not the one who had the problem with me or my desires. What made me feel like my heart was being ripped in half was not knowing how I could honor my truth and my religious and family identity.
So while I had no reason to believe I would be shunned, I also had no idea how my parents would react. All I knew was that I could no longer live with it being a secret. That took courage. That was a risk.
Coming out is always courageous, always risky. Every time I’m in a new situation that requires me to come out, there is always a moment of assessment—how safe is this situation? Am I in a condition where I’ll be able to deal with a negative reaction? And every time, you don’t know how they’ll respond until you’ve done it.
To cope with the anxiety of this, I made a practice of finding ways to come out as quickly as possible—mentioning a boyfriend or husband, or otherwise giving a tell. As an adult, it’s possible that being openly gay closed certain doors to career opportunities or other forms of social acceptance and privilege that would be available to those who kept their queerness hidden. And it’s possible that my being out allowed me to be an advocate and an influence on culture that wouldn’t have been possible.
The fact that I was able to stay afloat and make a good life for myself is of course a result of the support, community, and privileges I had, including a family that did not reject me and was willing to do the work to understand and accept me.
And there is also a privilege in receiving opportunities for wealth and status that are only available because you’re not out of the closet. And that kind of privilege is its own kind of hell, to live a life experiencing daily discrimination against LGBTQ+ folk, knowing that the life you’ve worked to build could be ruined by an accidental discovery or a disclosure.
What I want to say is, for Pride this year, in a year when the tide of the law is turning against queer people, can we honor that it’s always a risk to come out? That it always takes courage to make visible something within you that could be hidden or repressed? That there is a cost to being out, and a cost to staying hidden?
There is also a power in coming out that our queer elders and ancestors knew. When you are visible, you are a target, but you are also a force. The people in your life can’t have bias against a strange, foreign entity; they have to reconcile their beliefs about this class of people with the person that you are, and the relationship you have with them. Your love for each other makes you both irritants to each other’s worldviews.
It’s comfortable and sometimes necessary to reject the irritant and surround yourself with comforting reassurance and shared beliefs. And it contributes to the polarization we find ourselves in in our culture, where we move more and more toward extremes because we cannot tolerate the irritation of loving someone whose life does not reconcile with our beliefs.
But when you stay with that irritant, it becomes a pearl. My grandmother, with whom I prayed the rosary so much, and who said unkind things to me about gayness when I was young, came to my commitment ceremony to my husband. She was a powerful woman of sincere faith and diligent practice, attending Catholic mass daily and doing regular acts of service. She was the real deal. And as she approached the end of her life, she shared, “I just don’t think it’s that hard to get into Heaven anymore.”
I don’t believe that change was entirely about me and my coming out, but I do believe that my choice to be openly gay and to stay connected to my family was a part of this great process that held us together. And as her beliefs changed, over time I was finally able to begin to heal my relationship with family and religion and find, for me, how my heart can be whole even if the ideologies tell me it should be divided.
Whatever privileges I had or didn’t have, all of this has been work, and it has been hard. And it comes in the wake of the work that my queer ancestors did of coming out and being loud in even more dangerous times.
Coming out is courageous because it’s scary. It’s powerful because it is so risky, no matter who you are or when you do it.
