Still At It

Yesterday was National Coming Out Day. Been there, done that, right? Where's the novelty in that? Where's the excitement? Where's the necessity -- now? We all of us do it, have done, sooner or later. Right? Most of us anyway, do. All the gay people I know, all the transgender and the non-gender conforming people, the bisexual people and the queer people and the gender neutral people and all the people on the full spectrum of sexuality and gender, we all of us come out, have been out, remain out. Who's left?

Well, me. There's still me, and you.

First though, the point was and still is for lots of people that first declaration. That was the motivation in designating a day. National Coming Out Day originated back in 1988, created by activists Jean O'Leary and Robert Eichberg, and designated October 11th to mark the anniversary of the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The momentum of that event had to be sustained, the struggle needed a day of commemoration and new purpose. People, other people, straight people needed to know that they already knew gay people. More than that though, we had to be willing to say who we were, all of us, if we were to be seen, if anything was to change in the society that continued and continues to oppress and deny the sexual minority. The definition of who we are has expanded, the necessity of claiming our individual and collective voices, our rights and dignity, has not.

No easy thing still. Coming out is still necessary and still not without cost and genuine danger in most places. People are still being bullied, beaten, killed for saying and just being who they are. Our acceptance is far from universal. The forces arrayed against us remain powerful, well organized, motivated, and in deadly earnest. Our existence still threatens to undermine the assumptions that sustain misogyny, homo and trans phobia, racism, sexual violence, class privilege, inequality and exploitation. We are still a threat.

We need to be a threat. We still need to say who we are. The most fundamental expression of solidarity with all others who struggle is to claim our identity, but that is not an end. That is and must be a beginning.

Until I come out as a gay man I cannot be who I intend to be.
Until I come out I cannot be honest with the people I love.
Until I come out what I do not say can be used against me.
Until I come out I cannot participate fully in our struggle or the struggles of other oppressed people without compromising the integrity of their efforts.
Until I come out I continue to accept the definitions imposed on me by my oppressors.
Until I come out I can not be an example to anyone coming up after me.
Until I come out you will not know me.

So I have to come out, again and again and again, and so do you. That's how it works. That's what it has come to mean over time, to be out. It isn't enough that I know and can say so, that my family knows, my friends, my employers, my neighbors. To be out must mean to be engaged in an ongoing campaign, wearisome as that may sometimes feel.

Coming out is bearing witness for those who cannot speak.
Coming out is standing up for all who fell before they could, or were put down when they stood.
Coming out is expressing a willingness to listen to the experience of others.
Coming out is a commitment to the liberation of our people.
Coming out is a commitment to the liberation of others.

The other phrase from my youth was, "openly gay." Sounds ridiculously old fashioned now, doesn't it? Nevertheless it still has meaning for me, if only in the negative. To be, for example, an openly gay Republican isn't to my mind being out. It is an incomplete liberation that supports the oppression of others, the exploitation of the worker, the persecution of the immigrant and maintenance of ignorance, superstition, privilege, and poverty. A gay man who doesn't support a woman's autonomy over her own body isn't out, he's just not heterosexual. A lesbian who opposes transgender rights isn't out, she's just out of touch.

If we are not coming out anymore, we are just accepting what we've been given by those that came before us, and devil take the hindmost. If we are not coming out anymore we are colluding with the silence that still kills our brothers and sisters around the world.

One last point. There's a word I used earlier that needs to be addressed again, "witness." Any that grew up in or near certain faith traditions as I did will recognize that word as more than just a way of saying. That word is weighted with the whole history of the church. I choose it deliberately not despite of but in defiance of that tradition. I do not bear witness so that others may come to my understanding of the truth, but so that I might better understand my own and through this, come to know others. I seek no converts -- a ridiculous and long since repudiated notion worthy of contempt. I am a witness not to your God's grace or the absence thereof but to the reality and necessity of our struggle for equality before the law. My witness need not exclude yours, but they are different in both purpose and kind. I came out to be myself. I come out still to be and do better in this world, not to earn a place in the next.

So I guess we have to keep coming out, people. What choice do we have? I may never march in another parade, or dance on a float in my underwear -- Heaven forbid -- I'll leave all that to those better able and more inclined. But I will keep coming out, and so should you.

Tell your truth. I will listen. You show me yours, and I'll show you mine, honey.

(And to the young? Go on. Discomfort me as I did my elders. That's your responsibility now. Make the bastards jump! We may well deserve it.  Some of us are trying -- in every sense of that word, but still.)