Article by Abigail Garner

Happy National Coming Out Day, everyone!

Although the GLBT community is sometimes accused of “recruiting,” I think National Coming Out Day is about as close as we get. I consider the day to be an opportunity to show closeted people that living openly does not mean the world will come to an end.

I think that because I am a straight family member, many of the questions sent to me by GLBT people have to do with coming out to family, about how, when, and what to expect.

Here are a few of my thoughts on coming out.

Coming out affects your family. I have heard GLBT people say, “But this is about me. It has nothing to do with them.” No matter how much GLBT people want to believe that coming out should be a non-issue, it will still have an impact on family members. In the best cases, the impact can be seen as mostly positive, or even a relief. Coming out sometimes means letting go of a long-held secret–a missing piece that helps a lot of other things make sense. Make sure your family knows there are support networks available to them.

Family members also have to come out. This is sometimes difficult for GLBT people to understand, but family members share parallel coming-out experiences. Some censor themselves and stay in the closet, while others quickly become out and proud. A five-year-old cannot avoid coming out about her family when she explains to her kindergarten playmates why she has a “donor,” not a “daddy.” A grandma comes out when she shows her coworkers some photographs from her grandson’s Vermont civil union.

Coming out is a lifelong process. Only two kinds of people are exceptions to this reality: celebrities and hermits. Celebrities can tell everyone at once by coming out on a TV show or magazine cover. And hermits, well, they don’t have to come out to anyone. Most of us fall somewhere in between the celebrities and the hermits, so we are regularly running into new people to come out to: classmates, new doctors, neighbors, friends of friends, and your mail carrier who delivers all those fundraising letters from GLBT organizations.

Coming out gets easier every time. As a child, it was hard to tell people about my family without getting myself worked up to the brink of tears. Now, talking openly about my family is nearly an everyday experience. I do, however, endure a pit in my stomach on the rare coming-out occasions when I anticipate hostile reactions.

The results of coming-out may vary. Just because you get the hang of this coming out thing doesn’t mean you’ll never run into a few snags along the way. The worst is when I’m on an airplane and the person next to me asks me “what I do.” Sometimes after I tell them, they stop talking to me. It makes for a long and chilly flight…

Give others time to adjust to your being out. GLBT people usually come out when they’re good and ready to do so. There’s no guarantee that family members will be on the same timeline, so please be patient. As my friend Karl told me, “It took me 18 years to come out to myself, so I figured I could give my dad at least a few years to get used to the idea.”

An official day might not be the best day to come out. While an assigned “Coming Out Day” can be the extra push some people need, it does not have to mean now or never. Be sensitive to what is going on in your family members’ lives. (For example, if you are parent and you have a child who studying for an exam the following day, hold off until the weekend.) Additionally, coming out on Thanksgiving or another annual holiday could mean that the day will be forever remembered as your Coming Out Day, eclipsing earlier memories of the actual holiday. Picking an otherwise insignificant day might be best for both you and your family.

Originally published in Lavender Magazine

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