I'm Coming Out -- You should too!

Hello, everyone. I have an announcement to make: I am a gay man.

Until recently, every time I said that, there was this twinge of fear, a fuzz of shame. I was slightly embarrassed, felt like I was telling a secret about myself that could spell disaster. I'd usually follow up with a comment that somehow defended my place as a "straight-acting" man, able to blend into the heteronormative society surrounding me. As time progresses, though, and as I progress along the path of coming-out, I feel less and less reservation about claiming my gay identity. The journey to this point has been long, a story about negotiating prestige, power, and gender and sexual identity amidst deep-felt fear and judgment from myself and my friends and family...

Yeah, you guessed it, I grew up in the Church. In fact, I was a staunch Christian; I asked my parents if I could attend a private Christian school for my last year of high school. I even offered to pay for half of the tuition with money I'd made working in a local coffee shop. Around this time, I began to know that I was gay, but back then, I called it "same-sex attractions." This term was used among myself and my counselor to describe the attractions that I had to men. My counselor was a Christian man, a psychologist -- a good one, actually. I have my misgivings about his Christian approach to my sexual orientation, but I certainly benefited from our interactions. We talked a lot about how gender expression didn't have to conform to the strictly structured gender norms of American culture. I could play the violin, write poetry, and sing, and it could be masculine just because I claimed a masculine identity. It was here, too, that I learned to differentiate between sexual desire and sexual expression, a distinction that has shaped my philosophies of romantic love, and sexual practice.

Perhaps I'm not critical enough of the way I was brought to think about sexuality early in my dealing with my sexual orientation, but the fact of the matter is that I identify a lot with Christians, especially when they humbly and honestly grapple with the reality of sexuality and their deeply-held faith. That's what I was engaged in around this time, as well. After attending counseling, I joined a group at a local church that was committed to engaging with the tension of being a Christian and finding oneself attracted to the same gender. Not ready to call my self gay yet, I would only ever admit to being attracted to men. I was careful, too, to place myself in the social world of males, and had a girlfriend, off-and-on, until my freshman year of college.

2005 found me at a small, private, Christian liberal arts college, stumbling around and getting in arguments with my peers about queer theology. I'd always make sure to distance myself from the argument a bit, hedging my words with, "Well, one argument to what you're asserting is that..." By the end of two years at this school, however, I found myself tired, my growth stunted, and my monetary funds depleted. It was time to transfer to another school, where I could figure myself out, cope with my orientation, and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I landed at Grand Valley State University, again not far from my hometown. Amidst my parents divorcing, and having increasingly negative experiences with hegemonic heterocentrism among my Christian friends, my faith was finally put to rest; I had shed the skin of the faith I grew up with to embrace a bigger, more mystical view of the metaphysical. With this came a process of becoming fully comfortable with myself, my gender expression, and my gay identity.

Today, I see many of my gay friends at the place that I was a couple of very short years ago. I'm brought back to what it was like to consider my feelings "not okay." I remember thinking that while God may not have had a problem with my sexual orientation, the attractions I felt were due to some systemic brokenness of society or spirit. It may not have been a condemnable sin, but to me, homosexuality was the product of sin. I wasn't able to see it then, but this headspace was so oppressive! It contributed to my stunted growth, hindering me from pursuing actualization. I thought I was in need of fixing. That, or I faced a lifetime of coping with the fact that my attractions could never be as pure as those of my heterosexual friends. Since becoming convinced of the validity of my gay identity, I have never felt freer, lighter, more able to take on the world. But it was only through a long, painful process of coming out that this was possible.

All that to say this: It is almost as oppressive to witness many of my friends in this a similar headspace. I see it on their faces, hear it in their words, and it distresses me. In a recent Gay.com story, the author wrote about being unwilling to date men who were not out. At first, one might react negatively to this discrimination, asserting that we're all in various stages of the coming out process, as some commenters did. In evaluating my own response, though, I found myself agreeing with the author, but not on the grounds that he cited. I'm fully willing to be a support in the coming out process. I must admit, though that on this topic, I'm impatient; I'd have a very hard time adjusting to seeing someone with whom I'm close internalize the oppression of homophobia and heteronormativity. I say this not to warn potential suitors of my requirements. Rather, this is to illustrate the level of urgency that I feel about this. It is from this place that I implore my fellow queers to blurt it out, blush like hell, and begin the process of being open with themselves and others about their noble identities as LGBTQI people.