The Never Ending Process of "Coming Out"

Yesterday was the 31st anniversary of National Coming Out Day - a day to celebrate coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.  Truth be told, however, when one is LGBT, the "coming out" process is not a one time event.  It happens over and over again as one has to first admit reality to one's self and then over time to coming out to family, friends, at work, and thereafter, every time one meets someone new, assuming you feel it necessary and/or worthwhile to reveal this truth about yourself.  Some times it is worth the effort, other times it is easier to reference "my spouse" rather than to say "my husband" and run the risk of awkward questions or outright rejection.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, it can be exhausting and can be more about others' expectations than self-affirmation.  Over time, it does get easier once one develops an "I don't give a damn" attitude towards what others think.  Yet, coming out remains something the straight world cannot comprehend since no one straight ever has to "come out."  My thoughts and best wishes go out to the LGBT individuals beginning the never ending process. Here are column highlights:   

Since college, I’ve come out countless times: in office meetings, to roommates, at dinner parties, to baristas and doctors and anytime it seems necessary.

Since 1988, there has been an official day for coming out: Oct. 11. But the reality is that queer people have to come out over and over and over again. It’s exhausting and frankly sometimes not worth it. So I’m not always out. Maybe someone asks me if I have a wife, and I simply say no. Maybe a friend’s child asks what gay is, and I say they should ask their parents. Maybe I check “rather not respond” on hospital forms about sexuality. Maybe I don’t tell and hope that others don’t ask.

In asking gay friends — and lesbians, bisexuals, trans folks and closeted people — about their similar experiences with this exhaustion and coy, post-out closetedness, a recurring frustration was that as soon as queer life is broached, straight people often act entitled to ask personal questions. Are you a top or a bottom? Are you postoperative? Do you have a penis? Which do you like more, men or women? There is a tyranny there that conscripts queer people as servants to straight awareness, paid intermittently in the minimum wage of tolerance. Queer people would never do this to straight people; we’re not allowed.

This is the trap of coming out, the way it squirms under the weight of straight expectations. Coming out is embraced only as otherness . . . . my interrogators have almost never put any effort into their curiosity before unloading it on me. Because it’s not about learning my truths; it’s about fitting their scripts.

Openness was a radical act of self-empowerment in Harvey Milk’s day, when gay existence was just shy of insanity and plague. But a half-century of pride later, coming out has become increasingly about other people. When Apple chief executive Tim Cook came out, he quoted Martin Luther King Jr.: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ ” Sure. But our outness is for us, not them. We have lost the spotlight in our own story.

What’s more, we have collectively believed the lie that coming out, as a moment of actualization, is exclusively a personal journey rather than a societal one. Our celebration of coming out forces queer people alone to do the hard work and emotional labor of changing the country. Meanwhile, Americans are raising persistently gendered blue and pink kids. No matter our pride, outness still costs us Uber rides, YouTube dollars, our health care, our ability to parent, the roofs over our heads and, in 28 states, our jobs (this past week, the Justice Department argued that the Supreme Court should allow businesses to treat outness as a fireable offense nationwide, condemning queer livelihood to straight mercy).

No wonder that high-profile athletes and musicians who come out often do so only after they’re off the field (football player Ryan Russell) or after their song has danced atop the charts (“Old Town Road” singer Lil Nas X). The Brooklyn Nets forced center Jason Collins to accept a series of 10-day contracts after he came out. Actor Sean Hayes didn’t come out until after the original run of “Will & Grace” concluded (and he scored his Emmy). It is a vanguard that cowers — maybe by necessity.

Thankfully, the coming-out playbook is being rewritten — if imperfectly — by prominent people from Jodie Foster and Aaron Schock to Lil Nas X and Janelle Monáe. Without officially coming out, Foster and Schock (a former congressman) skipped to being out, forcing others to process "what this means" on their own. It's a mix of bravery, subversion and evasion. . . . . All four are out in deliciously contradictory ways.

This last part underscores the truth that there is no monolithic way of being LGBT.  We are as diverse and varied as those in the straight world despite efforts to stereotype us.

From Liz Smith To Kevin Spacey: How The Hollywood Closet Endured

Gossip columnist Liz Smith died this week at the age of 94.  During her most powerful years, her gossip column could boost careers or trash them.  Ironically, through it all, Smith was a largely closeted lesbian with long term relationships with women.   The other irony is that Smith and others aided in maintaining the Hollywood closet and all of the harm that it wreaked on numerous lives.  Fellow LGBT blogger and activist Michelangelo Signorile has a piece in Huffington Post that looks at Smith and others who perhaps unwittingly aided in sexual harassment by closeted figures while maintaining the Hollywood and celebrity closet.  Here are excerpts:

This week’s death of 94-year-old Liz Smith, the queen of gossip columnists, brought some frank assessments of her complicated relationship with the closet, including in the New York Times, Vanity Fair and a detailed, personal piece by Michael Musto in the fashion bible, W magazine.

I wrote angry columns as an editor and columnist at OutWeek from 1989 through 1991, referenced in some of these current assessments, excoriating Smith for her role in helping to keep the queer closet in pop culture tightly closed at a time when visibility was literally a life or death issue.

As the AIDS plague escalated, Smith, in her New York Daily News column, syndicated to dozens of newspapers nationally in those days before the Internet, was helping to cover for people like Calvin Klein, Jodie Foster, Hollywood mogul David Geffen, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, Malcolm Forbes, photographer Annie Liebovitz and many, many more ― all of whom have since come out, no doubt due to the pressure and the exhaustion of keeping the closet door tightly closed.

Smith not only “respected” the closets of Hollywood celebrities and other public figures, but she also actively promoted lies and distortions, running items about false heterosexual affairs that their publicists fed her, though she knew the truth full well, since she traveled in these celebrities’ circles. 

That was the epitome of Fake News, way back in 1989.   When it came to heterosexual public figures and their affairs, divorces and other romantic interests, Smith and other celebrity and political chroniclers not only had to get their details correct ― per proper journalism ― but they knew the public saw this as glamorous and exciting. Homosexuality, on the other hand, was something that revolted many in that profoundly homophobic era, so these scribes hid behind the notion of protecting “privacy” as an excuse for hiding information or outright lying.

This was of course hypocritical ― not caring about the privacy of heterosexual public figures but suddenly having more ironclad ethics when it came to the privacy of homosexuals, even when reporting on their sexual orientation was relevant to a larger, important story ― as the only thing they were protecting was often the industry that they, too, built their careers within.

And worse off, many or most of the columnists ― like Liz Smith ― were closeted and queer themselves. What better system for the powers-that-be than than to have queer people who have their own vested career and financial interests in the closet guarding the secrets of other closeted prominent and powerful people? What we’ve learned is that when celebrities feel pressured by both the LGBTQ community and the media to come out ― from Melissa Etheridge and Rosie O’Donnell to Neil Patrick Harris and Demi Lovato ― rather than being hurt they actually thrive, both personally and in their careers.

We’re also able to look back now on the dangers of the closet and protecting it at all costs with zealous anti-“outing” polices with regard to public figures, and rethink just what “outing” means. As I wrote recently regarding Kevin Spacey, protecting his closet was dangerous because some, even in the gay press, who knew of his sexual harassment of an underage actor refused to report it, wrongly equating his abuse of a male minor with being gay itself and thus afraid they were going to “out” him.

So many closeted public figures have in fact engaged in same-sex harassment and assault often because they couldn’t go out in public to bars or elsewhere and knowing they could get away with it because no one in the media would ever dare report on it.

That was the case with multimillionaire Malcolm Forbes, who was sexually harassing his male employees ― and also living a secret life dating men while people like Liz Smith, who’d been flown by him to his lavish parties on yachts around the world and in places like Morocco, perpetrated the glamorous but false notion that he was romantically involved with his platonic friend Elizabeth Taylor. 

That’s not to say Smith herself didn’t do good things for charity, including in battling AIDS, raising money for the cause and promoting such events that raised funds. But the most powerful thing she could do in those times was to come out and stop closeting others, and show the visibility of queer people, and stand up to the homophobes.

Eventually she did come out as bisexual, many years later. . . . . And this year, at the age of 94, she finally admitted she should have come out sooner. 

I do not mean to be unkind to Smith and others like her.  I existed in a combination of self-loathing and terror of my secret being discovered for many years in the closet.  It is not a good place to be and often blinds you to the better course of action.  Hopefully, despite the efforts of the Trump/Pence regime to re-mainstream anti-LGBT discrimination, the era of the closet is fading and fewer and fewer people will feel the need to be untrue to themselves and less than honest with others.  No one chooses to be born LGBT just as no one gets to choose to be black or born into a Muslim family.  It is far past time that ALL of us simply accept each other as creations of the Creator/god who are equal to one another, no one better than another.

The Power of Coming Out at Work

Lord Browne

Living in the closet is psychological and emotionally damaging.  Moreover, it takes a huge amount of time and effort that would be/is better spent on living a fulfilling life that is not haunted by the fear of being "outed."   In the business world being in the closet is similarly detrimental and wastes energy and creativity that could be better used to further one's business and career.  Sadly, since 29 states still provide no employment protections to LGBT employees, many still feel the need to hide their real lives at work.  I was in the closet at work after coming out for several years and it was exhausting.  Former BP CEO John Browne looks at the issue in a column in The Advocate.  Here are excerpts:

But by deciding to disclose his sexuality, [Apple CEO Tim] Cook has united his public and private lives. He will no longer have to devote valuable energy to concealing part of his identity, energy that can now be used productively in the pursuit of more fulfilling personal and professional lives. He has shown bravery many others and I did not have.

In an effort to maintain my double life, I made three fatal errors of judgement. First, in an attempt to reduce the risk of somebody finding out my secret, I met a man on an escort website. Second, I built a relationship with him, and was surprised when he sold our story to a British tabloid newspaper. Third, I went to court in an attempt to protect my privacy and lied in a legal document about how we met each other. I reversed that lie within days, but the case eventually collapsed. I resigned and lost the career that had structured my entire professional life.

When I was dragged out of the closet, my worst fears did not come true. I gained friends, lead a more fulfilling private life, and have a wider set of business contacts as a result. Many of the people I interviewed for The Glass Closet expressed a desire to come out, but only when “the time is right.” For some, that meant after a promotion, and for others — particularly athletes — it meant after retirement. For me, the “right time” would never come because I had invested too much in my double life.
Evidence suggests that around one third of LGBT people remain in the closet at work. In writing The Glass Closet, I spoke to men and women around the world who, despite living in an age of diversity targets, LGBT corporate networks, and equal marriage, are still afraid of the consequences of coming out. That takes a personal toll on them; they fail to build a unified private and professional life, to the detriment of both. But it also takes a huge toll on their businesses, which suffer when employees do not feel included and are preoccupied by something other than their work. Companies with a fully engaged workforce outperform their peers by an average of 2% per year, every year for 20 years. The return to an inclusive environment is enormous, and in my experience, there are two things that business leaders can do to create that environment for LGBT people.

The first is to set the right tone from the top. Leaders who take LGBT inclusion seriously should dedicate a fixed amount of time to it, and ensure that positive messages are accompanied by meaningful changes in behavior, rather than processes that can be ignored. If leaders are asking people to bring their whole selves to work, they must also lead by example.

The second thing that leaders can do is identify and celebrate role models. Role models are not examples to emulate but sources of inspiration that teach us something we can apply to our own circumstances. . . . Anybody struggling with a hidden life should take inspiration from these role models, and any leader who wants to create a safe and inclusive environment should celebrate them. They demonstrate that it is possible to come out and succeed.

Change does not happen unless individuals take their careers into their own hands and find the courage to step out of the closet into the true beauty beyond.

Business sometimes clings to the past and lags behind progress in society. But at its best, it is the engine of human progress. From apartheid to the fight against climate change, and from equal pay to equal marriage, business has been at the forefront of social change. Cook’s announcement represents several more bricks in the wall of LGBT acceptance and inclusion, but I am convinced that the best is yet to come.

Lord Browne - Internalized Homophobia at the Highest Levels

For me, a major part of the "coming out" process was letting go of all of the religious and societal brainwashing that I had grown up with that made me perceive being gay as something simply too horrible to contemplate.  Hence the decades of mental gymnastics to convince myself "it wasn't really true" and living constantly on guard and behind a glass wall, if you will, so that no one might discover my terrible secret.  I suffered from internalized homophobia of the highest order.  And it took several years of therapy to get over the damage that had been done to me emotionally and psychologically.  For many of us older gays, the homophobia that we internalized made coming out so, so difficult and painful.  Indeed, I have gay friends who still cannot completely let go of the homophobia they internalized in their youth.  A lengthy article in The Guardian looks at Lord Browne (pictured above), former head of British Petroleum who similarly had to overcome this kind of toxic internalized homophobia.  Browne has now written a book, The Glass Closet, that looks at Browne's experience and why he believes continued homophobia in the business world undermines business productivity. Here are article highlights:

When Lord Browne was in charge of BP, had anyone told him he would one day invite a journalist into his home to discuss his sexuality, he would have said they were insane. Homosexuality was the last thing he expected to talk about in public; after all, he never spoke of it even in private. The former CEO spent half a century in the closet, so terrified of letting his secret slip that he never talked about himself at all, confining his conversational repertoire instead to "the news, and politics, and business. That's what you'd talk about."

But since a Sunday tabloid outed him seven years ago, his life has become a series of unimaginable surprises. For Browne, the revelation has been how much less homophobic the world is than he had always feared. He has now written a book about homosexuality within the business world, and the revelation for many readers will be how homophobic that world still is.

The Glass Closet tells the story of Browne's 38-year career and double life, which began when he joined BP in 1969, and ended with a single phone call from the Mail on Sunday in January 2007, informing him that it was about to publish a kiss'n'tell by a former Brazilian escort, Jeff Chevalier. He had been Browne's first and only boyfriend; the pair met in 2003 on a gay escort website and were together for almost three years. But in public, Browne was a heterosexual bachelor.

His reason for writing The Glass Closet is, he says, quite simple. "I wouldn't want anyone else to go through what I went through."

This motivation to spare others is common among victims of injustice who become campaigners, but it's about the only thing Browne has in common with a typical activist. He lives in a town house on Cheyne Row in Chelsea, where a butler leads me through rooms that could pass for an art gallery and out across a courtyard to a private library purpose-built to hold his antique book collection. A chauffeur-driven Bentley is waiting to whisk him off to the launch of a Matisse exhibition when we have finished.

Browne knew he was gay by the time he left boarding school, and didn't tell a soul. His mother, a Roma Jew, was an Auschwitz survivor and passed to her son an abiding fear that to be different was to invite persecution. "I internalised that to mean being gay was basically wrong, because if you got caught it would be very dangerous."

In Browne's mind, there was no choice. He had to keep his sexuality secret, or his career would be over. "You had to blend in, be chameleon-like, so no one would notice your private life. But you could be noticed in your work life, so you sublimated a lot into that. 

Early in his career, he thought perhaps he could quietly come out once he was further up the ladder. But the higher he climbed, the bigger his public profile grew. In 1995 BP was just a struggling national company, but its new CEO launched a series of audacious takeovers and mergers that turned it into the second largest oil corporation on the planet. Browne became known as "the Sun King", described as Britain's most successful businessman, and almost certainly its most highly paid. 

His devotion to the job left little time for friends. His father, an army officer, had died in 1980; an only child, he was overwhelmed by loneliness when his mother died in 2000. For the first time in his life, aged 52, he risked a relationship with a man.

To anyone of Browne's generation, what happened next may be perfectly recognisable. To anyone under 25, it will sound incomprehensible. When Browne fell in love with Chevalier, he didn't announce their relationship, nor even acknowledge it to his closest friends. The words, "I am gay" had passed his lips only twice in his life, and when Chevalier moved in, Browne didn't even mention his new domestic arrangement to his butler.

Browne thought he was being careful, but now sees it differently. "A friend said, 'Well, of course what you were really doing was daring people to pull you out, and you didn't know you were, but you shouldn't have been surprised when it happened.' And I think, now, that probably the time was coming when what I was doing, and who I was, was becoming unsustainable."  It never occurred to him that Chevalier might betray him.

Seven years on, he still looks stunned by the avalanche of supportive letters and emails that came pouring in, his first intimation that the world might not mind him being gay after all: "It was just amazing." Friends, former colleagues, politicians, journalists and strangers offered support and advice;  . . . .  One of the many strangers who wrote to him was a 32-year-old Vietnamese banker. They met for a drink, fell in love, and have been together since. For the very first time, Browne is one half of a public gay couple.

[T]he simple act of coming out has made him feel like a completely different person.  "The transformation was quite extraordinary for me, because I had to confront who I was, and talk about who I was. I'd never done that before – I always talked about myself just as someone who represented a business. And now I have changed."

Had Browne's story been unique, he would not have written the book. But the statistics indicated to him that the corporate closet must be crowded. British attitudes towards homosexuality have undergone such a sea change in the past 15 years that in many professions – politics, the media – inclusivity is now taken for granted. The less widely reported, more troubling story Browne decided to tell is how little the corporate world has changed.

Only half of all LGBT employees in the US are estimated to be out at work, and in this country a third are estimated to be in the closet.

[I]t is industry leaders who, he hopes, will read his book. He was taken aback by the culture of fear and prejudice he uncovered. Interviewees were offered a guarantee of anonymity, and even then closeted businessmen and women told him they were too frightened to talk.

Homophobia isn't just a problem for gay employees, Browne argues – it's a problem for business. He doesn't concern himself with appeals to morality or equality, but instead keeps hammering home his unshakable conviction that firms that allow their staff to be open and honest are more profitable than companies that make gay employees live a lie. Browne used to think he was doing BP a service by staying in the closet. It was only after he came out that he realised what a colossal waste of energy it had been, and how much more of himself could have been devoted to BP had he been able to be open.

In the book, he quotes a gay businesswoman making the case for introducing a non-discrimination policy to cover sexual orientation. "I want you to go back to your offices," she told her heterosexual bosses. "I want you to remove all vestiges of your family, particularly your spouse. Put the pictures in the drawer and take off your wedding band. You cannot talk about your family, and where you were on vacation. And if your spouse or partner is seriously ill, you are afraid to acknowledge the relationship, because you are afraid you might lose your job. Do all of that – and see how productive you are."

The classic mistake, he says, is to devolve responsibility to an HR department. "HR managers are not CEOs; they're not there to set the tone; the tone has to come from the very top." It's no use simply saying their business is gay-friendly. Chief executives need to give speeches about inclusion, make the diversity officer's role an executive one, create LGBT resource groups and run "allies' programmes", where heterosexual employees sign up to support colleagues who want to come out.

The key, he argues, is to make it easy for gay employees to come out at the beginning of their careers.

I agree with Browne completely on the issue of lost productivity.  Being in the closet at work is exhausting and all the energy and effort expended hiding one's "secret" can be far better used to further the business' interests.   

Internalized Homophobia Still Plagues Some in the LGBT Community

Click image to enlarge

When I came out in mid-life one of the biggest hurdles I faced was overcoming the homophobia I had internalized from my religious upbringing and the larger society.  Thankfully, by leaving the Roman Catholic Church and seeing two exceptional therapists, I was able to let go of the religious brainwashing and the associated self-hatred that went with it.  Many in the LGBT community, including some friends I know, however, have not been able to let go of their internalized homophobia.  These individuals continue to be plagued by religious based guilt, some refuse to enter into committed relationships, and others go out of their way to avoid being around other gays out of fear that their "secret" might be discovered.  It is a soul killing phenomenon.  A piece in the Dallas Voice looks at the issue.  Here are excerpts:

Scott and Alan agreed to interview with Dallas Voice on the condition of anonymity, and during three meetings, they discussed their secret relationship and Alan’s closeted status and internalized homophobia, which he denies harboring. The contact was made through a mutual acquaintance, a Marine Corps officer, who has known Alan for three years.

“I don’t think I had ever heard of internalized homophobia until now,” Alan said. “It’s not something I have, so I don’t agree that’s the problem. I’m not out simply because of my job. Coming out would probably ruin my career.”

An executive with a Dallas-based professional sports organization, 32-year-old Alan has never been to a gay bar, has never attended a social event with a same-sex date and will only do things publicly with Scott that won’t be interpreted as a couple’s thing.

“We can go to a sports bar and have a beer, but we can’t go for a walk together,” Scott said. “I live with a long list of rules.”

Mental health professionals who treat LGBT issues would stamp Alan with one of the signs of internalized homophobia, regardless of his thoughts about it. In Beyond The Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life, author Steven Seidman describes being in the closet as a “life-shaping pattern of concealment.” Seidman writes that the closet seems to be on the wane, but it’s not gone, and its profound effects, including shame and homophobia, linger.

“Alan doesn’t realize it, but he’s put me in the closet, too,” Scott said. “I can’t go on a date with him because no one can see us out together like that, but I can’t go on a date with anyone else, either, because I’m with Alan, which makes no sense. This isn’t the way I want to live. I don’t do well with concealment.”

Sociologists and mental health professionals who treat and write about internalized homophobia say gay men and lesbians often use the demands of their jobs as an excuse not to pursue romantic involvements. They believe it keeps them safe from the toils of dealing with who they are.

“Most of us are concerned at one time or another with feeling bad about being gay or lesbian,” said Candy Marcum, a community counselor and president of Stonewall Behavioral Health. “It has to do with incorporating messages that say it’s not good or it’s even bad to be gay or lesbian. Those messages come from our families, the church, friends and the media, and they can linger into adulthood.”

Internalized homophobia takes root in those messages and leads to being closeted and a profusion of other traits that ravage a person’s self-esteem, among them contempt for the more open members of the LGBT community.  

The issue also is complicated by the LGBT community’s many facets. Tension between gay men and lesbians sometimes surfaces, and there are individuals in both camps who are opposed to drag queens and trans people. In that regard, gays and lesbians are no different than the heterosexuals who burden the community with hate, counselors say.

“Internalized homophobia leads to gay-on-gay acts of meanness and rudeness,” Marcum said. “Those people tend to hurt other gays and lesbians.”

The development of a scale to measure that internalized homophobia, written about in the Oxford Journals, suggests four dimensions to the issue: public identification with being gay, perception of stigma associated with being gay, degree of “social comfort” with other gay men and beliefs regarding the religious or moral acceptability of homosexuality.

One high-profile woman can relate to both Scott and Alan. Edie Windsor, the plaintiff in the case that led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule parts of DOMA unconstitutional, spoke publicly shortly after the decision, explaining her own struggle to speak honestly about her marriage with colleagues.  “Internalized homophobia is a big bitch,” she said.

One additional thing I will note is that the longer that I have been totally out socially and professionally, the easier it has become to simply be who I am.  No excuses, not pretense.  If some do not like me, that's their loss.   But over all, I have found that most people could care less - this includes my Hindu and Muslim clients and some of the old money crowd at the yacht club we joined last February.

The Torment of Life in the Closet

As long time readers know, I spent decades in the closet consumed with efforts to deny reality, self-hate and a never ending fear that "my secret" might be discovered.  Growing up Roman Catholic, a denomination where inflicting guilt and self-loathing is an art form, certainly did nothing to make matters better.  I found myself to be like an actor on the stage, always "in character" except when totally alone.  Never able to be fully close to anyone, always maintaining an invisible glass wall between myself and others.  It is a very miserable and unhappy place.  And this whole horrible word derives from a few passages in a book that is the written version of stories authored by ignorant uneducated people of 2000+ years ago.  So many lives either ruined or made to be a constant torment just because others cling to these archaic writings due to either childhood brainwashing, a fear of thinking for themselves, personal demons, or a fear of modernity.  Oh, and let's not forget those who are out to enrich themselves financially.  A piece in SB Nation looks at the experiences of David Testo (pictured above), a former pro soccer player who came out recently.  Much of what he describes I identify with because I've known the fear, known the self hate, and known the misery.  And LGBT youth (and adults) continue to experience this living Hell.  Thanks to Christianists and professional Christians who have a sick need to feel superior to others or who seek to enrich themselves while peddling bigotry.  Here are some story excepts:   

David Testo doesn’t remember anything from before the day his dad died of colon cancer, when he was 10. But from that day onward, he knew a few other things to be true. One, his father was gone. Two, he was gay. And three, he would pay a terrible penitence for it.

He wasn’t quite sure what it meant to be gay. .  .   .  .  .  . He could only imagine being with other boys, recognizing himself in what his surroundings railed against. The Bible, the only truth in his pious Baptist community down in North Carolina, was pretty clear on the evil of homosexuality: "Thou shalt not lie with the male as one lieth with a woman: for it is abomination," Leviticus, 18:22. 

"I kind of hated myself. When you’re told gay people are sinners and are going to burn in eternal hell and you’re a child, what are you supposed to feel? It just couldn’t be the truth. I didn’t know who I was." There was no Internet then, no way of circumventing Bible Belt propaganda and discovering other truths. "If you’re straight, you learn from examples everywhere around you," says David. "But if you’re gay you’re just left hanging there – you learn about your sexuality anonymously, through dark spaces."

"It takes a long time to accept it because you really do try to change or deny it. It’s the one thing I can’t change. I can change pretty much everything else about me but I can’t change who I’m sexually attracted to."

He tried anyway. 

He decided to do what closeted gay men have done for centuries: construct a beautiful facade behind which to huddle. So he wouldn’t go to hell after all, he decided. Yes, that was the best option available; the only option, unless he wanted to become a pariah and the target of constant proselytizing over his "disease." He would be unimpeachable – get good grades, join the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, be elected captain of the soccer team, date a cheerleader, have straight sex. He bullied kids suspected of being gay, called them "faggots."  He became the golden boy, hiding in the spotlight.

A sanctuary for others, the locker room had been a deeply uncomfortable place for David. He'd spent as little time there as possible, missing out on much of the bonding he so cherished. There was a lot of talk of sex. David dodged the questions. He'd looked at the ground and avoided the inherent sexual undertone in locker rooms. He’d bang on the windows of the team bus along with the others when an attractive girl walked by.

David had been a permanent resident of the gray area. Who knew; who didn’t know? Who was OK with it; who was judging him behind his back? He had no clue. It drove him crazy. Never once, in all of his years playing soccer, did a teammate ask straight up if he was gay. And he never formally came out to anybody either.

Call it a karmic reckoning. David didn’t actually know he’d be the first active male pro athlete in a major team sport in North America to publicly announce that he was gay last November, but he knew that what he had to say would matter. When he learned that yet another bullied gay teen took his own life — 15-year-old Jamie Hubley from Ottawa — his mind was made up. David hoped he might help make a difference for all the boys just as lost as he once was. That he could make amends for the bullying he did himself. Regret can be productive sometimes.

Testo came out in November, 2011.  He hasn't played pro soccer since.  While his story is inspiring, the aftermath sadly will convince other young LGBT individuals that the only safe place is in the closet as tortured a place as it may be.  In my own life, coming out eventually severely damaged my legal career as I became radioactive in the minds of most local law firms.    I've paid a high price for coming out, but the only alternative was to come out or die.  I chose life.  It's ironic that the "godly Christians" who are always saying "choose life" in the abortion context by their anti-gay bigotry condemn countless LGBT individuals to remain in a living Hell or to choose death as their best option.  Talk about hypocrites.  They only care about choosing life for unborn fetuses.  They care little about the living.

CNN's Don Lemon First Interview; A Message To Bilerico

I wrote about CNN anchor Don Lemon this morning and his decision to come out in his new book. Today, Lemon did his first interview since the story broke in the New York Times and I've inserted a video clip below of the interview. I have great respect for Lemon and applaud his courage. I do believe that he's correct when he says if more people came out publicly - especially those in role model/celebrity positions - that there would be fewer needless gay teen suicides. I wish Lemon the best as he continues his journey.

As an interesting aside, Don Lemon is a friend of The Bilerico Project for which I am a a regular contributor. Bil Browning, editor of Bilerico, posted a message that Lemon sent to those of us at Bilerico. Here's the message:
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"Today I chose to step out on faith and begin openly living my own truth. And let me say right up front that I hope many of you will be inspired to do the same thing in your daily lives. Some of the things I've chosen to reveal in my book Transparent were very difficult to share with even those closest to me.
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There was a time when I was terrified of revealing these things to the person I love most in this world - my own mother. But when I finally mustered the courage to tell her that I had been molested as a child and that I was born gay, my life began to change in positive ways that I never imagined possible. Yet I still chose to keep those secrets hidden from the world. I, like most gay people, lived a life of fear. Fear that if some employers, co-workers, friends, neighbors and family members learned of my sexuality, I would be shunned, mocked and ostracized. It is a burden that millions of people carry with them every single day. And sadly, while the mockery and ostracizing are realized by millions of people every day, I truly believe it doesn't have to happen and that's why I feel compelled to share what I've written in Transparent.
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As a journalist I believe that part of my mission is to shed light onto dark places. So, the disclosure of this information does not inhibit in any way my ability to be the professional, fair and objective journalist I have always been.
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My book is dedicated to the memory of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, who jumped to his death from a bridge after his dorm mates streamed his private business over the Internet for the world to see. Tyler might still be with us today if more gay men and women had chosen to live proudly and openly. It is also dedicated to the millions of young, gay people who believe they are alone when dealing with their own sexual identities. You are not alone! There are people, like me and many others, who are thriving in their personal and professional lives and although we sometimes have a hard time with it ourselves, we are here to show you by example that you too can overcome any obstacle as long as you stay strong and, most of all, stay alive."
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With love and honesty,
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Don Lemon
May 16, 2011

President of Phoenix Suns Comes Out

There is continued discussion of the homophobia that seems rife in professionals sports where it seems every week some sports figure makes some sort of bigoted anti-gay remark. In a move that will stun many, Rick Welts (pictured at right), the president and chief executive of the Phoenix Suns, has finally found the strength, courage or final desperation to say out loud to the public, "I am gay." Sadly, it seems it took the loss of a relationship for Welts to come to the point where he no longer felt he could keep living a lie. From my personal experience, no matter how tumultuous the journey may be, living out in private and in public is a hugely energizing thing. All the energy wasted in hiding and paranoia about being discovered is so very, very exhausting. I congratulate Welts. Here are highlights from the New York Times:
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[U]ntil now, Mr. Welts, 58, who has spent 40 years in sports, rising from ball boy to N.B.A. executive to team president, had not felt comfortable enough in his chosen field to be open about his sexuality. His eyes welling at times, he also said that he planned to go public.
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Mr. Welts explained that he wants to pierce the silence that envelops the subject of homosexuality in men’s team sports. He wants to be a mentor to gay people who harbor doubts about a sports career, whether on the court or in the front office. Most of all, he wants to feel whole, authentic.
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“This is one of the last industries where the subject is off limits,” said Mr. Welts, who stands now as a true rarity, a man prominently employed in professional men’s team sports, willing to declare his homosexuality. “Nobody’s comfortable in engaging in a conversation.”
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Although he had opened up to his supportive parents and to his younger, only sibling, Nancy, Mr. Welts feared that if he made his homosexuality public, it would impede his rising sports career. “It wasn’t talked about,” he said. “It wasn’t a comfortable subject. And it wasn’t my imagination. I was there.”
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But this privacy came at great cost. In March 1994, his longtime partner, Arnie, died from complications related to AIDS, and Mr. Welts compartmentalized his grief, taking only a day or two off from work. His secretary explained to others that a good friend of his had died. Although she and Arnie had talked many times over the years, she and her boss had never discussed who, exactly, Arnie was.
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When Mr. Welts left the N.B.A. in 1999, he was the league’s admired No. 3 man: executive vice president, chief marketing officer and president of N.B.A. Properties. By 2002, he was the president of the Suns . . . . But again Mr. Welts paid a price. Two years ago, a 14-year relationship ended badly, in part because his partner finally rejected the shadow life that Mr. Welts required. “My high profile in this community, and my need to have him be invisible,” Mr. Welts said, with clear regret. “That ultimately became something we couldn’t overcome.”
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He began to think: here he was, in his mid-50s, and maybe he had sacrificed too much; and maybe he should open up about his sexuality, in a way that might help others.
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With a spectacular view of Paradise Valley before them, the two basketball men talked about a topic rarely discussed in their work world. Mr. Welts asked for Mr. [Steve] Nash’s support, and the ballplayer, honored by the request, said yes. Of course. “Anyone who’s not ready for this needs to catch up,” Mr. Nash said later. “He’s doing anyone who’s not ready for this a favor.”

Majority of Workers Still Hide Sexual Orientation at Work

A new report confirms what I suspect most of us already had figured out: most LGBT employees hide their sexual orientation at work. It is an obvious result when the majority of states still provide no employment non-discrimination protections to their LGBT citizens. The irony to me is that all states have employment protections against workplace discrimination based on religion - which is EXACTLY the basis for anti-gay discrimination. But for religious discrimination kept alive by the professional Christian set and other religious extremists who demand that all live by their imposed religious beliefs, we gays would likely have few employment discrimination issues. Why the courts cannot see what's plain as day is beyond maddening. One can only hope that as religious belief fades - a topic by itself for another post - this circumstance will change. Here are highlights from the report which can be found here:

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[S]ignificant numbers of LGBT employees continue to experience a negative workplace climate that appears to be unaffected by organizational policies and which varies by location, manager and work team. The majority of LGBT workers (51 percent) hide their LGBT identity to most at work, the simplest indication that more work needs to be done to translate inclusive policies into an inclusive climate. Hiding one’s LGBT identity is even more pronounced among younger workers. Only 5 percent of LGBT employees ages 18 to 24 say they are totally open at work, compared to more than 20 percent in older age cohorts.

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Employees who are not open at work experience more negative outcomes from their workplace environment that affect productivity, retention and professional relationships. For example, 54 percent of LGBT employees who are not open to anyone at work report lying about their personal lives, compared to 21 percent of employees open about their LGBT identity. LGBT workers’ inability to participate honestly in everyday conversations hinders trust and cohesion with their co-workers and superiors.

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Derogatory comments and jokes still happen at work and are a major indicator that it is unsafe to be open about their sexual orientation or gender identity at work. A total of 58 percent of LGBT workers say someone at work makes a joke or derogatory comment about LGBT people at least once in a while.

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[D]omestic partner benefits have little effect on the number of employees who remain closeted. A total of 23 percent of employees at companies without equal benefits are not open to anyone, compared to 22 percent of employees at companies with the benefits. And whether a company has an EEO policy inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity does not change the number of employees who are not open to anyone (26 percent in both cases).
relationship.

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Overall, the report is pretty depressing in that it confirms that on the work front, most LGBT employees live in fear and feel the need play act a role that they perceive will be acceptable to their supervisors and company leaders. I played that game myself for over 30 years and it is very exhausting - even when one has not come out to themselves yet as gay. It definitely detracts from productivity and makes for a very unhappy work environment. And again, it ALL traces ultimately to religious based discrimination.