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Ralph Parks teaches at Eastern Maine Community College. Find his book “ The Energy of Life,” online.
Anyone who has gone through coming out will tell you it is not a one-and-done process.
You may have come out, been hurt, gone back in, and not come out again for a long time. That person you told might have said, “I’ll pray for you, but we can’t be friends. My church forbids it.”
You moved forward in life as if you never had come out. At some other point in time, you had just been living your life and you turned to a friend and said, “Am I out?” In my case, my friend looked at me, made a strange face, and said, “Well, you don’t wear a dress.”
There is not one coming out. There are many comings out. There is coming out to a friend, to siblings, to a parent, or to the parent who is dying and you do not want something left unsaid. There is coming out at work, in social gatherings, and maybe coming out at church. Often the process is a nonevent because the person you have decided to share with has just been waiting for you to say something.
There are many ways of coming out. I remember a friend coming out as a bald gay man by finally doing away with the weave he had been wearing, which made his head feel like a baseball cap. There is coming out as bisexual and having gay men tell you there is no such thing. There is coming out to your preferences. Somewhere along the line, there is coming out and accepting you are an old gay now.
Even in a group of gay people there is still the coming out process of speaking of your personal faith. Your ethnicity may be no issue, but your denomination may be a cause for gasps and eye rolls.
We are just as prone to judgmentalism and condescension as any other group of people. Some of us carry the scars from people, experiences, what was said, and what was not said, that made it a requirement for us to come out again and again and again.
Many of us, having come out, then pass judgment on those who have not come out. We judge those of other groups: lesbians versus gay men, whites versus people of color, gay versus bi, gay versus trans, or by age, by parents, by wealth, by profession, by race, by ethnicity, by appearances, by status. We pass judgment and in so doing often push someone else into a closet of some configuration or make coming out more difficult for them.
Some people think coming out has an expiration date. It does not. There is no age at which we should quietly go back in the closet to make it easier for people uncomfortable with our coming out.
Now is the time for another kind of coming out. Those of us who are out need to speak up and speak out about our beliefs, attitudes, and the need for change to protect those who are being demeaned and dismissed because of color, race, ethnicity, legal status, and orientation. Those who do not have the voice to be heard in our culture at this time, those who are living in fear, need us to come out as an ally.
You remember living in fear. Fear was palpable while living in the attempt to pass, fear of moral condemnation, physical fear, fear of being told we were not equal, not good enough, not worthy of participation, respect, or being treated equally.
This coming out is going to require doing more than voting your conscience in the privacy of the voting booth. This is going to require being part of the voices that are the sound of people saying, “Even if I feel safe, people around me, other people, don’t feel safe.”
Often, those in power look to find a small group to attack, a small group to vilify, a group without position or clout. If they can combine fear of the other with the use of a holy book to vilify the other, they have a powerful prescription for acquiring power and wielding it against the other. Power used against the other can eventually be used against all of us.
Every time you are silent in the face of hateful speech and condemnation of others, you silently become a part of the problem you abhor. Speak out, come out, come out as an ally to those needing protection. The best way to protect your rights is to ensure the rights of others are protected. I can hear you saying, “But I’m old, can’t the youngsters do this?” Babycakes, you have so much experience of coming out. Show us how it’s done.