As Glinda, the Good Witch, from The Wizard of Oz extolled to the Munchkins upon meeting Dorothy for the first time—“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
If my memory serves me, those were also the words on the poster publicizing the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights held 19 years ago this past Wednesday--October 11th. That day was soon dubbed National Coming Out Day and each year LGBT folks are encouraged to come out to friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and other important, or even not so important people, in our lives.
Coming out helps to normalize relationships between gays and straights, it builds understanding, it tears down homophobia.
I just finished reading James McGreevey’s memoir, Confession. McGreevey was the New Jersey governor who resigned amidst a sex scandal in August, 2004. While New Jersey politics is said to be the epitome of the “politics is like sausage” metaphor -- you may like the results but you certainly don’t want to know how it was made--exactly how corrupt his government was will be left up to biographers and historians.
The impetus for McGreevey’s resignation was the threatened exposure of a gay relationship he had while in the statehouse. The twice married McGreevey had his wife and infant daughter by his side when he pronounced to the world “I am a gay American” and then proceeded to leave the office he had worked his whole life to attain. You need to read Confession to get all the details.
Throughout the book, McGreevey bares his soul in a stunning act of continual contrition. He had lost touch with his God and faith, with his ethical center — his on-going compromise of who he really was led him to also compromise his politics. Ultimately, the moral to McGreevey’s tale is that staying in the closet, living a double, compartmentalized life, is unhealthy and destructive to one self and to those you love.
McGreevey came out so he can live a fulfilling, honest life. Unlike Mark Foley, he didn’t use it as a political cover. McGreevey came out because he could no longer maintain the lies and deception--the closet was slowly killing him.
By saying he was a gay American, McGreevey began to tear down the right wing rhetoric that had tacitly been implying for years that being gay was somehow un-American. He was laying claim to what millions in this country have done for decades. But by doing it live, on national TV, he brought two words—gay and American—together in a way that has struck a chord in our national consciousness.
Being gay is not an un-American activity. It never has been and the numbers are bearing this out each and every day.
A September 2006 poll conducted by Harris Interactive in conjunction with Witeck-Combs Communications, the nation’s leading LGBT marketing and PR firm, found that 83 percent of us who self-identify as lesbian or gay are out and that 70 percent of straight adults know someone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
Couple these numbers with a second study, entitled “Coming Out and Americans’ Attitudes on Gay Rights” which was written by the Hunter College Center for Sexuality and Public Policy at the City University of New York, and we find that familiarity does not breed contempt. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
The study draws upon the first-ever national archive of public opinion surveys about LGBT Americans which now houses 120 polls asking questions about our lives. The report found that in 2001, having gay or lesbian family members increased the typical American’s support for same-sex marriage by 17 points; it raised support for LGBT adoption rights by 13 points. A review of 2004 polling data showed a 13 percent increase in support of some sort of legal recognition of our relationships among straights who knew gays and a parallel decrease in support of an amendment to the U.S. constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
It really is all about building relationships. The more people come to know us as family, friends, neighbors and co-workers, the more difficult it is to maintain the hate and homophobia. The more we come out the more likely it is that straight folks will recognize us for who we really are—just like them except for the person we wake up with each morning. We raise kids, we pay taxes, we work hard. For us, being a gay American is part of our American dream.
