National Coming Out Day

I never came out, not really. There was no declaration on my part. I never sat down with my parents to recite a speech I had practiced in the mirror a hundred times. I never worried about whether my loved ones, my classmates, or my employers would exact judgement. I never monitored my words, censoring my pronouns to hide the gender of my crush. I’ve never called myself bisexual, but chose words that felt less like labels: ‘biflexible’ in high school, or the lengthier “two on the Kinsey scale” thereafter. I never announced it, it just seeped out.

National Coming Out Day doesn’t matter to me because of my own experience. It matters to me because of what it meant for my mother. For my mother, it was a whispered thing. It was a begrudging confirmation after I asked, for the thousandth time, if she knew her friend ‘Laurie’ was in love with her. For my mother, it had been natural in her youth. She once told me stories of kissing her friends during middle school sleepovers. It wasn’t until she matured that she had to hide her bisexuality. She did not hide for fear of bullying, as many do. She hid to avoid the fetishization of men who saw bisexuality as nothing more than a tab on an internet porn site.

National Coming Out Day doesn’t matter to me because of my own sexuality. It matters because of the experiences of so many who never had the chance to stand in the light of their own truth. It matters because of the men and women who had to lie, or risk their lives. It matters because of the people who paced outside hospital rooms as their partners died, denied visitation because they weren’t legally considered ‘family.’ It matters because of the 30% of gay youth who commit suicide near the age of 15. It matters because homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in many nations. It matters because of the evening where I met Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was beaten and left on a Wyoming fencepost to die because he was a gay man, and we held each other while tears streamed down our cheeks.

National Coming Out Day is not about politics. It is not an excuse for Democrats to applaud themselves for being the party whose President was the first to come out as pro-marriage equality. It is not a day to crowd the steps of the Supreme Court and thank them for the verdict of Obergefell V. Hodges. Homosexuality and queerness predate the state. In some ways, it was never the right of government to control that which existed on a plane above it- love. Conversely, it is not a day for conservatives to curse the expansion of the federal government to override states’ decisions on the matter. Any other day, perhaps, but not today. Today should be above politics.

When we think about liberty, we must think of our brothers and sisters who were and are denied the liberty to love freely and live honestly. To those of you celebrating today, congratulations. To those of you pacing back and forth in your bedrooms, wondering if you’re ready, be strong. Today may be the day, or it may not. You are the master of your own truth.