Happy 35th National Coming Out Day! How and when did you come out?

[marylander1940]

Celebrating ‘National Coming Out Day’ on October 11

WWW.CBSNEWS.COM

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Entertainment host and cultural commentator Ryan Mitchell joins us to talk about the importance of the holiday and having the courage to celebrate your true...

 

National Coming Out Day: 10 celebrities who came out in 2023 (so far)

WWW.NBCNEWS.COM

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From “The Last of Us” star Bella Ramsey coming out as gender-fluid to Japanese pop star Shinjiro Atae revealing he's gay, here are some of the year’s notable coming out...

 

OP note: I didn't come out... they (family) simply figured it out, later on I openly talked about it with my nephews and nieces, they all knew already!

[pubic_assistance]

I was never "in".😉

But, I remember my first realization that I was different from other people.

My mother picked me up after my first day of Kindergarten. She asked me about my day. I said the teacher was nice and I met a cute girl and a cute boy. She quickly corrected me and said that although the girl might be cute, the boys are just friends and you don't call them "cute" or think about them in that way.

So I thought about it and decided to never discuss it again with my mother ..because that boy was definitely cute. 🤣

[+ nycman]

“Out” to my best friend at 17 (the first).

”Out" to my parents at 25 (the last).

After that there was no "In". 

[marylander1940]

2 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

I was never "in".😉

But, I remember my first realization that I was different from other people.

My mother picked me up after my first day of Kindergarten. She asked me about my day. I said the teacher was nice and I met a cute girl and a cute boy. She quickly corrected me and said that although the girl might be cute, the boys are just friends and you don't call them "cute" or think about them in that way.

So I thought about it and decided to never discuss it again with my mother ..because that boy was definitely cute. 🤣

I guess you already had an agenda back then!

[alageorge]

Came out to my sister and close friends in high school in the early 1960's. Have been out socially and professionally since the early 1970's.

[pubic_assistance]

13 hours ago, marylander1940 said:

I guess you already had an agenda back then!

My "agenda" is that you're gonna like what (or who) you like and no matter what someone else thinks about...that's not gonna change.

"You do you", has always been my mantra.

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by pubic_assistance
punctuation

[marylander1940]

55 minutes ago, alageorge said:

Came out to my sister and close friends in high school in the early 1960's. Have been out socially and professionally since the early 1970's.

the 70's.... wow! It was very tough back then even if you were in a more accepting part of the country and in a big city!

 

[+ José Soplanucas]

My coming out was a long process that started in 1983, when I embraced my homosexuality (I was 21 and had been playing with my cousins since our early teens). It was long because I was in many social circles and did not come out to all of them at once. Of course, the critical date is when I came out to my parents and family in 1985. 

We should replicate the positive gay visibility effects and develop a Sex Work Coming Out campaign, with famous Joes and Whores looking at the camera and saying -I am into sex work. Guess on what side... (with mischievous smiles) 

[caramelsub]

For me I think coming out is almost like an everyday occurrence. People always ask me if I have a girlfriend. Including some of my previous bosses and coworkers. I remember I was eating donuts alone at a krispy kreme shop and a lady facetiously asked me “does your girlfriend know that you’re eating krispy kreme donuts without her?” I just chuckled and told her I’m single. I wasn’t just going to tell her that I’m gay and into guys. I’m a pretty masculine acting guy so people just assume I’m straight. At this point I’m done sweating over having to acknowledge being gay every day. Though I wouldn’t say I’m closeted, I’m just fairly selective of whom I choose to tell or let know.

Edited October 12, 2023 by caramelsub

[Becket]

I was eight years old at summer camp. One of the counselors was just drop dead gorgeous and I noticed I felt "funny down there" whenever I saw him. Sadly he was not my counselor so I never got to see him in the shower. But I remember wondering why it was every time I saw him my heart skipped a beat, and I just longed to be in his presence. In school the following fall some bully called me a homo. I asked an older kid who I trusted what that meant, and after he told me I was able to honestly come out to myself. (That's sometimes the hardest person to come out to, IMHO.) Tried to hide the fact from the rest of the world for as long as I could, but a few years later my best friend and I were upstairs dancing to Three Dog Night. The dancing turned into wrestling, which turned into hugging, which advanced to experimental petting. As years went on he and I regularly touched and groped and explored. Sometimes we noticed our penises had a really neat feeling once in a while. I'll never forget the first time he had one of those feelings again, and this strange white stuff came out. Of course we tasted it and it tasted warm and salty. Then I "borrowed" my parents book on sex positions that they had hidden in Dad's bedside table. The heavens must have been giggling at our trying to do what the book said. It was a comedy of errors. Over time I told my story to people I trusted. I was truly fortunate as no one ever got grossed out or stopped being my friend. 

I still only tell people I really trust, and though the world has changed I am still careful and reserved in that area. Guess I'll be "coming out" to folks for the rest of my life.  

Thanks for this thread. It was nice to reminisce.

[+ poolboy48220]

Late bloomer, I was 37. I told the friend I was about to share a rental house with first, then my youngest sister later that year. I joined the local gay swim team, found my "community", and got the courage to tell my parents and the rest of my family after that. 

[+ Charlie]

I came out to myself when I was about 15. I realized that I was more attracted to guys than to girls.

Had my first sex with a young man who picked me up in the men's room of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC when I was 17. When I told him he was the first, he was very informative about the "gay" world (I had never heard the term before--it was only used within the gay community in those days). I came out to my best friend the next day by telling him about the experience, and he admitted that he had been having sex with older guys since he was 12! However, we were never sexually interested in one another. (Like me, he was attracted to more physically mature males.)

Came out to my parents when I was 19. I had had a minor nervous breakdown at college, so they sent me to see a psychologist, who told me that hiding it from the people I loved was causing my emotional turmoil. I broke the news to my parents, whose first question was, "How do you know?" At which I burst out laughing. When I then told my steady girlfriend that I was sexually attracted to men, she said, "Is that all it is?!" But she agreed that we should probably not consider marriage, and I never had another steady girlfriend.

After college, I went to graduate school in a big city and lived in a gay neighborhood rather than on campus, so most new acquaintances probably assumed I was gay. I came out to all my new friends. When I started teaching, I came out to most of my colleagues if they asked. I came out officially at work in the mid-1970s, when I proposed to teach a class on gay literature, and the dean didn't question my competence to do so.

I came out legally at 70, when I married another man.

 

[56harrisond]

A Retired Army Colonel’s Obituary Shares a Secret: ‘I Was Gay All My Life’
Edward Thomas Ryan, who died at 85, wrote that he was “afraid of being ostracized.” The revelation set off a wave of online tributes.

The New York Times 

By Sopan Deb
June 14, 2024
Updated 7:06 p.m. ET

At first glance, Edward Thomas Ryan’s obituary, published in The Times Union of Albany, N.Y., seemed fairly straightforward.

It listed his survivors, including many nieces and nephews. It detailed his Army service in Vietnam. That he was a retired firefighter in his hometown, Rensselaer, N.Y. And that he was a co-founder of an Albany-based radio station.

But the end of his obituary, which ran on June 8, included a personal note from Mr. Ryan, who died on June 1 at 85 years old.

“I must tell you one more thing,” the obituary reads. “I was Gay all my life: thru grade school, thru High School, thru College, thru Life.”

Mr. Ryan went on to say that he had been in a “loving and caring relationship” with a man for 25 years. That man died in 1994, and the note said that Mr. Ryan would be buried next to him.

“I’m sorry for not having the courage to come out as Gay,” Mr. Ryan wrote. “I was afraid of being ostracized: by Family, Friends, and Co-Workers. Seeing how people like me were treated, I just could not do it.”

The revelation in the obituary set off a wave of online tributes to Mr. Ryan, and came as a surprise to some of his family and friends.

“Thank you Edward Ryan for fighting for our freedoms while you yourself did not feel free,” one comment on the obituary page reads. Another said: “He thought he was not brave enough. His military record and other accomplishments speak for themselves. I’m glad he was able to find happiness with someone who loved him.”

Mr. Ryan showed Linda Sargent, his niece, and Edward Sargent, Linda’s husband, the obituary a month before he died, as he was consulting them about end-of-life care. Mr. Sargent said the cause of death was heart failure.

That Mr. Ryan revealed himself to be gay was not a surprise to the Sargents. In the past, Mr. Ryan had mentioned a “soul mate” of 25 years to them, though Mr. Ryan, an intensely private man, never offered further details.

“Linda and I knew, you know what I mean?” Mr. Sargent said in an interview. “We never sat down and talked about it prior to that because my uncle was a private person. So we never broke that boundary. We knew, but we didn’t say anything.”

Upon finding out for certain, Mr. Sargent said, he urged Mr. Ryan to come out before he died.

“I felt that it would have empowered him,” Mr. Sargent said. “And gave him that freedom and made his life whole and complete. All he did his whole life practically was to serve his community.”

Another one of Mr. Ryan’s nieces, Kelly Blue, said that she was unaware of what the obituary would say before it was published.

“I’m happy that he did it,” Ms. Blue said. “Now he can rest in peace. He got it out.”

Born in 1938, Mr. Ryan came of age in an era when gay people faced frequent discrimination and often lived in the shadows. A former colonel in the Army, Mr. Ryan would not have been able to live publicly as a gay man without repercussions. In 1993, President Bill Clinton instituted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which allowed gay men and women to serve in the military provided they did not publicly reveal their sexual orientation. President Barack Obama reversed the policy in 2010.

”I feel that he didn’t tell anybody because he thought people were going to judge him,” Ms. Blue said. “And years ago, you didn’t talk about that stuff.”

Mr. Ryan was a man of many skills, aside from being a decorated soldier. According to his obituary, he was a chef at the local American Legion post. He received a citation from the State of New York for volunteering to cook for emergency workers in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Sargent said.

After leaving the military, Mr. Ryan was a firefighter for almost three decades until he retired in 1992. He was affectionately known as “Uncle Ed.”

“He interacted with everybody in the community,” William Brooking, the Rensselaer fire chief, said. “He was always happy. Always smiling. Just a down to earth guy that would help anybody through anything that was needed.”

Mr. Brooking, a close friend of Mr. Ryan, said that Mr. Ryan’s sexuality was something long assumed by his family and friends, but that Mr. Ryan never discussed it because “of the era that he came up in.”

“I definitely am not a fan of him not being able to live the life that he wanted to live,” Mr. Brooking said. “Me personally, I have approximately five gay family members myself. One being my daughter, who is married to another woman. To me, I understand it. I have no judgment of it. And I feel as though everybody should be able to live like my daughter lives now.”

The last line of Mr. Ryan’s obituary is perhaps the most poignant: “Now that my secret is known, I’ll forever Rest in Peace.”

Sopan Deb is a Times reporter covering breaking news and culture.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/nyregion/military-veteran-obituary-gay.html

 

[CuriousByNature]

Just over 50 years ago. C-section.

[samhexum]

• 

  What happens when an Orthodox woman comes out as gay

• By 19, Sara – nee Malka – Glass got everything an ultra-religious Jewish woman from the insular Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn could want.

  She’s married a God-fearing man and became a mother – her “true purpose” in life –  while settling into the Hasidic enclave of Lakewood, NJ.

  After growing up in a “Fiddler on the Roof”-style home among five sisters, she externally looked the part of the perfectly pious: modest wig, covered collarbone and kneecaps, prayer book permanently stashed in purse – but all was not well.

  Between mining kosher cookbooks for gourmet recipes to please her emotionally unavailable husband, Malka unsuccessfully ignored an inconvenient truth: that despite her commitment to Judaism, she was a closeted lesbian who’d broken off a torrid affair with an equally religious woman just before her wedding.

  “My devotion to God and my deep, well-tended fear of his wrath didn’t leave much room for choice,” Glass writes in her new memoir, “Kissing Girls on Shabbat.”

  Her story is one of a woman trapped – in a loveless, arranged marriage, by the rules of her own faith, and by the self-denial she struggled with for years.

  Her anemic sex education consisted of a lesson involving a tube of toothpaste and “bendy toy” that raised more questions than answers as she lay with the stranger she happened to be her spouse.

  She was soon drowning deeper in a dire situation – burying burning secrets, both from herself and her cloistered world – while juggling two children in an increasingly untenable marriage.

  Once her controlling husband finally granted her a religious divorce, Glass writes that she was 24 and already had “ruined my own life. Forgive me, I begged of God.”  

  Cognizant that one perceived slip-up would cost her her children, Glass forced herself to date men suitable for marriage.

  But after 13 years of “living in fear” and leading a “double life,” it was over — Glass won custody of her children with help from a group that supports ultra-Orthodox who left the community.

  She remains committed to this purpose today.

[+ DrownedBoy]

I knew I was gay by the time I was 13, since I was exclusively attracted to guys. I recall mentioning this to my father, who advised I wait until I was 18 until I was certain.

After high school I (and most of my friends) were certain - I came out and slept with my first guy when I started college, age 19.