On Coming Out
Reading & sermon preached by Reverend Carolyn Patierno
October 7, 2007

From The Politics of Silence remarks given at the Library of Congress on January 28, 1993
Included in Last Watch of the Night, a collection of works by Paul Monette

I always tell parents who are in pain after discovering their sons and daughters are gay, [those who are afraid that their child will live a] pariah’s life, I tell them life is difficult for everyone.  The struggle for true openness and intimacy is a lifelong struggle for all of us, gay & straight alike.   [But] a difficult life brings you to the core of yourself, where you learn what justice is & how it is to be fought for. 

Despite all the hate & intolerance – at a fever pitch these days – I would not give up a minute of the last 17 years of being out.  I am myself now, not somebody else.  I’ve had a full & joyous life and that even includes a decade of AIDS & I am able to be as angry as I am at our government’s indifference, as despairing as I am about how far away a cure is, and still be a happy man because I’m so glad to be out.  And because I’ve learned that anger against injustice is good for you.  It sharpens your soul.

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Five years after the first cases of AIDS were reported and now, twenty years ago, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was unfurled in Washington DC.  At that time, the Mall was large enough to hold the Quilt in its entirety.  (Soon thereafter, and certainly today, that is no longer true.) Accompanying this memorial ritual was a March on Washington by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and our allies.  It was past time to descend on the nation’s capital because despite the clear and growing crisis, President Ronald Reagan had made not one reference to this devastating pandemic.  Not surprisingly, on that October weekend in 1987, he did not step out of the White House to bear witness to the level of loss that had already been experienced. 

The march brought significant attention to g/l/b/t communities.  It was said that, “The love that dared not speak its name had become the love that wouldn’t shut up.”  Indeed.  As Paul Monette said, “[But] a difficult life brings you to the core of yourself, where you learn what justice is & how it is to be fought for.”   There were hundreds of thousands of people streaming into DC that weekend all of whom had a new lease on life – even if they were living with AIDS.  Difficulty had brought them closer to the core of who they were.

A year later, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a preeminent gay rights organization, founded National Coming Out Day.  It fell on the first anniversary of the March and has continued every year since.  This year the theme is, “Talk About It.”   Such simple encouragement yet the intended outcome couldn’t be more radical.   In 1987 the concept of a “coming out” campaign was in its infancy.  Far fewer g/l/b/t than are out today were willing and / or able to be out at that time.  And so with the advent of AIDS came a double difficulty for gay men who were diagnosed with the disease, many of whom were not out to their families. 

You’ll remember that at the start of the pandemic certain communities were labeled as “risk groups”.  It took awhile for the wider world to understand what epidemiologists knew:  that the more appropriate distinction was about “risk behaviors”.  Before the dialogue turned – slowly – to behaviors that put one at risk for contracting HIV, the so-called “risk groups” were identified as homosexual men, hemophiliacs, and Haitians.  The latter was named only because a cluster of infections had emerged among that particular community.  (Soon enough, of course, no community would be untouched.) There was a sort of gallows humor that bubbled up among gay, white, men with HIV / AIDS.   Many of them closeted, they quipped that one of the difficulties of telling your parents that you had AIDS was trying to convince them that you were Haitian.  Many gay men found themselves in the difficult position of having to come out to their families on two fronts:  as HIV positive and as gay.  This was only 25 years ago. 

So, I find it impossible to reflect on the phenomenal progress of the concept of coming out – the soul sharpening process of accepting one’s identity as a g/l/b/t person, integrating this information into a sense of identity, and then sharing it with others – without also holding up the affect that the AIDS crisis had on the gay community as we emerged as a stronger, more visible force with which to be reckoned.

As social movements go, the change that we have witnessed has happened at lightening speed.  This past week I was at the new coffee shop at Mitchell College.   Prominently displayed on the bulletin board was a flyer inviting patrons to share their coming out stories with a representative from the Health and Wellness Center, no less.  Indicating that the struggle is far from over, the invitation also ensured that confidentiality would be kept and honored. 

But still.

I experienced that change within the eight years I worked as an HIV / AIDS advocate and educator.  The agency for which I worked received a grant from the Centers for Disease Control to support health care and social service workers in their HIV/AIDS work.  Specifically, we helped them to learn about and then talk about sexuality as it related to transmission and identity issues.  One of the issues we presented was that of discrimination – the discrimination that people with HIV / AIDS experience as well as discrimination based on any quality that may put one in the margins.  This training was created and first offered in 1989.  The centerpiece of this section of the training was the moment when I come out as a lesbian to the participants.   This training was two days long and this section on discrimination fell on the second day.  When I would come out I could practically hear brain gears rattling and readjusting.  There would inevitably be a few people who got angry and accused me of deception - always an interesting charge.  By the eighth year of this training, I had to change the approach.  Because 1) in part I was increasingly impatient with the drama.  The tone of the wider movement had shifted and I with it.    The background chant became,   “We’re here.  We’re queer.  Get used to it.”   And 2) it became less necessary to come out with such fanfare among the groups of people with whom I worked at least because, their sensibility had sharpened and their acceptance broadened (one group of participants in Seattle told me that they already knew I was a lesbian because of my sense of humor – bucking the humorless lesbian stereotype – that and because my shoes were so fabulous.) 

It seemed as though my sexual orientation just didn’t matter as much any more.   People were getting it, after all.  Were we approaching the light at the end of the tunnel? 

Not so fast.  As it turns out, I was living a secluded life. 

Those of you who were here in 2001 called a lesbian minister to serve this congregation.   After candidating week and the call, I returned to CA and turned my attention to finishing my seminary studies and to looked forward to graduation.  I was surprised when a week or so later a columnist from The Day called me for a story.  Initially I was so naive that I thought the story was simply about the new UU minister in town.  How sweet.  How quaint, I thought.  However, it became clear that the story was about my being a lesbian, and specifically, the first and only out gay / lesbian minister in the area.  Some of you may remember that Steve Slosberg was the writer.  I kind of chuckled as I realized his intended angle and then incredulously asked, “Slow news week in New London, is it?”  To which Steve replied as incredulously, “Do you know where you’re moving to?”

What did I know?  In the previous 16 years I had lived in New York City and Berkeley, CA - places where being a lesbian was increasingly nearly blasé.  It began to occur to me that I was in for a completely different life – and so was my family.

And what of you?  By calling a lesbian minister you were also placed in the position of having to come out.  You’ve had to come out to friends and neighbors when sharing that you are members of this congregation.  Your children, like my daughter, may have been told that they are members of the “gay church” or that All Souls isn’t a “real church”  (for this reason as well as a range of others, actually.)

How have you managed those conversations? 

A recent poll recently that said that 72% of Americans say they personally know or work with someone who is gay / lesbian.  (The other 28% are lying.)   Those of you with gay and lesbian sons and daughters, or other family members, you choose whether or not or how to come out as a parent of a gay child whenever you speak of them. 

Further, we all have issues with which to reckon.  In Paul Monette’s words, “… life is difficult for everyone.  The struggle for true openness and intimacy is a lifelong struggle for all of us, gay & straight alike.”   Openness and intimacy.  We block these when we struggle to keep parts of ourselves closed off to others.  Unlike sexual orientation, some of these may be our broken parts.   For example, we make ourselves more known, more true, when we come out to ourselves and those we love as alcoholics either in recovery or still drinking & struggling.  We come out when we share the truth about our mental illness, about chronic or life threatening disease.  Anything that stands in the way of our being whole before those we love begs for truth telling.  Through this process, this coming out, the avenues of openness and intimacy are made more clear. 

So, it’s not just about the gay community, although the gay community offers a powerful coming out model.   National Coming Out Day is a reminder of how far individuals and a wider community may come using truth telling as a means to freedom.   

Yes.  Much ground has been covered.  But we have not yet overcome.  When the most devastating taunt on the playground is no longer about smearing the queer, we will have overcome.   When g/l/b/t youth – the “Elmers” of the world* - are no longer at greater risk for committing suicide, we will have overcome.  When we can come out without fear of physical harm or job loss – no matter where we live, or what our racial or religious background may be, we will have overcome.  

The heart is stubborn.  We cannot choose the people with whom we fall in love as the heart has a mind of its own.   And when we find love, we sing:

What wondrous love it this, oh my soul, oh my soul?  
What wondrous love is this, oh my soul? 
What wondrous love is this that brings my heart such bliss and takes away the pain of my soul of my soul? 
And takes away the pain of my soul…

I believe that lyric is essentially a coming out anthem. 

This Thursday, October 11th is National Coming Out Day.  Talk about it.  Talk to your lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered sons and daughters / brothers and sisters.  Talk with your friends.  Face yourself and struggle forward in your own search for openness and intimacy. 

In the words of another anthem for the occasion:  “Come out.  Come out, [whoever] you are.” 

Amen.

* From the story for all ages, The Sissy Duckling by Harvey Fierstein

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