Nearly 30 years after the first National Coming Out Day, LGBTQ activists said that the emphasis of the observance has changed, but the principle — the power of visibility — remains the same. Hear what they have to say and read the coming-out stories of several people in or from the D.C. area.
WASHINGTON — The first National Coming Out Day had eight events across the country. For this year’s Coming Out Day, set for Wednesday, the number is easily in the thousands — from outdoor events to high-school celebrations to observances at Starbucks, say two activists from the Human Rights Campaign — but the point is still the power of visibility.
Candace Gingrich, the associate director of youth and campus engagement at HRC, said that the first Coming Out Day was a way to capitalize on the momentum from 1987’s Gay and Lesbian march on Washington, which drew hundreds of thousands of people to D.C.
The idea, Gingrich said, was to demonstrate the size of the community: “In order to gain support for LGBTQ people, they needed to know who we were. … Their friends, the family members, their neighbors, their co-workers, their teammates, their classmates.”
It’s hard to remember how things were in those days, but Ellen Kahn, director of HRC’s Children, Youth and Families division, said that coming out, and being out, was a risk: “You’d lose your job right away; you could potentially get beaten up just for walking out your front door.”
Celebrations of the day still may feature people stepping to a microphone in front of a crowd of strangers and announcing their sexual preference, but Kahn said it has evolved over the years into more of a celebration of the idea of coming out, as well as a chance for others in the community to show support: “Coming out as an ally, or coming out as a family member, of someone who’s LGBTQ — it’s not always easy to do that either.”
Kahn said the HRC observances of the day include a recap of high-profile people who came out over the past year. They’ve also recently held events with gay and gay-friendly celebrities such as “Star Trek” star George Takei; Ellen DeGeneres’ mother, Betty; and former NBA player Jason Collins. “It’s kind of a platform to tell stories,” she said. (Three of those stories are collected in the photo gallery below.)
Coming out, and being openly LGBTQ, may have gotten easier over the years, but “there’s still a lot at risk for young people,” Kahn said. “They can see themselves on TV; they can see themselves as CEO of Apple; they can see themselves as community leaders looking ahead, but in the moment their lives are quite challenging.”
Various surveys have found 20 to 50 percent of homeless young people are LGBTQ, and the main reason they’re on the streets is that their families have thrown them out. A 2012 HRC study found that only about half the 10,000 people surveyed were out to their immediate families, and only half felt their families were supportive of them.
“While the needle has continually moved toward a better place for young people, every family is different. Every community is different. Every parent reacts differently. Every school policy … varies,” Kahn said.
She added, “We work to balance the message of how liberating it is … with the reality that if you’re dependent on your family to house you and feed you, or pay your tuition, or take care of you, you have to really pay close attention to whether coming out puts that at risk.” Some young people may be out to a few friends or go to an LGBT community center, but don’t tell their parents about their preference.
Advice for young people
She advised that young people who don’t feel they can come out to their parents should find support from sympathetic counselors at school, a support group in the area or online. And to be patient: “If you can sort of manage to get by through high school, then the world can open up a little bit,” and at 18, you can find a new community or “family of choice.”
Kahn said she came out to her “very hip, very cool” aunt first, which gave her a place to go to be herself and a backer in her dealings with the rest of her family. She advises others to follow that lead if it’s possible: “Come out to the one person you know is supportive — somebody you’re pretty darn sure [of], or maybe [you think] they already know. … Then you have that person as your ally.”
At any stage of life, Gingrich said, coming out is a personal decision: “No matter what age you are, it’s your decision when and if and where and how you’re going to come out. … This is your journey; you’re in the driver’s seat. There probably will come a time when it feels right, and you’re going to know when it is.”
And it doesn’t end after one day: Friends and family may know, but “You’re invited to the first Christmas party at work and you have to decide if you’re gonna show up with your partner,” Kahn gave as a common situation. “You may be coming out every day.”
WASHINGTON — Joanna Lohman, a Maryland native and a midfielder for the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League, said of coming out, “my process never really ended, and I think a lot of people will tell you that.”
She discovered her sexual preference at age 21 as a senior at Penn State. She was “engaged to a very nice gentleman” when she realized she had feelings for a teammate. “I could have had, from societal standards, the perfect life.”
“For me,” Lohman said, “it’s not a choice. I think a lot of people believe it’s a choice. And if it was a choice, why would I choose the harder path for myself? … It’s a way that my body reacts that I have no control over. I would love to fit in with the majority — wouldn’t that be wonderful? But unfortunately that’s not the path that life has chosen for me.”
Lohman slowly came out to her friends and family; to her parents, the quickness and completeness of her “180” was hard to deal with at first. “You sort of have to mourn the death of who you thought your child was going to be. And that’s not an easy thing to do.” Now, though, she said, “They can tell I’m happy and comfortable.”
Lohman said, “Most of the resistance I face is not because I’m gay [but] because of coming across as more of an androgynous human being.” In many ways, she said, “I would say I fall under the typical male qualities.”
Since coming out, Lohman has been an activist and mentor in the community. She speaks on LGBTQ issues, mentors young people one-on-one and is working with a group that includes Mayor Muriel Bowser and soccer star Brianna Scurry to bring the 2022 Gay Games to D.C.
Lohman said that in her world it’s an easy temptation to stay in a “bubble” regarding sexuality — one she avoids. “It’s very safe to be gay in America in women’s soccer, so oftentimes women in our league believe ‘What’s the point in coming out? I’m living my life; everyone knows I’m gay and I don’t hide it.’ … [But] there are still so many people who live in silence, and so many people who are forced to live a life they don’t feel safe in. [So] I find it even more important that I stand up for the community. Because the more voices that we hear collectively, the stronger that we are.”
Lohman’s advice to anyone thinking of coming out would be to take it at a slow, comfortable pace. “It’s something you want to put a great deal of thought into. But at the same time, if it truly is who you are, you want to express that. Because I believe that you aren’t your best self until you can live really openly and honestly.”
The problem of suicide in the LGBTQ community (a 2015 CDC study found that lesbian, gay and bisexual high-schoolers were three times more likely to have seriously contemplated suicide in the previous year) comes from feelings of shame and the necessity to hide oneself, Lohman said: “To a certain extent, if you are forced to live a life that is so uncomfortable to you, oftentimes you feel like it’s a life that’s not worth living.”
On the other hand, “Being your best self is such a liberating feeling. And to feel like you are loved and accepted, and that you belong, is such a natural craving for any human being. And really, at the end of the day, that’s what we all want.”
(Jose Argueta/isiphotos.com)
Jacob Tobia, an author and producer who lives in Los Angeles, said coming out was a two-part process — once as gay, a label “I’m fine with,” and again as genderqueer, or “gender nonconforming.”
The second time, “I never really sat anybody down and said ‘Hey, I’m genderqueer.’ It was much more about just changing how I acted in the world,” Tobia said recently. “I just wore lipstick to the dinner table one day.”
Tobia, who uses the pronouns “they” and “their,” came out as gay as a sophomore in high school, though they’d known since fifth grade. It’s a lot to ask a person of that age to define themselves, Tobia acknowledges: “The idea of coming out assumes that you fully understand who you are, but you’re hiding it. And sometimes — and I think increasingly for young people — we just discover our identities out in the open, and explore who we are out in the open, for everybody to see. And I think that’s incredible; I think it’s a healthier way to do it.”
Young people are generally loaded with confidence, Tobia argues; it certainly was true in their case.
“When I was a kid, I had no shame about it innately. I was just ‘I’m gonna play dress-up and I’m gonna look good.’ … And then the world kind of made it so I had to put all that away. But I think there’s a way to spin the world so that I didn’t have to put away my gender in the first place, in order to rediscover it. I could have just had it.”
Most of the time, Tobia pointed out, kids have that kind of confidence in most spheres of life, but it’s pushed out when it comes to sexuality and gender. “Without a closet, there’s nothing to come out of. And we can just stop making a closet. No one is born in a closet. We put people there.”
As such, Tobia hopes that someday “the classical narrative of coming out” will be obsolete and envisions “a world where a 15-year-old guy can just come home to his parents and say, ‘Oh yeah, Ted and I are dating now,’ and it’s can just be the same level of ‘Oh my God, my kid is dating,’ not ‘Oh my God my kid is gay.’”
Tobia advises young people to contact The Trevor Project, a nationwide hotline for LGBT young people, as well as going to any of “a zillion different blogs and places you can go online.”
To people of all ages, Tobia added, “You’re totally not alone, and you don’t have to think about this on your own. And you don’t have to think about this in a vacuum. There are so many people you can talk to about it.”
(Photo courtesy of Jacob Tobia)
(Jose Argueta/isiphotos.com)
Josh Dixon, of D.C., recognizes now that he was in a better situation than most people when he came out, but even then it wasn’t easy.
“I went into it expecting the worst-case scenario, which was so far off of reality,” said Dixon, 27. He added, “In hindsight, in the environment I was in, it was not a big deal. I was in California, at Stanford, one of the most diverse and inclusive schools and environments one can ever be in, so it was more or less getting over me and any hesitations I had.”
Still, Dixon, 27, said there was fear to overcome: “You develop relationships and friendships and you assume that ‘I am perceived as one thing when I am actually another.’” If there is a negative reaction, “It’s hard to swallow, because that’s a lot to lose.”
Dixon was a gymnast on the powerhouse Stanford University team when he came out in his junior year. He first confided in an old teammate from the U.S. Junior National Team, which Dixon first joined at age nine, who was also “newly out,” Dixon said.
That experience was “nothing too crazy.” Next up was telling his teammates and friends, then his family. Meeting a Stanford teammate who was “super out,” Dixon says now, “showed me what it was like to not have it be a big deal. I had to have that conversation with myself, and that was interesting.”
Dixon tried out for two Olympic teams and retired from gymnastics in 2016. He came to D.C. to work for U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and now works as a consultant in the private sector. Some of his confidence came from his family situation — he and two older sisters are adopted, and of several ethnicities. “I have a very diverse family,” he said, and added that his Bay Area upbringing was a help — “You grow up accustomed to being accepted, whatever you are. And I’m proud to say that’s the culture of most of California and most of the Bay Area.”
He was also a major contributor to the Stanford team — he remembers thinking, “if there is any fallout, I honestly don’t care, because I’m still very good at what I do and I’m still contributing to this team.”
It’s not like that for everyone, he acknowledged: “I … realize it’s a unique situation to be in, because not everybody has that luxury.”
He advises anyone who’s questioning their sexuality to “reach out to those who you know have gone through it,” whether they’re personal friends or prominent figures.
“Go online. Go to different Facebook groups. Reach out to publicly out figures. If it’s in the sports space, reach out to other who athletes you’ve seen and read about. The reception within that community is very strong, because at one point we were all there ourselves.”
(Photo courtesy Josh Dixon)
Rick Massimo came to WTOP, and to Washington, in 2013 after having lived in Providence, R.I., since he was a child. He's the author of "A Walking Tour of the Georgetown Set" and "I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival."
