Move beyond 'coming out' to inviting in' | Voices of Faith
Don't come out unless you want to. Don’t come out for anyone else’s sake.
Don’t come out because you think society expects you to.
Come out for yourself. Come out to yourself.
Shout, sing it. Correct those who say they knew before you did.
That’s not how sexuality works, it’s yours to define.
—Dean Atta, in The Black Flamingo
Wednesday was National Coming Out Day. National Coming Out Day began in 1988 with the idea that coming out as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual (or other identity) person was the most basic form of activism one could do, because it is thought that it is harder for people to hate LGBTQIA+ people if they know one. Although there had been a first march in 1979, National Coming Out Day is a celebration of the second March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights that put forth such demands as increased funding towards ending the AIDS pandemic and the passing of a gay and lesbian civil rights law.
I came out as a gay man in the 1980s. It was an important rite of passage for me in my development as a person, but I also felt called to be active in the fight for equal rights, a fight I have continued through the years. Things have changed in the years since and there is much more acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people. (I never dreamed when I came out that marriage equality would be a reality in my lifetime.) But coming out is still dangerous, especially for people who are transgender, and there have been recent discussions about the merits of coming out. Some people argue that the expectation for someone to come out is actually harmful.
Author David Johns wrote: “The notion of coming out perpetuates a harmful power dynamic that puts the pressure on queer people to more or less 'confess' our identities to people around us, which is not something heterosexual, cisgender people ever have to do in a comparable way. There is no parallel public expectation for people who aren't queer to make big announcements about who they are and how they show up in the world.”
Johns also makes the very important point that peoples’ identities change over their lifetimes. He writes that: “People often 'come out' as one thing or another and then discover more about themselves later, which can be confounding when the assumption is you only get one moment, a single opportunity to make a declaration. That's simply not the way that development or life or relationships work for so many people — in spite of the political identification or social construct they may claim or be forced to fit within.”
Johns offers a stunning alternative to coming out: “inviting in.” Inviting in recognizes the truth that we are all changing and that creating community happens when we choose to share who we are (both the good things and our shadow sides) and invite others to share themselves fully as well.
Along with the acceptance and inclusivity in Unitarian Universalism that I and others experience as LGBTQIA+ people (we were the first denomination to celebrate marriage equality and to ordain openly LGBTQIA+ people), my faith calls me to invite others in. Unitarian Universalists believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We affirm that we are all made in the image of God and that there is a spark of the divine in every single person. My colleague the Rev. Victoria Safford says: “Come out. Come in. We’re all in this together. We are 'allied' with no one and with nothing but love- the larger Love transcending all our understanding, within which all the different, gorgeously various, variant, beautifully deviant aspects of ourselves are bound in elegant unity.”
This Love calls us to draw the circle of belonging ever wider so that no one is left out and everyone, no matter who you are, whom you love, how you identify (or don’t) is invited in. My faith community has been a life giving home for me and I encourage everyone to look for (and not stop until you find) a community that welcomes you, invites you in, a place where Love makes space for all of who you are, and offers you the freedom to be your beautiful, wonderful, unique, divinely created self. We all deserve nothing less.
Rev. Steven Protzman is a religious naturalist Humanist and the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, a congregation whose mission is to inspire love, seek justice, and grow in community.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Voices of Faith: Beyond Coming Out to Inviting In
