Coming out
[3] Author Steven Seidman writes that "it is the power of the closet to shape the core of an individual's life that has made homosexuality into a significant personal, social, and political drama in twentieth-century America".
[6] Between 1864 and 1869, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs wrote a series of pamphlets – as well as giving a lecture to the Association of German Jurists in 1867 – advocating decriminalization of sex acts between men, in which he was candid about his own homosexuality.
[8] In his 1906 work, Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit in seinen Beziehungen zur modernen Kultur (The sexual life of our time in its relation to modern civilization),[9] Iwan Bloch, a German-Jewish physician, entreated elderly homosexuals to self-disclose to their family members and acquaintances.
[11] The decidedly clandestine Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay and other veterans of the Wallace for President campaign in Los Angeles in 1950, moved into the public eye after Hal Call took over the group in San Francisco in 1953.
Having been fired from his job as an astronomer for the Army Map service in 1957 for homosexual behavior, because it was considered to make people vulnerable to blackmail pressure and endanger secure positions, Kameny refused to go quietly.
The present-day expression "coming out" is understood to have originated in the early 20th century from an analogy that likens homosexuals' introduction into gay subculture to a débutante's coming-out party.
A major frame of reference for those coming out has included using an inside/outside perspective, where some assume that the person can keep their identity or orientation a secret and separate from their outside appearance.
[21][22][23] Emerging research suggests that gay men from religious backgrounds are likely to come out online via Facebook and other social networks, such as blogs, as they offer a protective interpersonal distance.
This largely contradicts the growing movement in social media research indicating that online use, particularly Facebook, can lead to negative mental health outcomes such as increased levels of anxiety.
While further research is needed to assess whether these results generalize to a larger sample, these recent findings open the door to the possibility that gay men's online experiences may differ from those of heterosexuals in that these may be more likely to provide mental health benefits than consequences.
Fear of retaliatory behavior, such as being removed from the parental home while underage, is a reason for transgender people to delay coming out to their families until they have reached adulthood.
According to a study published by Blumenfeld and Cooper in 2012,[32] youth who identify as LGBT are 22 percent less likely to report online bullying because they may have parents who do not believe or understand them, or they fear having to come out in order to explain the incident.
[37][38] A 2023 study co-authored by Yasmin Benoit found that asexual people in the UK were unlikely to reveal their identity within healthcare settings for fear of being pressured to conform to sexual behavior.
[39] In areas of the world where homosexual acts are penalized or prohibited, gay men, lesbians, and bisexual people can suffer negative legal consequences for coming out.
[49] For example, teens who had parents who rejected them when they came out showed more drug use, depression, suicide attempts, and risky sexual behaviors later on as young adults.
[52] A 1995 study (that used young people's reactions) found that half of the mothers of gay or bisexual male college students "responded with disbelief, denial or negative comments", while fathers reacted slightly better.
18 percent of parents reacted "with acts of intolerance, attempts to convert the child to heterosexuality, and verbal threats to cut off financial or emotional support".
[56] Homelessness among LGBTQ youth also affects many areas of an individual's life, leading to higher rates of victimization, depression, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, and participation in more illegal and dangerous activities.
[61] Likewise, philosopher and critical analyst Judith Butler (1991) states that the in/out metaphor creates a binary opposition which pretends that the closet is dark, marginal, and false, and that being out in the "light of illumination" reveals a true (or essential) identity.
Eve Sedgwick writes in Epistemology of the Closet: the deadly elasticity of heterosexist presumption means that … people find new walls springing up around them even as they drowse: every encounter with a new classful of students, to say nothing of a new boss, social worker, loan officer, landlord, doctor, erects new closets whose fraught and characteristic laws of optics and physics exact from at least gay people new surveys, new calculations, new draughts and requisitions of secrecy or disclosure.
The first US professional team-sport athlete to come out was David Kopay, a former NFL running back who had played for five teams (San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, New Orleans and Green Bay) between 1964 and 1972.
In 1995 while at the peak of his playing career, Ian Roberts became the first high-profile Australian sports person and first rugby footballer in the world to come out as gay.
On 21 June 2021, Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib announced on his Instagram account that he is gay, becoming the first active NFL player to come out publicly.
On 29 March 2010, Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin came out publicly in a post on his official web site, stating, "I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man.
"[78] Martin said that "these years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn't even know existed.
In January 2013, while accepting the honorary Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, American actress and director Jodie Foster made the first public acknowledgment of her sexual orientation, saying; "I already did my coming out a thousand years ago, in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to friends and family and co-workers then gradually to everyone that knew her, everyone she actually met.
[81][82] In 2011, as the US prepared to lift restrictions on service by openly gay people, Senior Airman Randy Phillips conducted a social media campaign to garner support for coming out.
Interviews with People magazine,[85] Joy Behar,[86] Don Lemon[87] ABC News[88] and NPR[89] focused on bullycides[90] which Bishop Swilley said had prompted him to "come out".
[96] In 1999, Russell T Davies's Queer as Folk, a popular TV series shown on the UK's Channel 4, debuted and focused primarily on the lives of young gay men; in particular on a 15-year-old going through the process of revealing his sexuality to those around him.
In political, casual, or even humorous contexts, coming out means by extension the self-disclosure of a person's secret behaviors, beliefs, affiliations, tastes, identities, and interests that may cause astonishment or bring shame.
