Am I just ignorant?

Grumpypants wrote: »

Yes. Do a tiny bit of research about the issues gay people face in the world from being ostracized from friends, family, social circles and jobs in the most liberal societies. Being subject to violent brutal humiliation attacks in places like Russia, all the way to being put to death in backward hellholes in Africa and the middle east.

Then ask why it's brave to face all that rather than live a lie.

Holsten wrote: »

I'm the same OP.

What is the big deal? How many openly gay entertainers are there? Lots and lots.

It doesn't matter... why do it in this big way? Who cares like!

Romantic relationships are inextricably embedded in conversation. Even in brief interactions, men talk about their girlfriends and ex girlfriends and women talk about their boyfriends and ex boyfriends. Being silent is not really possible because people wonder why you refuse to talk about these things. And, after a while, people begin to ask questions. If you are closeted then you don’t have many options: you can either come out and face the potentially devastating consequences; or you must actively lie about yourself.

Staying in the closet takes a lot of intelligence, social finesse and, most of all, endurance. It takes a lot of work to maintain a convincing lie. The effort of constantly creating plausible fictions and the persistent fear of being found out is a heavy burden to bare. And when you’re closeted, it is a burden that you will have to carry alone. It drains you. It even makes you sick. Studies have found that people with concealable stigma’s (eg closeted gays) have poorer physical and psychological health than people with non-concealable stigmas (eg open gays).

Straight folk don’t have to go through all this to conceal their identities so queer folk shouldn’t have to either. I hear a lot of homophobic straights (in general, not accusing the asker of anything) that complain about queers making them feel uncomfortable by making their existence known. I even hear them make the ludicrous claim that queer folk would be treated better if they weren’t so overtly gay. But I don’t think that equal rights can ever be won by allowing bigots to comfortably maintain their bigoted beliefs. In a democracy, equality is won by numbers, and to get numbers you need to make your presence known. In the Western world, we’ve come a long way when it comes to gay rights, but I think it is very naive to think that the progress we have made would still exist if queer folks just stayed in the closet. Fortunately a bunch of queer folks did not remain in the closet; they went out in the open chanting “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”. They didn’t allow themselves to be bullied back into the closet and, when it became clear that they were here to stay, people got used to it. And as more and more people came out a lot of families and friends found that their love outweighed their want to maintain their bigoted preconceptions.

That being said, people have good reason to stay in the closet. In the West we like to pretend that people are all independent, but the truth is that we all rely on the support of others. If a family cannot accept you and you are not financially independent then there is a good chance that you will spend the rest of your life on the street. If your school can’t accept you then you could be bullied so severely that you develop persistent mental disorders that you will have to live with for the rest of your life; and things could get so bad that you don’t even make it to adulthood.

Coming out is not about sexuality it’s about security. It is very difficult to hide your orientation forever. Closeted queers need to know that the people in their lives will accept them because their future depends on it. People will find out. And it’s very hard to get on with life when you know that, at any moment, everything can fall apart. That is why coming out is important.