Celebrate National Coming Out Day

  • National Coming Out Day
National Coming Out Day is observed each year on October 11 to affirm the ongoing act of living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or otherwise not-straight person. It is a day for coming out for the first time and for the fiftieth time — because coming out is not a single event but a lifelong practice, repeated at every new job, every new friendship, every hospital admission form, every unfamiliar dinner table.
The date is deliberate. On October 11, 1987, half a million people marched on Washington for lesbian and gay rights, calling on the Reagan administration to respond to the AIDS crisis and to recognize the humanity of queer Americans. National Coming Out Day, founded exactly one year later on the first anniversary of that march, is a way of continuing to march — in kitchens, offices, and family living rooms rather than on the National Mall.

History

The Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights took place on October 11, 1987. It was the largest gathering of LGBTQ+ Americans that had ever been organized. The march had a specific and heartbreaking backdrop: five years into the AIDS epidemic, tens of thousands were dead or dying, and the federal response had been criminally inadequate. The names quilt — soon to become the AIDS Memorial Quilt — was unfolded for the first time on the National Mall that weekend, covering an area larger than a football field.
One year later, on October 11, 1988, psychologist Robert Eichberg and activist Jean O’Leary co-founded National Coming Out Day. Their reasoning was elegant. Most Americans, they observed, believed they did not know any gay people. Every survey showed that people who did know someone gay held more supportive attitudes. The single most powerful political act any queer person could take, therefore, was simply to be known. National Coming Out Day was designed as an annual occasion for that act — and as a promise of community for those taking the step.
The Human Rights Campaign adopted National Coming Out Day as its own signature observance in 1990 and has coordinated it since. It is now marked in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and dozens of other countries. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, it is observed on October 11 as well; other European countries have added their own local coming-out days on different dates.

Observances

On National Coming Out Day, LGBTQ+ organizations run open houses, panel discussions, and coming-out stories events. Colleges and workplaces host “come out to support us” days where allies wear rainbow ribbons alongside LGBTQ+ people. Social media fills with first-person testimony: some people come out publicly for the first time; others tell the story of their own coming out years ago, honoring the person they were then.
Faith communities have increasingly claimed the day as well. Many welcoming congregations hold a special service in which members are invited to share the story of their own coming out — spiritual, sexual, or both — and are then blessed by the community. Some progressive men’s spirituality circles use October 11 as a night to gather and simply listen — one man after another telling the story of a coming out that has never been fully told before. In a culture that tries to pretend the story ends the day the word is spoken, that kind of listening can be its own healing.

Male Perspective

For gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer men, coming out is rarely one story. There is the first coming out, often in adolescence or early adulthood, that gets remembered as the coming out. But there is also the coming out to a father who never quite said the right thing. The coming out to a work team that would prefer not to know. The coming out about having HIV. The coming out about a kink or a relationship structure that the wider gay community does not understand. The coming out, later in life, about having always known and having buried it for forty years. Some men come out and then, for reasons of geography or safety, go back in — and come out again years later, in a different city, with a different life.
National Coming Out Day is a good day to recognize that whole layered practice, and to honor every version of it: the man who is out at Pride and closeted at Thanksgiving, the man who is out in his prayer group and closeted at the barbershop, the man who is out now in a way he never dared to be before. In the Circle we speak often of erotic spirit — of the truth of the body as a location of the sacred. Coming out, at every age and every stage, is a spiritual practice in that language. It is bringing the body’s truth into speech.

Summary

National Coming Out Day, marked each October 11, honors the ongoing courage of living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer person. It grew out of a historic march for AIDS response and civil rights, and it continues as an annual invitation to be known. For the men of Jonathan’s Circle, it is a good day to speak, to listen, to bless the coming-outs of a whole life — and to notice how much of our spiritual work has always been the same work.