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"COMING OUT."

"Coming out" by A.E. Smith

Volume 10, Issue 6 / June 1962

You, as a homosexual, know that your “coming out” changed your whole life. It was like coming out of a cocoon. The world thereafter to you was a whole new world. The transition perhaps was a rough experience perhaps a delightful discovery, probably some gradation in between. Anyway, you know it was a momentous transition. What happened? You know what events transpired in your own case. You probably just call that series of events your “coming out.” But what happened in the larger intellectual and impersonal sense? Why did the homosexual world choose the phrase, “Coming out”? Why not, just for instance, “initiation,” or “debut”? And is it “coming out” in the sense of coming from somewhere, from something, or is it “coming out” in the sense of coming into somewhere or something? Or both? Regardless of its origin, sociologically our slang phrase is very illuminating. For, as sociologist Mrs. Suszanne Prosin puts it, homosexuals are a minority, but in a way, they are a minority in reverse since they come from a majority and go into a minority; they are “raised” on the values of the dominant group and then must unlearn some of those values when they leave. When you “come out,” that “new world” you entered was, in your case –because what you prefer sexually is against the law, against religion’s teaching, and absolutely forbidden by the majority— because of that, your “new world” is only another word for “minority.” “Coming out” is our slang phrase for coming from a majority and going into a minority. What values changed when you “came out”? Your attitude toward sex, certainly. Before you “came out” you accepted the majority’s teaching about the evilness of homosexuality, that it was absolutely beyond the pale. You learned from the church that it was so horrifying that it was unmentionable, the “abomination,” so far more evil than just the ordinary heterosexual sex like adultery that it couldn’t even be listed with the Ten Commandments. You learned it was against the law and accepted the majority’s judgment when they sent people to prison for it. Your values in this regard are now a far, far cry from the majority’s. It has to be—or you wouldn't be holding this particular magazine in your hands right now. The chances are, also, that when you “came out” you left behind you at least a goodly portion of the majority belief in the divinity of the Christian or Jewish religion you were raised in. You might still occasionally go to church. But as a thinking (and practicing) homosexual you probably “go,” maybe with your mother or heterosexual friends, as part of “passing.” Which brings us to another thing that changed when you “came out,” one of the very first things, the vast importance of which you learned quickly from the first other gay people you met, in case you didn't know it already from having been raised in the teaching of the majority– you learned to “pass.” You learned the absolute necessity for secrecy from the majority (which, immediately, included your family and the police, but also all the other heterosexuals) regarding the truth of your sexuality. This unfortunate necessity for secrecy (or, As Dr. Merritt, Professor Emeritus of ONE INSTITUTE, put it in a lecture on Homophile Ethics and Philosophy, “the necessity of wearing the mask), colors the life of every homosexual. It stems from there being immeasurably more prejudice against

Homosexuals than against any other minority, and the immediate necessity is, of course, your job. I would estimate that 95% of homosexuals “pass,” and I do not think I am under any illusion in believing that 94% would be promptly fired were they declare themselves. I can think of no better way of pointing up this blight upon millions of lives and upon society itself than looking into a period of history when it did not exist, which is exactly what Mary Renault does in her novel, The Last of the Wine. (We are fortunate that Miss Renault is also a noted Greek scholar and that nobody questions her historical veracity!) What a different “coming out”! Her young hero has no need for secrecy, He was expected to take a homosexual lover and is even counseled about it by his father. The public disgrace there was not being able to attract a lover. “Coming out” then entailed no secrecy, no hypocrisy, no wearing of the mask. Homosexuality was an integral and very necessary part of the Greek religion and educational system. But today we are not living in the antique days of Greece. Greece was mostly untillable and could not support a large population. Homosexuality was encouraged for this purpose (along with exposure of excess infants), just as it was in the Cretan and Japanese ancient civilizations. And while it is true our world is about to have an overpopulation problem, that problem did not exist to the Jewish population and it's off-shoot, Christianity, when they came to power. The homosexual today “comes out” to an entirely different situation, However, I think the illustration of the diametrically opposite “coming out” of the young Greek is very instructive for us. It shows that the homosexual was not always in the fix he is in today. And if it happened once in history, it is possible it can happen again. History repeats itself, they say. Even without evidence of this historical example, we have reason to suspect that “coming out” need not always be the shock that it was for you and me. For in our own lifetime the hostile world has been made less hostile. We have seen one state of the United States actually alter its law to make legal homosexual love between two consenting adults in privacy. Frankly, I would have laughed at anyone telling me, when I ”came out,” that such a thing could happen in my lifetime. I’m an optimistic fellow but such was the ingrained pessimism of the outlook of my generation that “came out” that I could not envisage such a thing. I can envisage much more. I can envisage a time when future homosexuals on “coming out” need not ask, ‘Out from where?” and for an answer have to look behind them and see only the red-hot blind prejudice, and need not ask, “Out into what?” and look ahead and put on the mask. It may only be a vision but I have seen it.