What It Means to Come Out, Be Out
The term coming out has an interesting history, but what it really means to be out is often not well understood. It does not mean you have to make an annoucement, nor does it mean that you have to tell everyone at once. The essential element of being out is simply not actively hiding who you are. For many, the more one thinks about how they interact with others, the more one realizes how they hold back and verge on deception when it comes to living openly and honestly.
Virtually all LGBT persons are at some stage of being out. However, just because we may have a straight friend or two that knows who we are does not mean we are living our life freely and openly. While coming out implies a sort of one time action, the real challenge is finding the day to day freedom to be ourselves without hiding who we are from anyone, even for a moment.
It is surprising to think that anybody can still claim this, but almost 50% of the population reports that they do not know a gay person. Studies from the Pew Forum and others show that support for LGBT-friendly legislation and policies double if a person knows an LGBT person. Since support is so high amongst those that can name a gay or transgender person in their lives, it is very clear what we must do if we want to achieve full equality and a more supportive country.
Continue your journey towards living openly and freely by discovering who you are and thinking more about how you interact with others.
Coming out...
Submitted by Angela (not verified) on Wed, 2007-08-22 16:10.
Proper Television is looking for someone who is at the point of Coming Out. We would like to interview this person just prior to the event to talk about hopes, fears and expectations. And then we would like to interview this person after about the results - how it went and what it feels like to let it out. This would be a part of an intelligent, sensitive and hip TV show about Coming OUT - our intent is to share the message with those who are going through it or will be one day when they are ready. We have some high profile people in our show who are also sharing their Coming Out story with us. We would also like this person to be able to talk about positive gay and lesbian role models on television. Pls. contact me to learn more. Angela angela@propertelevision.com
» reply
Class Study Questions...
I'm doing a study for my Psychology Class and would like to hear what information's other individual's might have. My study is on "Race and Ethnic Factor's upon Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual people in Coming out." Studies have shown that white male's and female's have the highest rate of coming out while the lowest tend to be African American and Asain/pacific islander's. If anyone knows of a good study that has information or any thought's or opinion's about this topic, please respond.