User:Certs02/Coming out

The first prominent American to reveal his homosexuality was the poet Robert Duncan. In 1944, using his own name in the anarchist magazine Politics, he wrote that homosexuals were an oppressed minority. 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, with many gays emerging from the closet.

For example, some LGBT youth become aware of and accept their same-sex desires or gender identity at puberty in a way similar to which heterosexual teens become aware of their sexuality, i.e. free of any notion of difference, stigma or shame in terms of the gender of the people to whom they are attracted

In addition Diana Fuss (1991) explains, "the problem of course with the inside/outside rhetoric ... is that such polemics disguise the fact that most of us are both inside and outside at the same time". Further, "To be out, in common gay parlance, is precisely to be no longer out; to be out is to be finally outside of exteriority and all the exclusions and deprivations such outsiderhood imposes. Or, put another way, to be out is really to be in—inside the realm of the visible, the speakable, the culturally intelligible." In other words, coming out constructs the closet it supposedly destroys and the self it supposedly reveals, "the first appearance of the homosexual as a 'species' rather than a 'temporary aberration' also marks the moment of the homosexual's disappearance—into the closet".

In October 2010, megachurch pastor Bishop Jim Swilley came out to his congregation. The YouTube video of the service went viral. Interviews with People magazine, Joy Behar, Don Lemon ABC News and NPR focused on the bullycides that prompted Bishop Swilley to "come out". One year later, he confirmed the costs but also the freedom he has experienced.

Extended use in LGBT media, publishing and activism
"Out" is a common word or prefix used in the titles of LGBT-themed books, films, periodicals, organizations, and TV programs. Some high-profile examples are Out magazine, the defunct OutWeek, and OutTV.