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October On that list of dates is LGBTQ History Month every October as distinct from Pride Month in June. Founded in 1994 by a Missouri high-school teacher to highlight the role models and contributions of LGBTGQI+ people in, well, history, it's since been adopted worldwide. October was chosen to coincide with National Coming Out Day on October 11th, the anniversary of the Second March on Washington for LGBTQ rights in 1987. That day was founded to celebrate positively the "coming out" of LGBTQ people publicly and rooted in the then feminist and gay liberation movements' well-known affirmation that "the personal is political." I wish people could come out of their closets on this or any day because our society was healthy enough about sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender realities to accept LGBTQ+ people or even those uncertain or confused about where they might fit. I also wish everyone believed that it's also okay not to know for sure, but a lot of us seem to feel safer when people fit into definitive, less ambiguous categories. And there often doesn't seem to be a category - or much patience - for the confused and uncertain. Even those who have come out can be suspicious about "what's really going on" with people who just might not know yet, or who are "experimenting." I suspect, too, that if our society as a whole were healthier, we could accept that there are a lot more of these people than anyone wants to admit and the uncertain and unsure could safely say they are. The confused and uncertain too, then, need to "come out." If anything, National Coming Out Day should be a time for us to give people a break. LGBTQ+ people have had enough guilt piled on them by society for millennia anyway without adding another layer themselves because someone hasn't declared where they'll land as members of the club. There's a diversity of circumstances when "coming out" is proposed for anyone. These are not just excuses but realities for the LGBTQ+ person - family, occupational, religious, geographical, and financial. And the last of those is one that American classism tries to ignore. It's generally easier to be out in middle and upper-class circumstances than in working class environments. And it's easier for those who don't have their fortunes on the line to scapegoat LGBTQ+ working class people rather than to confront the effects of the all-pervasive structure of class in our society from which the uppers might benefit. © 2024 Robert N. Minor Other Issues, Books, Resources
Robert N. Minor, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, is author of When Religion Is an Addiction; Scared Straight: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It’s So Hard to Be Human; and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society. Contact him at www.FairnessProject.org
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