Jun 12, 2009  |  By: Amy Cavanaugh  | COMMENTS     

COMING OUT

Karen Taylor: Tell us how old you were when you came out — if you’ve come out, because I’m not going to assume that everyone has — and who the first person you came out to was.

John Klenert: I came out when I was 20 and still in the monastery. I was a monk, and the first person I came out to was a fellow monk while we were having intimacy.

Alan Dinsmore: I came out when I was 40, which would have been, if I did the math right, three years after Stonewall. The first person I came out to was to a gay friend. I knew he was gay and his response to me was “Oh, please, you didn’t think that we didn’t know about this for months and months and maybe even years?” But it was a surprise to me.

Laurie Young: I came out when I was 25 and it was to a girlfriend, not a person I was involved with, but a friend, who looked at me and said she had slept with her three other friends … and it was like this instant affirmation.

Bishop Rainey Cheeks: My mother, and when I told her she already knew. It was funny because I didn’t think she knew what I was talking about. I said I need to tell you something, “I’m gay.” She said, “What’s the issue?” I said, ‘I’m a homosexual.’ She said, “What’s the issue?” “I’m attracted to men.” She said, ‘Boy, get to the issue.’ I was like, “Well fine, if it’s not an issue for you, it’s not an issue for me.”

Terra Moore: Coming out… unfortunately I wasn’t given that particular pleasure. There was an incident with a friend of my older brother where he had asked me for a sexual favor and because I declined he went back and told my brother that I had asked him. And that crumbled an entire relationship.

From there on it was me against the world trying to find myself, but I found SMYAL in like 2002 or 2003, and from there I was able to get a hold and say, “You know what? This is me, if you can’t deal that’s not really my problem.” I have to live for me. It was about finding my own hold on life.

Parí Parker: I just came out, I was out there. I never actually told anyone I was gay. Everybody assumed and they assumed right.

Richael Faithful: I don’t think I “came out” when I was 14, it was more of an issue of me finding the words, because like other people mentioned, people knew that my relationship with men wasn’t quite typical and they knew, or assumed for different reasons, mostly because I wasn’t as effeminate as other women. It was more about finding language to describe it.

Nick Benton: One night around the dinner table, my older brother asked my father “What is a homosexual?” All I know was I was just sitting there and turned about 44 shades of purple. I didn’t say a thing, so that was coming out, I guess. My father found out and he threatened to kill me. Since he eventually killed himself, I know he probably meant it.

Antoine Smith: I first came out when I was 17, in my high school choir to my best friend at the time who turned out to become my very first boyfriend. I came out to my mother the same month. She did not react that well.

Tim Robinson: I got a picture of my boyfriend at the time; I was like “I’m dating that person right there.” And my mom said “Where did you get that picture from? From that shoebox where you got all that other stuff?” “So you already knew? ”

Andrew Barnett: The first person I came out to was one of my closest friends growing up. He and I went to middle school and high school and college together. And he had actually come out to me as transgender about a year before. Even still it was incredibly scary and I remember after I told him, he looked at me and said, “Well, Andrew, as you might imagine, I’m pretty OK with this.”

Karen: Some of you talked about coming out to family members where it was OK, ...