It's important to find some safe place in your life where you can be your most authentic self and not a sanitized, publicly acceptable shadow of that self.
Coming out as ally does not bear the same weight as coming out as LGBTQ, so we must take care that we do not treat them as equal actions.
I guess I've had two coming-outs. I'm like a greedy debutante or something. I came out as a raging homosexual and then a fancy fake lady. They actually were about two months apart, so we'll just combined them into one.
Coming Out Day is not so much about the people yet to come out. It's about the rest of us. It's about being the people they know they can come out to. It's about being the people they know will stand with them.
An intense feeling grew in me to tell my family. I felt as if they had this fabricated understanding of who I was based on my Oscar-worthy role as a straight teenager, and I really wanted them to know the real me.
Our world's worst social ills require all of our attention, and there never will be a unified Earth if we prioritize ourselves over another. At the end of the day, all of this is what we fight for: a more open society, a more free and equal culture.
If you are reading this and you haven't come out yet, do it. Join your brothers and sisters in the #CountMeOut campaign. You count. Your single image matters. You are part of the activist army; without you we are weaker.
