Sunday, October 11 is National Coming Out Day, an event that will be celebrated this year with a March on Washington DC, a presidential address to the HRC, and many other events in various communities and towns the world over.  Most commentary that you will read or hear about Coming Out over this weekend will talk about the socio-political value of Coming Out–that people who “know someone” who is GLBTIQQ are more likely to support equal rights for members of our community, that cultural icons or leaders that come out serve as role models and icons for our youth, etc.  Very few people will talk about the spiritual value of coming out, yet it is my opinion that for the individual who is “coming out,” the spiritual value of coming out is the most integral.

Spirituality is generally defined as the quest to find “what is true,”  but we as human beings are tiny creatures on a tiny planet that circles a tiny sun at the edge of a tiny galaxy.  If there truly is such a thing as “universal truth,” we are far too small and limited as creatures to grasp more than the slightest edges of that truth.  What we can grasp and explore and develop are our own personal truths, and the first step of owning our personal truths is the declaration of our personal truths.  Undeclared identities–be they sexual, gender-based, spiritual, or any other–are unclaimed identities carrying potential power that we are not utilizing, and as nature abhors a vacuum unutilized energy will be taken and used by somebody.  It’s an unfortunate fact of life that the people who seek out unused power are frequently people who view unused power as a sign of weakness in their fellows, people who would use that unspoken identity against you.

I worked in a middle school for a couple of years, and this was something I saw frequently–when kids who were teasing a fellow student about being gay were asked if being gay was inherently a bad thing, they would generally say no.  The teasing was based on their perception that the possible “gayness” of their victim was something that person saw as a weakness in their character.  I’ve heard many stories that support this assertion from high school students who have come out–that while they were picked on before coming out, a lot of that went away after they came out, claiming their identity and power.  In fact, they often found a swelling of support for them within their social circles and acquaitances.

I’m not trying to say that coming out solves all problems.  My personal coming out story includes as much pain and loss as it does empowerment.  While I find that in many cases the above is true, there are unfortunately many other cases in which homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia have led to disenfranchisement, harm, or even death of even individuals that have claime d their identities and power.  But each person who comes out is engaging in harm reduction on both a personal and communal level, each person who comes out accesses the power of the identity they have spoken and claimed, each person who comes out moves themselves closer to their own personal truth, and in so doing grows as a spiritual being.