I always fear bad consequences when I come out to other people. How will they react? Will there be more pain than gain for them, for me? Coming out may be easier for some in 2012 than it was 50 years, 20 years, even a dozen years ago, but for most it’s still tough. I’m thinking of all the gay people who found coming out to be fatal, all the teen suicides, all the societies that treat their gay citizens as outcasts.
One recent Sunday, my sweetheart’s aunt and uncle were passing through town and took us to lunch. This same couple had also traveled some distance to attend our wedding. In the course of lunch, the subject of marches on Washington came up. My sweetheart’s aunt mentioned having been at Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I’ve only known one other person in my whole life who’d attended that world-changing event. If I hadn’t already known, I would have realized at that moment that I married into exactly the right family for me.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2012.