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“Coming out” is a very common phrase in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and asexual (LGBTQA) community. The phrase is so much a part of the community that National Coming Out Day was started in the late ’80s, and Oct. 11 will mark its 25th anniversary.
The two words encapsulate a complex, highly individual experience that those of non-heterosexual orientation go through. In order to get a better understanding of this rite of passage, we asked six UT students who identify as non-hetero a series of questions that started out with one: “When did you come out?”
Alex
It wasn’t until he was stationed in Baghadad, Iraq, that Alex Powell began to come to terms with his bisexuality. After a 12-plus hour day, he got back to his trailer around 8 or 9 p.m., but he couldn’t go to sleep.
“I remember that night, just walking around and praying and crying,” he said. “And I wanted to call my mom and I wanted to call my dad, and I had the resources to, but I just couldn’t bring myself at that point to call and talk to anybody. I really didn’t have anybody to talk to.”
Powell, an academic junior and first-year transfer student majoring in paralegal studies, joined the military when he was 18, the same age he married his wife. At the time he was wandering through the Baghadad night, a city he served in for 15 months, he was newly separated from his wife with three little girls at home.
He was also trying to deal with his first boyfriend, a member of his division that he referred to as a “battle buddy.”
“He just didn’t know what he wanted and I’ve never been one to not really know what I want,” he said. “And just being in limbo with him really was hard on me, because it was the first time that I really had feelings for a person of the [same] sex,” he said.
It’s been a difficult journey for Powell to get to where he is now. He was retired in 2009 from the Army after suffering brain trauma when his truck was hit by a roadside bomb. But more than his injuries, Powell said his experiences as a military paralegal affected his outlook on life.
As part of his job, Powell was asked to investigate all 40 deaths of the soldiers in his brigade, as well as two kidnappings.
“When you deal with death on a daily basis like that, with all the graphic details that come with it, it makes you rethink your life and how you spend your life,” he said. “It basically boils down to happiness. Do you want to live a life that you’re not happy every day? Or do you want to live a life that you’re just pleasing everybody else? And I chose to live a life in which I would be happy.”
Now, Powell is 28, divorced, a confirmed bisexual and in the second year of a gay relationship. He’s really happy where he is, because being bisexual means, “Whoever I end up in a relationship with is who I end up in a relationship with.”
“Some people don’t understand it,” Powell said. “Some people think it’s being greedy, but to me it’s not if you’re honest and you don’t try to hide who you are to other people who may come into your life.”
Melissa
Melissa Brodsky came out for the first time about halfway through second grade.
“I had a best friend, and I was just like ‘you know, I like her,’” she said. “And it turned out to be a ‘like’ like, which is what you would say in second grade, I guess.”
With a lifetime of Catholic upbringing to contend with, Brodsky’s instinct was to hide from being a lesbian. To face rejection, especially at such a young age, was unthinkable.
“I just realized automatically that I should not be feeling that way and that it was wrong,” she said.
But as she grew older and continued to feel different, she decided to tell, including her mom. At first, she was afraid of the rejection she’d face at the two Catholic, all-girl high schools she attended. But she was pleasantly surprised to find support, and her first girlfriend.
“I would say coming out to yourself is more of a realization of who you are; it’s finally understanding what makes you yourself,” she said. “But coming out to the community is telling everyone that you’ve found what makes you unique or independent or different from everyone else.”
But once she started to go public, not everyone was so accepting - like the children who began to taunt her little brother in sixth grade.
“He got a lot of backlash for it anyway once people found out,” she said, her eyes crinkled. “Someone actually threatened to kill him.”
“When my mom found out that this happened, she told me that I wasn’t allowed to act gay anymore, because she thought that was why my brother was threatened.”
But now, in her second year as a bioengineering major, Brodsky is “extremely” out – she’s the vice president of UT Spectrum , and her backpack is covered in buttons with phrases like, “When did you choose heterosexuality?” and “We the people; that means all of us,” stamped across them.
Jared
Jared was sure he was gay the summer before his junior year of high school. It was his first relationship with a girl.
“After a month of dating, I was like ‘Yeah – yeah, I’m gay,’” he said with a big laugh.
But way before then, he was suspicious.
“Looking back, I’d kind of always known I was gay,” he said. “The acceptance and coming out to my close friends kind of happened at the same time, but the thinking of it happened a long time before that.”
But the knowing and accepting were two different things for Jared, a second-year chemical engineering major who asked for his last name to be withheld.
Around his freshman year of high school, Jared told a friend about his sexuality. The process halted there because Jared “wasn’t sure this was how I really felt,” and it took about four years before he was sure enough to share his orientation.
Even now, Jared doesn’t consider himself “out publicly,” because he hasn’t told many people back home. He’s only talked to his mother, who he said isn’t very happy about it.
Jared said his mom wants his grandmother to know, but Jared and his mom agree that he’s not going to tell his grandfather.
“It just wouldn’t be productive to tell him,” he said quickly. “It would cause more issues than it would solve.”
But even though not everyone knows he’s gay, Jared doesn’t feel like he’s holding anything back.
“I don’t hide myself and I don’t feel like I have to hide myself,” he said. “The people around me accept me for who I am whether they know I’m gay or not, so how I act around people, I don’t change that whether they know I’m gay or not.”
Emily
Emily Hickey described coming out as “a long process, that I think I’m still somewhat going through.”
Hickey said she didn’t start considering that she was a lesbian until about 2009 as she approached the end of her undergraduate career at UT. She’s still here, working as a graduate assistant in office of assessment, accreditation and program review
Hickey said her hesitation had to do with lack of education. She remembers secretly reading magazines and books about the gay community: anything to “visualize what it would mean.”
After doing some research and meeting her first girlfriend (whom she met at a Catholic spiritual retreat), Hickey began to come to terms with her sexual identity.
Now, Hickey serves as an LGBTQ advocate and an active member of the community. She helped to organize the Toledo Pride parade for three years, and writes advocacy pieces for the Toledo Free Press.
But she has regrets. First, waiting so long to come out.
“My understanding when I was in high school was that if I accepted the fact that I was a lesbian, it meant that everything else in my life had to go away,” she said. “I didn’t know that those two could be together.”
Second, she regrets coming out not as a lesbian, but “just bisexual.”
“It still gave [my family] an idea that I could still be with a man. And I think by doing that I did myself a huge disservice, because I think I made it even more difficult for those that are in the bisexual community, that legitimately do identify as bisexual because they have feelings for both sexes.
“It did them a disservice,” Hickey said, looking at the wall of her office. “I did it the wrong way.”
Will
Even though Will came out to himself two years ago and to his friends a year and a half ago, he counts from when he outed himself to his family: six months ago.
Will, a fourth-year pharmacy major who asked for his last name to be withheld, remembered telling his sister first as an “experiment” before telling his mom, then dad.
“It’s a sin but it’s no worse than stealing,” he remembered his sister saying. “So like, you can be pardoned for it.”
He remembered his response with a laugh. “And I’m like, ‘Well, you can pardon my foot up your ass.’”
However, Will began the coming out process well before he could curse; he said he first began to realize he was gay around age 5.
One day, Will was with his friend Cory, watching a TV show that featured two men getting married. When Will’s dad came in the room, Will announced that he and his friend were going to get married.
Will laughed as he recalled his dad’s reaction.
“And he’s like ‘All right, that’s fine.’”
But it wasn’t fine with Will, at least not at first. He started dating at age 14, but only women. Ultimately, he said was involved with 14 women and had sex with three of them by the time he reached his second year at UT.
The moment it finally clicked that something was wrong, he said, happened thanks to the last woman he was with. After a tear-filled conversation in Carlson Library, she confessed that she felt like he didn’t love her.
“She’s my friend and she’s my lover,” he remembered thinking. “Why isn’t this working? This relationship is perfect. She’s a great person.
“And there’s just one part missing, and I think that’s me.”
Now, Will said he’s received a lot of love and understanding from his friends and family, and is enjoying the sixth week with his new boyfriend.
“My life has gone from what it’s ‘supposed to be’ to what I want it to be,” he said.
Sophie
Sophie Miller can’t keep track of the times she’s come out.
“I kind of came out multiple times because it was hard for my mom to get the idea of it,” she said with a sad smile.
Miller, a third-year majoring in nursing, said she started questioning her sexuality in seventh grade. She said she wasn’t thinking about girls, but she also “wasn’t excited about boy stuff. She decided to go to her mom for advice.
“Mom, I just don’t know what that means,” she remembers saying.
The reply? “Well, you’re not gay.”
“That was scary,” Miller said, “because I was like ‘Well, apparently you can’t be gay in this family.’ I don’t even have to use the word and all of a sudden my mom’s like ‘just for the record, that’s never an option.”
Though Miller said her brother, father and stepmother are accepting of her being a lesbian, Miller’s mother still struggles. But even though Miller describes her mom as her “best friend,” that doesn’t mean Miller is quiet about her orientation.
“It took me a long time to realize that just because it’s not an option in my mom’s head for me, doesn’t mean it’s not a reality,” she said.
That reality was still something Miller said she struggled to consolidate with her Christianity, which she ranks as the No. 1 priority in her life.
“That was a big struggle for me, because growing up I had always learned being gay is a sin, and being gay and being Christian are never going to mix. You’re not born that way, so you choose to be that way and it’s sinful.
“But I did some research on my own and read the Bible for myself and there’s definitely scripture in there that is obviously against homosexual relationships, but I think people misinterpret it quite a bit, because it’s referring to homosexuals that are raping one another, and they leave that out when they preach that it’s wrong.”
Now, Miller and her girlfriend, who plans on being a Lutheran youth pastor, have been together nine months.
“Once you fully embrace who you are, and you’re OK with where you are in life and who you are and who you’re with, then it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks,” she said. “It’s tough; there are days that are really tough, especially with my mom. But I think it’s up to everyone individually to surround themselves with people that support them for whoever they are.”
Danielle Gamble 